Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for January 11, 2014

Don’t underestimate the American people, GT.

Same as the British did for centuries, to control narco-trafficking.

Inertia

To “control” narco-trafficking… Yes, all too literally.

Does the average GI really know why he or she is there?

Inertia…excellent answer.

Better to ask the victim’s families & survivors of 9/11 if those who hosted the planners of that tragedy should be allowed to return to power and resume their agenda.

@gmartin997And it employs many, many more staff of defense contractors. Sort of like the automobile industry. It’s “good” business.

We’re there to keep the military-industrial complex humming and to provide very realistic training for combat troops. Otherwise, why negotiate with Karzai to keep troops there after this year? Ever notice that these little wars never end and that the U.S. always seems to be involved in at least one of them? If we stopped spending trillions on these escapades, we would still have problems, but they wouldn’t be about money.

Why don’t you ask the President.

Try the “influence” of the companies of the military industrial complex.

“Quite simple. It keeps 50,000 people employed who otherwise would be unemployed.”~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~That very thought has occurred to me – pretty often — especially when the talking heads refer to ‘homeless veterans.’Imagine how the ‘jobless’ numbers would rise if we brought them all home. How many would find jobsin today’s economy?Can you imagine? the consequences of ending the war would be calamitous!A perfect example of being ‘between a rock and a hard place.’

Military spending is the only form of Keynesian economic stimulation that both parties can agree on. The beauty of the “volunteer” military and deficit financing of war is that the great majority of the public has zero skin in this game and so doesn’t seem to particularly care about it—at least not as much as they care about playing iPhone games…

“To “control” narco-trafficking… Yes, all too literally.”

I cam down here to say that…

I assumed it was rhetoric question.

Trudeau is right, feminists in America care as much about women in Afghanistan as they care about worms in Thailand.

Why do we have troops anywhere overseas? To protect the income of military industrialists, or as they USED to be called, war profiteers. And by extension, the income of CONgresspeople.

Because we don’t know how to bring them back?

Why are we still in Afghanistan?… I always assumed there was some frivolous reason like, say…keeping girls and women from being tortured or murdered for going to school or work or for showing their faces in public…? In other words, everything these two characters take for granted in their day-to-day lives. You’d think they’d at least acknowledge this at some point; maybe tomorrow. (?)

“why are we still in Afgahanistan?…”Lots of countries do lots of bad things. This doesn’t mean we can solve all of those issues by having boots on the ground.

Well, I wouldn’t say Pakistan is our closest ally, but I take your point otherwise, Garfield.

Afghanistan has some of the largest, untapped oil fields known.

Then there was Captain Penny on channel 5, Cleveland: You can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool Mom.

They’re still there because there aren’t any jobs for them if we bring them home. Military pay isn’t great but it does provide a place to live and food on the table — which is more than WalMart does. Minimum wage jobs used to be for teenagers still living at home — now their parents are trying to raise families and get them through school on those jobs. Somehow we just can’t convince Congress that they need to work on putting this country back to work — probably because there is too much money going to them to make sure that doesn’t happen.

9/11 was a tragedy, done by religious extremists, not another nation. We need to send in Seals and other forces(the same way that Israel does). Fighting 2 expensive wars was done to boost the money and knowledge that the military contractors have. Rebuilding those countries will just keep that money rolling into their coffers. Come to think of it, it is slightly better than making huge multinational corporations rich(the ones that pull the puppet strings in DC and in NATO countries, that are to good to claim a flag – they are bigger than that)