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Macomb, IL – Days before President Obama finally declared the war in Iraq over, before news that Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi is as dead as al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein, Obama announced that he's deploying about 100 armed advisers to central Africa to help fight the Lord's Resistance Army, and a study detailing the 1,446 U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan through December came out.
The war in Afghanistan was 10 years old last month, and the nation's longest war shows no sign of ending - despite proclamations by the White House that try to appeal to a majority of Americans who favor a withdrawal. Shouldn't we withdraw?
True, Obama plans to withdraw 10,000 troops this year and another 23,000 next year, but that will still leave almost 70,000 troops there - about twice as many as when he was inaugurated - as well as about 200,000 contractors and employees. It's far from over.
This undeclared war was started by George W. Bush on Oct. 7, 2001, and it took 78 days to rout the Taliban, who'd been sheltering al Qaeda operatives such as bin Laden, who wanted the U.S. to invade. In a 2004 video, bin Laden said, "All we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point East to raise a cloth on which is written al-Qaeda, in order to make the generals to race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses ... so we are bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy."
According to another study by more than a dozen universities' economists, anthropologists, political scientists, legal experts, and a physician working on Costs of War, the full price of the Afghanistan and Iraq "adventures" is $4 trillion. Most analyses put Afghanistan's share of that total at 35% - some $1.4 trillion.
Besides the money, of course, there are the lives - and the profound loss to communities as well as families. Costs of War notes that more than 6,000 U.S. troops and 14,000 Afghani civilians have died.
And the State University of New York at Stony Brook's October report, American Military Deaths in Afghanistan, and the Communities from Which These Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines Came, says "these fighters and their communities are significantly different from U.S. society."
Troop fatalities are disproportionately white and Native American working-class people with no more than a high school education, most from the Midwest and South and the highest rates from rural counties and small towns.
Maybe that's part of why most Americans support withdrawal.
US Rep. John Duncan, a Tennessee Republican, recently recounted his appearances in conservative areas, where he said, "We had to end unnecessary foreign wars, stop rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan, and start rebuilding our own country. In each place, the audience erupted into applause."
That's sensible. Obama's own original goals of denying al Qaeda a base of influence, reversing the Taliban's resurgence, and bolstering Afghanistan's security all seem closer, if not 100% achieved. Al Qaeda isn't in Afghanistan. The Taliban are scattered. And Afghan President Hamid Karzai's corrupt government seems beyond reform.
Duncan, the conservative Republican, added, "There is nothing conservative about these wars. Fiscal conservatives should be the ones most horrified by the cost in blood and treasure."
Indeed, the nonpartisan Afghanistan Study Group surveyed conservatives and found that two-thirds of conservative back a reduction in troop levels in Afghanistan and 71% of conservatives - and 67% of Tea Party supporters - worry that wars' costs will make addressing the budget and deficit more difficult.
Maybe that's why Republican Sens. Rand Paul and Mike Lee were among 27 senators who signed a letter to Obama this summer calling for a "sizable and sustained withdrawal." In the Republican-controlled U.S. House, a proposal by Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Jim McGovern to speed up withdrawal lost by just 11 votes, with 26 Republicans joining almost all of the Democrats there.
In west-central Illinois' two Congressional districts, the costs are staggering, according to the National Priorities Project's own conservative Cost of War estimate, which this week listed totals as $772 million from the 17th District and more than $1 billion from the 18th District.
Shouldn't we withdraw and use a fraction of that money on rebuilding America, as Duncan suggests, on schools and jobs, on roads and bridges, on high-speed rail and alternative energy?
Shouldn't we withdraw and spend less, period?
Shouldn't we withdraw and save our communities and their young men and women?
Shouldn't we withdraw and save lives?
Shouldn't we withdraw?
Bill Knight is a freelance writer who teaches at Western Illinois University. The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of WIU or Tri States Public Radio