Who Decides About War? What About the People?

by John Nichols
The U.S. occupation of Afghanistan has reached its "sell-by…" date.

A majority of Americans now tell pollsters the mission was a mistake. Ninety-eight members of the House – including liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans – have cosponsored Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern's resolution asking the Pentagon to develop an exit strategy.

Unfortunately, the generals who run wars, and the defense contractors who profit from them, want to keep U.S. troops on the ground in that distant land. And President Obama is under pressure to surge tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops into "the graveyard of empires."

The people have wisely turned against an occupation that has cost the United States too many lives and too many hundreds of billions of dollars while only making a bad situation worse for the Afghan people -- especially, according to feminists in Kabul, women.

Unfortunately, the people do not have the power to end wars that they know have gone awry.

So it falls to Congress to demand an exit strategy.


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