A WAR BY ANY OTHER NAME

The war in Afghanistan is now the longest war in American history. Ooops, sorry, it's not a war, which under those casual notes the Founding Fathers signed some 235 years ago, only Congress has the power to declare war. There was a reason why the Founders included that provision: TO LIMIT THE DICTATORIAL POWER OF A CENTRALIZED GOVERNMENT AND KEEP A CRITICAL DECISION ABOUT GOING TO WAR IN THE HANDS OF THE ULTIMATE AUTHORITY IN OUR ENLIGHTENED COUNTRY, THE SOVEREIGN PEOPLE.

But, alas, Presidents of all stripes have dictatorial blood running through their veins. The Vietnam War and the Korean War were not wars either...merely police actions, conflicts, counter-offensives...political euphemisms for the deadly reality of war.

Why the reluctance to officially calling the Afghan War what it is? There is the political reason. Legislators would have to vote Aye or Nay, go on the record...not something many would care to do in the face of voter discontent at fighting and dying for unpersuasive reasons. If things go poorly, "Hey, it's not my war, it's the President's...who inherited it from the prior President of the other party. Don't blame the 4,000 dead, 30,000 wounded, on us."

I think there is a second reason for misnaming the battle. The politicos running the war don't believe they can win it...the way we won WWII. The war is basically a guerrilla war and that's not where our strength is. There will be no unconditional surrender. Our enemies will be there after we leave, we know that. As they still are in Vietnam and Korea, half a century after we left. And we don't want to be associated with a lost war. Let's call it something else. and quietly say we have successfully completed our mission and are turning the fight over to local politicos. As we just did in Iraq, as we will soon do, or begin to do, in Afghanistan, Pakistan and anywhere else our enemy is found.

So, how about, containment. Let's contain Al Qaeda and the Taliban and our other sworn enemies, say our brilliant civilian military experts, inside other countries. They can't hurt us much from over there. Wonder why we didn't think of that before. "OK, AdolF, you have your concentration camps in Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Treblinka and Bergen-Belsen...contain your genocide to those camps and we can live with that. Just don't try to bring them to New Jersey."

But that can't be the reason for not declaring war, or the President would be securing our borders, which he refuses to do. That's the other half of the formula, isn't it: contain them there, keep them out of there.

So it must be that political thing. We fight and die with one hand tied behind our backs, we do not give the military everything they need to win, we advise our enemy when we will begin to evacuate and do that turnover thing to Karzai...all to get Obama, Pelosi and the rest of that gang reelected.

Or is it we can no longer clearly distinguish between who's right and who's wrong?