Although headlines trumpeted troop withdrawals scheduled for 2014, the United States has signed an agreement with the Afghan government pledging continued military support through the year 2024.
The Forever War
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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A pretty obvious question, but I don’t think I’ve seen anyone answer it: “What’s the point of no return?”
How many more warfronts can we keep open before the whole system just freezes up and crashes?
@ alex_the_tired –
Focusing on your “point of no return,” my mind went into a whirlwind!
The point of “no return” is:
“Don’t ever leave!”
Be an optimist, Ted – by 2024 the US will probably be so broke that even the Chinese won’t lend them money and troops will perforce have to be pulled from Afghanistan. No tree grows to Heaven….
Henri
derlehrer,
Right now, we’re still able to steal from Peter to pay Paul. But we’re coming up against it, aren’t we? There is only a finite amount of money to spend, and after a while, you simply can’t keep borrowing more money to pay back later. I’m wondering if anyone’s aware of any economist who’s made a determination of some factor — GDP or tax base or employment or whatever — at which point the system has a high probability of simply seizing up due to mathematical unavoidability.
Woah – Woah guys – let’s stop with the knee-jerk reactions just for moment. What if “support till 2024” simply meant “answering the phone about how fucked you are now?” Don’t buy into the mainstream knee-jerk crap, or the same shlick Ted seems to continue banking on. Another thing worth noticing is how few there are actually responding on this blog – at any one time – I see a handful of regulars and a few stragglers. While many consider Bill Maher in a bad light, I still prefer a few more words and explanations to the sound-bites Ted is providing regarding the same issues. The cartoons are great – but the words that accompany them are often ambiguous, and yeah, sometimes don’t seem to fit below the cartoon itself once in a while. The stuggle for objectivity seems to be lost – are we all just barking dogs? Do we even want to be barking dogs?
@ alex_the_tired –
Maybe my post was a bit too subtle; it was a facetious statement that if the U.S. never leaves, there will be “no return”! Bad joke.
@ rikster –
When the cartoon & the caption don’t match up, it’s because somehow a fluke has caused a *future* cartoon to post ahead of schedule. I’ve caught a couple of these and posted to alert Ted; it’s usually remedied within a couple of hours.
[And (sorry, it’s the teacher in me) the correct spelling is “whoa” and not “woah”! 😉 ]
I forgot to mention:
If you want to read more comments from various participants in the discussion, you can visit GoComics.com ! Ted’s work is posted there, too – and there are many more comments.
Shouldn’t surprise anyone, the US still has soldiers in Germany, Japan, the Philippines and f’ing CUBA…..we don’t ever leave….the MIC just continues to suck up a greater percentage of our budget and we all moronically wonder where the money goes…..whatever, we’re F’d in the A, Ted…and not in a good San Francisco kinda way.
rikster,
Yahoo gets lots of comments. All the time. I prefer just a few regulars for the same reason I prefer a dinner party with something like 12 people, rather than a cattle feeding with 5,000 bovine heads all masticating in unison.
To rikster:
If you are going to complain about the too few “words that accompany” the cartoons, then you should, at least, quote them accurately.
Your riff on “support till 2024” was actually “continued MILITARY support through the year 2024.” (My emphasis.) It is not possible to give military support by telephone.
You need to do a little research into the US’s global network of military bases. Start here:
http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5291
You’re not getting my son.