War.

Editor,

The NYT finally reported this week that our so-called partner, Pakistan -- who everyone who has heard of Ahmed Rashid knows has been, is, and always will be the Taliban's primary benefactor and protector -- is colluding with Hamid Karzai to broker a power-sharing arrangement in which the Afghan Pashtuns and Haqqani Taliban will dominate Afghanistan politically and, incidentally, brutalize the Tajik and other minorities (which together constitute the majority in Afghanistan).

What in heaven's name does Washington think they are doing in Afghanistan? Our military is as good as gone from there by any practical measure, and the result of our leaving is the same as what resulted from the Soviet withdrawal in 1989: civil war.

Unemployed Americans are about to be turned out into the street by a Congress concerned with "runaway spending." Well, this utterly stupid, pointless, and horrendous war that the same Congress is funding to the tune of a billion dollars a week is draining enough money from the American economy to stimulate it back to health.

I suspect that Wall Street banks and American corporations are betting on a middle class being bootstrapped in China, and they have already written off the middle class in this country.

Look at the drug war on our Mexican border and the militarization of the immigration issue in Arizona. When consumption is not the designated function of a nation or region, it is given over to war.

You better hope that the Chinese can't get their domestic economy far enough off the ground for American workers to be cut loose altogether, because when we are, the U.S. will become a designated war zone on some pretense or other.

Re: "The 36 Hours That Shook WashingtonB" (6/27/2010)