The Middle East

What happened to calls for the U.S. to completely withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan? It would appear that, with the election of Barack Obama, these calls have fallen sharply and received less attention in the media.  I understood the original mission in Afghanistan, blood for blood. I also understood extending our involvement to Iraq where a repressive dictator who our then president's family held a grudge against was in control. I can no longer understand or justify continued substantial military involvement in either of these places, and that is ignoring the exercise in indecision that is Libya. The U.S. military estimates that we have given 360 million dollars in contract money to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Note that this is an estimate coming from the U.S. military, which has powerful motives to limit this figure as much as possible. Yet 360 million is nothing compared to the loss of men, in Iraq alone we lave lost more than 4400 men, and over 32,000 have sustained injuries. Perhaps, if someone could tell me a realistic and attainable goal that a military presence could achieve in these two countries, I would be more open to continuing our military actions. I think the most reasonable course of action at this point is flooding the governments we support in each country with money and resources to keep them from collapsing, continuing limited, but hopefully dramatic, raids that highlight the elitism of our country's military and take out key components of the opposition, and learning a lasting lesson about military involvement in Islamic countries.