Will the U.S. Collapse?

Ronald Reagan is given credit by many for causing the collapse of the Soviet Union. Personally, I’m not one of those people; I think there’s plenty of evidence that it fell apart all by itself. Furthermore, I’m not sure we’re that much better off with a lot of former Soviet states than we were with one big one, although I have to admit that in general the citizens of those states are. (I speak with some authority here—I lived in Kazakhstan for nearly a year, in 1994-95.)

But if Reagan is responsible, it is largely because of the Soviet’s war in Afghanistan, in which we funded the Mujahideen (at a cost of $Billions) and kept the Soviets tied up in an unwinnable war for years. The “Soviet Vietnam” was extremely unpopular at home and basically bankrupted the country. Meanwhile, the CIA was training and arming a network of freedom fighters that we thought we could control. Guess what? We were wrong. And now those same freedom fighters (we’ve apparently decided that they should be called insurgents instead of the more ennobling “Mujahideen”) are keeping us tied up in an unwinnable war (two of them, since Afghanistan is looking worse by the day) as we sail merrily into a bankruptcy of our own. Excellent strategy on their part, and it looks like it’s working. The question is, will we let it tear us apart as the Soviets did?

I’m not sure we can stop it, unless we bring the war to a speedy end. Never mind the fact that the President took us to war on false pretenses, that he has lied to us since the beginning, that his government is corrupt and incompetent. All those are reasons why we shouldn’t have launched the war in the first place. But the continuation of the war is only making matters worse. For every day we spend occupying Iraq we create a thousand new terrorists bend on destroying us. If not tomorrow, then the next day. If not them, then their sons and daughters. We must stop the war, stop the bleeding, stop the killing. Otherwise, I’m afraid we are doomed to collapse.