Losing

One worrisome trend in American culture is our fear of losing. You see this fear embedded in decision-making all across the spectrum from public to private. The biggest two examples are the federal bail out of the banks and the war in Afghanistan. The bail out of the banks was a way to avoid the consequences of risk-taking. People took risky loans, bankers took risks on shady borrowers, other bankers bought this risky debt and so on. And they were all wrong. But rather than ask people to live with the consequences of their bad choices, the federal government decided to bail the banks out. Many on left were incensed because they thought the government should have bailed out the homeowners as opposed to the banks. But this is just an argument over who gets to be bailed out by their bad choices - not whether we ought to be bailed out. Not surprisingly, it is those better connected. They all bet on a bad hand at poker and then want their money back after losing.

And now we look at the issue of Afghanistan. We are so terrified of "losing" the war, we're sending more and more troops over to this wasteland of a country with less than 1000 Al Queders for what? It makes no sense anymore. What are we trying to "win" over there? We thought we might be able to transform Afghanistan into a liberal democracy and at the very least, make it inhospitable to Al Queda. We reached the lowest of our goals in Afghanistan. So let's pack up and save our energies for another cause. Because we can't be foolish enough to believe Afghanistan will become South Korea anytime soon with any number of troops we leave there.