You're Approving What?

Between a severe subway bombing in Moscow and Ricky Martin coming out of the closet, how does anyone keep track of what’s going on in the world?

Oh, yeah. We don’t.

Case in point: a recent poll from The Washington Post found that 53 percent of Americans approve of Obama's Afghanistan policy, the highest rating of any other issue on the president's agenda. Clearly nobody is paying attention.

Lamentably, the same population that seems to conceptualize a respect for humanity as some fictionalized communist health care system is now apparently backing the president’s extension of Bush Era Colonialism in the Central Asian nation.

But have you been paying attention to Obama's actions in Afghanistan, the country wrecked and devastated from years of imperialism and now a war more rooted in economic and political ideology than terrorism or "hating freedom?"

I mean come on! What exactly are we “approving" of, America?

In December, the Commander-in-Chief deployed 30,000 more troops to continue to wage a war in a nation fraught with economic decay, pluralistic and divided ethnic groupings, some which have xenophobic tendencies, and a strong anti-Karzai stance that only strengthens Taliban influence.

If people knew how the U.S. practically fertilized soil for Taliban growth and then hypocritically and violently began attacking it, maybe they wouldn't laud Obama's unoriginal efforts that merely mirror Bush's fatal behavior in Iraq (a heavy price tag of government spending and military causalities for which we are still paying today).

How do wars in countries whose national disasters we helped spawn and create going to solve anything? Immediate and complete withdraw and not using Karzai as an American puppet might be some solutions to actually consider.

Alas, the American public - desensitized to the implications of foreign policy and war - seems to support any move in Afghanistan, as popular understandings of what happened on 9/11 still remain emotionally potent in in our historical memory.

And thus, every single day, entire families and communities are made homeless, injured, or completely wiped out thanks to military invasion.

Let’s stop approving of Obama’s already poor record on foreign policy issues. Do not continue a war in Afghanistan that is not, as Obama said it, keeping America “safe and secure.”

Say NO and loudly disapprove of international behavior that is making us more vulnerable, vilified and violent.