Richard Reeves: Get Out of Afghanistan!

Washington is 67 square miles, about as high as the Washington monument, and surrounded on all sides by "reality". Last week Joe Scarborough, former Florida congressman, talking head on MSNBC, and now guest columnist for Politico.com, did a nice job in laying down a couple of rules that would make my list. "Age old truths," he called them. The three that impressed me were: "The first of these truths is that Washington always wins. Always. The federal government always gets bigger." "The second time-tested truth of Washington is that Washington always wins. Always. The federal government always gets bigger." "The second time-tested truth of Washington is that policy makers skew the rules to ensure Wall Street always wins. Wall Street stands stronger than ever, three years after bringing America to the brink of financial collapse. The third ugly truth is that the city's political gears are always greased for war. The most recent Republican administration showed an unnerving propensity for war, and the current Democratic White House has expanded troop levels, increased the Pentagon budget and made larger the percentage of the US economy being spent on weapons systems and hot wars." Scarborough, a Republican, aims some of his arrows at the press: "Against this chaotic backdrop of military adventurism run amok, there is no countervailing force to balance a reckless, shrewd foreign policy, and most troubling is the same press that bowed and scraped to Obama in 2008 is now doing his bidding in support of his wars." Obama, in fairness, inherited two of his wars, and he can say that the Libyan war is not an American war, but a North Atlantic Treaty Organization war. Unfortunately, he is beginning to learn that there really is no such thing as NATO!