War Peddlers

Sometimes General Petraeus sounds like a door-to-door salesman. Especially when he peddles his wares--the war in Afghanistan--to a weary public.

I'm not sure if it's a deliberate tactic or not, but he uses words that can leave you dizzy. On Sunday's Meet the Press, he said, "Over the last 18 months or so, what we’ve sought to do in Afghanistan is get the inputs right for the first time. . . And, indeed. . . the inputs already are enabling some outputs."

He evidently likes this language. In June he told us that General McChrystal had "played a key role in helping get the inputs right in Afghanistan." And in March, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he said, "We've spent much of the past year working to get the inputs right in Afghanistan. . . And with those inputs now in place, we're starting to see the outputs."

My head spins with questions. What exactly are inputs? "Organization," "concepts," and mostly troops, as far as I can tell. What are outputs? Not clear. So far there don't seem to be any or he would have spelled these out, as any good salesman knows. And biggest questions of all, why has it taken 9 years to get the inputs right? And why have we tolerated a 9-year-old war that, to date, shows no outputs?

The salesmen have come and gone. George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Barack Obama, Robert Gates, brass and non-brass, all packaging and repackaging the same product--one that costs far more money and lives than we can afford.

Instead of shutting our doors and pretending we're not home, let's confront the salesmen and tell them we're not interested. We owe it to ourselves and our country to do no less.