Top Values Stories to Watch in 2010: No. 1 ... the War in Afghanistan

This week ends 2009 and starts the New Year. It’s the traditional time to make resolutions. In addition to resolutions, I invite you to list the top values stories we should watch in 2010. I’ll list three this week—tell us if you agree or disagree—and add your own.
   

War is the theme for 2010. Different kinds of war: armed conflict, culture war, economic war.

Today, let’s consider the traditional definition, war as armed conflict against an enemy. The venue is Afghanistan; the enemy is Al Qaeda. As the alleged terrorist incident aboard a Northwest flight on Christmas Day reminds us, Al Qaeda continues to be a real threat.

Obama’s 30,000-troop surge will play out in 2010. As he said in an address earlier this month at West Point, “I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources that we need to seize the initiative, while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan.”

As necessary as the surge may be, I am reminded of Dwight Eisenhower’s remarks in 1953:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”

Do you support Obama’s surge? Do you agree that it’s a top values story to watch for 2010?

What do you think of Eisenhower’s remarks? Still pertinent today?

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