Lynn C. Woolsey: “The trip taken by the U.S. delegation to the NATO summit in Lisbon was an expensive one indeed. The decision made there…”

“The trip taken by the U.S. delegation to the NATO summit in Lisbon was an expensive one indeed. The decision made there to extend our military occupation of Afghanistan into 2014 and possibly beyond will exact untold, unsustainable, unacceptable costs. A war that has already tragically cost us 1,400 American lives will now take many hundreds more. A war that has already drained the Treasury of $370 billion will drive us further into debt and stall our economic recovery. And a war that has undermined our national security goals will continue to make us less safe. Here we are patting down holiday travelers at the airport while we escalate a war that is fomenting, rather than fighting, terrorism. That's the current state of our national security policy. Talk about missing the forest for the trees. This decision to stay the disastrous course in Afghanistan represents a broken promise plain and simple, a promise that was to at least begin ending this war in July of next year. Meanwhile, as the timetable extends, the tactics seem to grow more violent. Remember shock and awe in Iraq? Well, we are now engaged in what one American officer called, 'Awe, shock, and firepower' in the form of enormous tanks now rolling into Afghanistan for the first time during this war. As if Afghans needed another reminder of the 1980s Soviet invasion, which was heavy on tank artillery, and left an indelible mark on the national consciousness.”