Let me start off by saying that I do believe God is taking care of us during this whole job-search thing. I know that eventually things will work out the way God deems best.
Now that I’ve got that disclaimer out of the way, allow me to say how much this ticks me off.
The Bush administration plans to ask Congress for $10.6 billion for Afghanistan, a major increase aimed at rebuilding the country and strengthening government security forces still fighting the Taliban five years after the U.S.-led invasion. … The new U.S. money would be on top of $14.2 billion in aid the United States has already given to Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban government.
The half of my brain that houses a rudimentary knowledge of global economic interdependence and global impact of national defence gets the principle behind this move.
But right now, as I wade through the red tape of my current circumstances I’m less than thrilled. From where I sit, it appears that the United States has this policy whereby we fight expensive wars in other countries and then pay as much–or more than–the cost of prosecuting the war in order to put back together a country we participated in tearing asunder. This is a very expensive policy that comes out of my pocket. And your pocket.
So we have this War on Drugs which makes the price of drugs go up. Which makes countries like Afghanistan–a major poppy grower–home to drug cartels swimming in wealth. So we spend more money to go over and wipe out the cartels, wipe out the poppies and set up what amounts to an Afghan welfare state. How screwed up is this?
I’ll be honest. I grew up sheltered and can be naive about a lot of things. So perhaps I am living in an ivory tower on this, but I don’t understand why some drugs are legal and others aren’t. I’ve had relatives who are drug addicts and relatives who are alcoholics. Obviously there are just some people with weaknessess for chemical addiction, regardless of the legality of the chemical. I’ve known people who are sex addicts and food addicts too. They’ll either screw or dine themselves into grave physical harm but last time I looked neither sex nor food was illegal. The Feds don’t take your mama’s house and car if you are growing carrots in a room in her basement. So why have we decided to prosecute the unwinnable war on drugs in order to make bad men the world over wealthy? So we can spend more of my hard earned money to go after those bad men and destroy their drugs making the drugs the other bad men have even more expensive and so on and so forth?
It’s common knowledge that terrorists are funded in large part by drug money. Drug money we’ve created a demand for. None of it makes sense to me anymore.
And here I sit, a good law-abiding citizen without so much as a traffic ticket. All I want is to live in peace with my family. Maybe order a pizza every now and again. Unlike governments and drug-runners I haven’t got an abundance of earthly wealth at my fingertips. So WHY ON EARTH do I have to keep throwing my money down this rabbit hole? Why?
Thank heaven it’s Friday. I think I need a weekend.