David McElroy

We learned Saturday that 30 American troops (along with seven Afghans) were killed Friday night when Afghan rebels shot their helicopter down during a raid. The obvious question: Why are U.S. troops still there?

Afghanistan is no danger to the United States today, and it’s not our business to fix the country’s twisted political situation. I don’t see any evidence that it’s even realistically possible, especially considering that Afghanistan has a long history of humiliating invaders. Ask the British and the Russians about that.

So why are U.S. troops still fighting over this inhospitable piece of land where the people don’t like each other very much and like us even less? Many people would give many different justifications for the continuing war. (You do realize that it’s been going on for almost 10 years now, don’t you?) Some people would claim that if U.S. troops pulled out that terrorists would be able to go back to using the country as a safe haven. Others would say the U.S. needs to stay there to build a stable and democratic government. Others would be more honest and just say that since we started the fight, we have to gain a complete victory or else lose face.

All of the listed reasons are bogus. The real reason the U.S. military is still there is that war itself is good for the state, even though that’s not necessarily the conscious intent of the politicians making the decisions. In fact, many of them have spent their careers opposing U.S. involvement in wars, but when you reach a position of power — especially something such as the U.S. presidency — you frequently end up making decisions that reflect the permanent interests of the state.

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The priorities of elected officials are warped, even when they’re dealing with public safety.

Because of serious budget cuts and possible bankruptcy, the county where I live has had to make severe cutbacks. The Jefferson County sheriff fought the cuts tooth and nail, trying to get his department exempt from the layoffs all the other departments were facing.

When his budget was finally cut in June — after the defeat of a legislative bill that would have allowed the county to raise taxes — Sheriff Mike Hale announced that his deputies would no longer have time to respond to calls about accidents in unincorporated parts of the county. It struck me as a petulant move to try to create pain on the part of the public and create pressure to get his budget back.

Friday, his busy deputies found time for some real police work. Sheriff’s deputies raided a couple of bingo parlors that were using electronic bingo machines that the sheriff and the state believe are illegal. The bingo operators have had some success in court arguing that their machines don’t violate state anti-gambling laws. Either way, the law and court rulings on the issue aren’t clear, so it’s far from clearcut about whether any laws are being broken.

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Nobody can really comprehend the numbers in the federal budget. They’re just too big for us to wrap our minds around. Even millions of dollars are hard for normal people to comprehend, much less billions or trillions.

But things are different in Washington. I’ve always thought the typical D.C. attitude toward money was summed up in the famous quote from powerful U.S. Sen. Everett Dirksen back in the ’60s, who said, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”

Radio talk show host and personal financial guru Dave Ramsey puts the federal budget into perspective by proportionately shrinking the numbers down to that of a family budget:

‎”If the U.S. government was a family, they would be making $58,000 a year, they spend $75,000 a year and are $327,000 in credit card debt. They are currently proposing bigspending cuts to reduce their spending to $72,000 a year. These are the actual proportions of the federal budget and debt, reduced to a level that we can understand.”

The truth is that politicians aren’t going to get serious about cutting spending. In Ramsey’s family budget example, they needed to cut $17,000 in expenses, but just arguing about federal budget cuts proportionate to $3,000 in family budget cuts made people in D.C. scream bloody murder.

No, nobody is going to stop the runaway debt train. It’s far too late. Just know the facts and be prepared.