On April 10, I watched former Republican Congressman John Kasich guest-host “The O’Reilly Factor.” He was interviewing Sunsara Taylor, a self-designated anti- war protester. The topic was left-wing supporters of Obama who are upset with the president for making claims on the campaign trail about pulling out of Iraq, then reneging once he was in office. Taylor wanted all American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq to come home immediately. The follow- ing dialogue is, I think, instructive:
Kasich: “Look, take Afghanistan for a second. I have my concerns about what we’re getting into – it sounds amazingly like Vietnam – but, Sunsara, over there they’re taking young women, if they want to go to school, and they throw acid in their faces.”
Taylor: “That’s true.”
Kasich: “So what do you do? You just let that go?”
So it seems that we now live in an America in which
John Kasich – known as a budget cutter during his time in Congress, chief author of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 – now believes that during a recession, a time of massive new government spending, a time of deficits that dwarf anything he fought against in the 1990s, the United States must deploy troops to countries that he himself has concerns about becoming other Vietnams, not because any Americans are in danger but because domestic violence has been reported there.
