This summer's most exciting reality TV show: The War

I had a brilliant idea this morning. I was watching The Today Show, as I just love a good train wreck, and for once I actually saw a story of legitimate merit. Richard Engel, he of the god-sized balls and really one of the few journalists worth a shit, was on the ground in Afghanistan while US troops fought off Taliban fighters a mere hundred yards away. It was a bloody and hard fought battle, littered with bodies and spent bullet casings. Just the way I like to start my day.

So here’s my grand idea. Let’s get some more big balled mothers on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, not armed with weapons, but with cameras. Let’s have a live feed of each and every battle that goes on, and let’s play the best hour of carnage in primetime, and let’s make it mandatory viewing for every American.

Why do I want this? Because I’m having a hard time recalling why we’re there in the first place and I would imagine I’m not the only one.

Long ago, Mayor McCheese, aka George W. Bush, made the argument that if we don’t fight those bad guys over there, we’ll be forced to fight them here. Not that it was a very compelling argument, or even the only one, but that was his story and he clung to it with both hands. But then Mr. Barack Obama came along and intimated that he would close up shop in Iraq and re-commit to Afghanistan, which wasn’t exactly ideal, but at least it was a move towards wrapping this shit up.

Except that never happened. Both wars are still in full swing, with tens of thousands of troops on the ground in either place, and no one can tell us why. What are we still doing there? What is the point? Obviously no one is coming to get us, and even if they were I don’t know that playing Muslim whack-a-mole halfway around the world really makes much of a difference. We’re not building a democracy in either place, and isn’t about time we gave up on the imperialistic attitude that we are the purveyors of democracy? The region isn't exactly stable, but it's never been very stable. Meanwhile we are hemorraging money and human lives, and no one can even be bothered to have a conversation about it.

I'm not anti-war in general. I believe there are some things worth fighting for. A muddled clutch of excuses, revamped and revarnished whenever the need arises, is not a good reason.