It's official: President Obama will send 34,000 more troops to Afghanistan

After months of wondering what President Obama's decision will be regarding the war in Afghanistan, the wait is over. On December 1 he will announce his plan to send 34,000 more troops.

Military officials and others expect Obama to settle on a middle-ground option that would deploy an eventual 32,000 to 35,000 U.S. forces to the 8-year-old conflict. That rough figure has stood as the most likely option since before Obama's last large war council meeting earlier this month, when he tasked military planners with rearranging the timing and makeup of some of the deployments.

This troop surge isn't exactly surprising, since it is what him and his cabinet have been leaning towards anyway.

By the Obama Administration's own account, this escalation could cost $40 billion, or $1 million per soldier per year. The bill will likely be higher, of course, since every government program always costs more than predicted.

But don't worry. Senator Carl Levin (D-Pentagon), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has a very simple suggestion on how to help pay for these killing-fields in Afghanistan. LIke any good "progressive," the answer to everything is a tax raise.

An “additional income tax to the upper brackets, folks earning more than $200,000 or $250,000” a year, could fund more troops, Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said in an interview for Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital With Al Hunt,” airing this weekend.

Here's a better suggestion. Instead of having the productive and law-abiding citizenry pay to support one of the most corrupt governments in the world in Aghanistan, why not ask Senator Dianne Feinstein to contribute? Her husband, Richard Blum, has made millions on this war overseeing two "defense contractors." Or asking some of the US government's merchants of death private contractors, like General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Bechtel, General Electric, to contribute, since they all have profited immensely off the backs of American taxpayers in our Middle Eastern wars.

Coincidentally, and without a peep in the mainstream "news" networks, Obama is also supporting the renewal of PATRIOT Act provisions that are due to expire at the end of the year. These powers include allowing the FBI to continue to seize records and eavesdrop on emails and phone calls, and compelling Internet providers, libraries, banks, and credit reporting companies to give up sensitive information.

What's stood out to me about all of this is the near silence from the Left. I can remember hundreds of thousands of people (rightly) protesting Bush's wars and violations of civil liberties. Half a decade later, the "anti-war" Code Pink is now supporting Obama's continued occupation of Afghanistan for "humanitarian" purposes.*

*My apologies to the indispensable Cindy Sheehan, who is the only mainstream liberal I can think of who is opposing the Obamawars.