In the wake of primary elections in New Jersey in which
Castle got 35 percent of votes in a three-way race to challenge the incumbent,
Republican Congressman Scott Garrett, a news reader could be forgiven for not
having a clue as to what former Marine Sgt. Castle was about in seeking voters’
nomination to run for Congress. The winner, with 55 percent of the vote, was
Adam Gussen, who ran on his record as a Teaneck Township Council member
Meanwhile, the news from Afghanistan noted that suicide
bombings and a NATO airstrike on a village made Wednesday “the deadliest day
for Afghan civilians so far this year,” according to The New York Times.
Oh, and by the way, US military fatalities from a decade of fighting
in Afghanistan
approached or topped 2,000 this week (depending on various listings)—although
that was hard to find in news reports. And, as we know from periodic reports, thousands
of veterans of the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq
are unemployed, homeless, suffering from traumatic injuries. On average, 18
veterans commit suicide every day.
“More than 6,500 veteran suicides are logged every year —
more than the total number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan
and Iraq
combined since those wars began,” The New York Times reported in April. “One
reason for veteran suicides (and crimes, which get far more attention) may be
post-traumatic stress disorder, along with a related condition, traumatic brain
injury…Estimates of post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury
vary widely, but a ballpark figure is that the problems afflict at least one
in five veterans from
Afghanistan and Iraq. One study found that by their third or fourth tours in Iraq or Afghanistan, more than one-quarter
of soldiers had such mental health problems.”
According to local news reports, barely 30 percent of
registered Democrats voted in Bergen
County, the heart of the
newly redistricted 5th Congressional District. The other 70 percent
presumably could care less who represents them in Congress or how things are
going in a war that’s primarily kept going by Republican saber-rattling in
Congress.
Yet in the neighboring 9th Congressional District,
two incumbent Democratic members of Congress, competing for a newly
redistricted seat, hotly debated who could push harder for a quicker end to US
combat operations in Afghanistan.
The Obama administration plans to hand military operations over to the Afghanistan
government in 2014, while starting to withdraw a large number of troops over
the next year.
“I’d like to accelerate that withdrawl,” Rep. Bill Pascrell
Jr. said during a debate last month at the Ethical Culture Society of Bergen
County in Teaneck.
“We do need to help our own people,” he said, referring to redirecting war
funds to job-creation and other issues at home. Rep. Steve Rothman countered
that he recently voted for the Barbara Lee amendment to the defense bill, which
would limit funding for the war in Afghanistan
to “the ‘safe and orderly withdrawal’ of U.S. troops,” as CNN reported on
May 17.
“Lee's amendment to withdraw troops was defeated 113-303,
but it did demonstrate the willingness, again, for a significant number of
Democrats to split with the president on his war policy - over a hundred
Democrats voted for it,” CNN noted.
On Tuesday, Pascrell defeated Rothman in the Democratic
primary election. The stance on Afghanistan
by both incumbents was, no doubt, nudged by public attitudes. Support for
continuing the war tanked in the polls earlier this year.
“According to the CBS News/New York Times survey, many
Americans would like to get troops home sooner. Forty-seven percent of
Americans said they would like to see the timetable for the departure of U.S. troops
moved up. Thirty-three percent think the schedule for withdrawal should remain
as is, and 17 percent think the U.S.
should stay in Afghanistan
for as long as it takes,” CBS noted in March.
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