John Block Reports from Washington

Hello everybody out there in farm country. This radio commentary is brought to you by Monsanto, and John Deere. They are all friends, supporters, and allies of a healthy farm economy and prosperous rural America. Thank you.

And now for today’s commentary—

There is a lot going on. No shortage of issues.

Turn your attention to the Middle East. Israel has been pounding Hamas and Gaza for days. Their objective has been to destroy more than 30 tunnels from Gaza into Israel. Looks like – mission accomplished. But the loss of human lives and cost to rebuild homes and cities is a serious downside.

You don’t have to go very far in that part of the world and we find Iraq. What used to be Iraq is no longer a country. The Sunni and Islamic forces have taken over a huge land mass and they are pressing close to Baghdad. Baghdad is solid Shiite. Syria in the north has been in a civil war for 3 years. It’s hard to believe but Afghanistan is quieter than any of the other countries.

President Obama is criticized for not being more decisive. Why can’t he fix the problem? How did he let things deteriorate like they have?

My take on all of this is that there is plenty of blame to go around. However, after more than a decade of fighting, thousands of our young men and women killed and wounded and billions of dollars spent. We have seen enough. The American people don’t want to fix the Middle East. It isn’t fixable.

The Tribes with different ideas and religious intolerance is why we can’t put out the fires of war over there The British in the 1800s were run out of Afghanistan. The Soviet Union had to retreat from Afghanistan in the 1980s. It’s time now for the powers of the world to let the Middle East people establish their own country boundaries and their own way of governing.

It is easier to decide that now since we don’t depend on their oil to the extent we once did. We are more energy-secure today than we could have imagined even 10 years ago. Let’s get our own house in order. Deal with our debt problem. Fix immigration. Simplify our Tax Code. Let’s harvest a great crop this fall. That’s it for this week.

Until next week, I am John Block in Washington, D.C.