Sometimes, messes are so big that you just can�t fix them.� The best thing to do is to leave it alone, and walk away, before you make things worse.�

Afghanistan is one of those big messes.� President Obama�s decision to claim ownership of the war in Afghanistan�by sending 30,000 more troops to fight the unwinnable war�is an example of misplaced priorities and misguided advice.� As the White House parrots the Bush administration by launching a surge in Afghanistan, there is a domestic crisis that requires our attention.� And this crisis is a far greater threat to national security than any foreign terrorists, real or imagined. A surge is needed, to be sure, but it is needed here at home.

Of course, the domestic crisis of which I speak is the nation itself.� Simply put, America is a mess.� Unemployment is over 10 percent, while the effective unemployment rate�which also includes the underemployed�is more like 19.2 percent.� In the first three quarters of 2009, there were more than 2.6 million foreclosure filings, with a projected total of 3.2-3.4 million property foreclosures for the year.� In the "land of plenty", 40 percent of the food supply is wasted, one in eight people uses food stamps, as does one in four children.� About half of American children, and 90 percent of black children, will live in a household that depends on food stamps at some point before they turn 20. And 63 percent of teachers buy food for hungry students with their own money.� Is this the most we can expect from the world�s greatest superpower?

Meanwhile, we are told the economy is recovering because Wall Street has recovered.� Wall Street never had it so good, as the banks bask in the glow of their TARP-bailout, corporate-welfare recipient status.� As the titans of finance are rewarded for their greed, failure, and demolition of the U.S. economy, the upward redistribution of wealth continues in this country.� Those who have the most are getting more and more.� A consumer-based economy ceases to function as such when the consumers are jobless, penniless, homeless, and hungry.� It doesn�t take an expert or professional commentator to realize that something is fundamentally wrong with this nation�s economic system, and that the public will not sustain more of this suffering without some repercussions.� For further information on the nature of the repercussions we can expect, you only need to consult history.

Surely, the Obama team is smart enough to know this.� After all, they have fancy degrees and extensive book learning.� But it would seem that the advisors who are misguiding the President on the economy are as useless�or perhaps as harmful�as his advisors on Afghanistan.� Just look at his economic team.� Larry Summers is Director of the White House's National Economic Council.� In his old job as president of Harvard, Summers ignored warnings not to put so much of the university�s money into the stock market.� As a result, the world�s largest university endowment lost $1.8 billion. And this man is the President�s economic czar?��

Or take a look at Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner, who failed to pay Medicare and Social Security payroll taxes for four years.� Geithner, according to one observer, �should never have been appointed to anything.� He's been wrong about just about everything for 15 years.�� As head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Geithner oversaw the bailout of AIG.� Further, he has been criticized for giving away tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to counterparties that contracted with AIG�a cash transfer amounting to one hundred cents on the dollar, to be exact.� Geithner was a part of the problem in helping create the financial crisis and failing to protect the taxpayers from vultures.� Now, calls for his resignation are coming from both sides of the aisle.

This is what happens when the so-called �best and brightest��corporate pinheads with no real-world sensibilities, no moral compass, and no connection to the lives of everyday people� are given more power in government than they deserve.� President Lyndon Johnson relied on Robert McNamara, a number-crunching technocrat from Ford Motor Company, to run the Vietnam War like a business.� That war was unwinnable, if anyone really wins in war, and McNamara came to know it.� But he continued to crunch the numbers to please his President, like any good technocrat.� Who cares if in the end, 58,000 Americans and 2 million Vietnamese lost their lives, in addition to hundreds of thousands of casualties, right?

Waging a senseless, immoral and unwinnable war, Johnson cost himself a great presidency. Dr. Martin Luther King called out Johnson on the Vietnam War and was derided by many for doing so, but history proved King right.� History has judged McNamara a sorry excuse for a person.� And Johnson was unable to accomplish his Great Society anti-poverty programs because the war sucked up all of the resources.� And that was when the American empire was far ahead of the competition.

Today, we have a basket case of a nation, and a president who was elected as an agent of change.� Yet, the Democrats have become the party of Wall Street.� The administration prefers to manage its predecessor�s messes abroad rather than walk away from them.� But most importantly, the people don�t have an appetite for war.� The only war that concerns them now is the war that has been waged against working people for years, by a predatory economic regime of wage suppression, deregulation and corporate plunder.� Today, we see the fiercest battles in this war since the Great Depression.�

Obama needs a surge of resources here in the U.S. to help everyday people.� He should take a page from F.D.R., or several chapters if he must, and adapt it to twenty-first century sensibilities.� F.D.R. saved the people from capitalism, if he didn�t save capitalism from itself.� Now is the time to save the people once again.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, David A. Love, JD is a journalist and human rights advocate based in Philadelphia, and a contributor to The Huffington Post, theGrio, The Progressive Media Project, McClatchy-Tribune News Service, In These Times and Philadelphia Independent Media Center. He also blogs at davidalove.com, NewsOne, Daily Kos, and Open Salon. Click here to contact Mr. Love.