More from Ohio Democratic Senate candidate Jennifer Brunner: “If he sends more troops, he must be starkly honest with the American people about the costs — in lives, in increasing the national debt, and in slowing an economic recovery.”

Really? We are a nation of more than 300 million people, with a gross domestic product of about $14.3 trillion. As of 2007, we had 7 million establishments, 6 million establishments with less than 500 employees, paying out $4.7 trillion in payroll. We export more than $100 billion a month.

And yet economic recovery will be slowed by sending 34,000 more troops to Afghanistan?

Er, no. Our economy is not sluggish because too many Americans are hunting Taliban in the mountains of Afghanistan. It’s sluggish because many Americans spent a lot more than they could afford in recent years and have been forced to cut back dramatically; because most homeowners can no longer use their homes at ATMs with home equity loans; because companies are facing a whole bunch of new factors that could make each employee more expensive – new health care costs, new energy costs, and potential new hikes in corporate, capital gains, and income taxes. The markets are nervous about whether the toxic assets are really off the bank books; our exports are still pretty lousy despite a weak dollar, and gas prices are creeping up again. There are fears of inflation, driving the price of gold higher and higher. With less economic activity generating sales tax revenues, state and local tax rates, particularly property taxes, are creeping up, taking bigger bites of Americans’ disposable income. Industries are finding their old means of production and distribution completely overturned by emerging technologies – i.e., newspapers, music, television, movies,publishing. Meanwhile, unemployed workers can’t buy products, which means businesses have fewer customers, which means they lay off workers, continuing the cycle.

We have plenty of reasons for the lousy current state of our economy, but the diversion of resources to Afghanistan is pretty darn low on the list, if a factor at all.