Obama's War...

[Ben]

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 by Creators Syndicate
Obama's War

by Jim Hightower

Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to war we go! Pound the drums loudly, stand with your country proudly!

Wait, wait, wait — hold it right there. Cut the music, slow the rush, and let's all ponder what Barack Obama, Roberts Gates, Stanley McChrystal and Co. are getting us into ... and whether we really want to go there. After all, just because the White House and the Pentagon brass are waving the flag and insisting that a major escalation of America's military mission in Afghanistan is a "necessity" doesn't mean it is ... or that We the People must accept it.

Remember the wisdom of Mark Twain about war-whooping generals and politicians: "Loyalty to the country, always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it."

How many more dead and mangled American soldiers does the government's "new" Afghan policy deserve? How many more tens of billions of dollars should we let them siphon from our public treasury to fuel their war policy? How much more of our country's good name will they squander on what is essentially a civil war?

We've been lied to for nearly a decade about "success" in Iraq and Afghanistan — why do the hawks deserve our trust that this time will be different?

Their rationales for escalation are hardly confidence boosters. The goal, we're told, is to defeat the al-Qaida terrorist network that threatens our national security. Yes, but al-Qaida is not in Afghanistan! Nor is it one network. It has metastasized, with strongholds now in Pakistan, Indonesia, Morocco, Yemen and Somalia, plus even having enclaves in England and France.

Well, claims Obama himself, we must protect the democratic process in Afghanistan. Does he think we have suckerwrappers around our heads? America's chosen leader over there is President Hamid Karzai — a preening incompetent who was "elected" this year only through flagrant fraud and whose government is controlled by warlords, rife with corruption and opposed by the great majority of Afghans.

During the election campaign from July through October, 195 Americans were killed and more than 1,000 wounded to protect this guy's "democratic process." Why should even one more American die for Karzai?

Finally, Washington's war establishment asserts that adding some 30,000 more troops will let us greatly expand and train the Afghan army and police force during the next couple of years so they can secure their own country and we can leave.
Mission accomplished!

Nearly every independent military analyst, however, says this assertion is not just fantasy, it's delusional — it'll take at least 10 years to raise Afghanistan's largely illiterate and corrupt security forces to a level of barely adequate, costing us taxpayers more than $4 billion a year to train and support them.

Obama has been taken over by the military industrial hawks and national security theorists who play war games with other people's lives and money. I had hoped Obama might be a more forceful leader who would reject the same old interventionist mindset of those who profit from permanent war. But his newly announced Afghan policy shows he is not that leader.

So, we must look elsewhere, starting with ourselves. The first job of a citizen is to keep your mouth open. Obama is wrong on his policy — deadly wrong — and those of you who see this have both a moral and patriotic duty to reach out to others to inform, organize and mobilize our grassroots objections, taking common sense to high places.

Also, look to leaders in Congress who are standing up against Obama's war and finally beginning to reassert the legislative branch's constitutional responsibility to oversee and direct military policy. For example, Rep. Jim McGovern is pushing for a specific, congressionally mandated exit strategy; Rep. Barbara Lee wants to use Congress' control of the public purse strings to stop Obama's escalation; and Rep. David Obey is calling for a war tax on the richest Americans to put any escalation on-budget, rather than on a credit card for China to finance and future generations to pay.

This is no time to be deferential to executive authority. Stand up. Speak out. It's our country, not theirs. We are America — ultimately, we have the power and the responsibility.
Copyright 2009 Creators.com

National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.

[Coroner]

He´s trying to impress and accommodate the Republican fascists. Now, the pressure is on European governments as well who are not in the mood for sending more soldiers into a failed war and country like Afghanistan.

[hippifried]

There's an old political saw:
If everybody's mad at you from both sides of an issue, you probably got it right.

[El Nino]

Yah, that must be it, fried...

[Ben]

Obama's folly...
Rather than trying to salvage Bush's policy in Afghanistan, the president should show real courage and just pull the plug.

By Andrew J. Bacevich
December 3, 2009

Which is the greater folly: To fancy that war offers an easy solution to vexing problems, or, knowing otherwise, to opt for war anyway?

In the wake of 9/11, American statecraft emphasized the first approach: President George W. Bush embarked on a "global war" to eliminate violent jihadism. President Obama now seems intent on pursuing the second approach: Through military escalation in Afghanistan, he seeks to "finish the job" that Bush began there, then all but abandoned.

Through war, Bush set out to transform the greater Middle East. Despite immense expenditures of blood and treasure, that effort failed. In choosing Obama rather than John McCain to succeed Bush, the American people acknowledged that failure as definitive. Obama's election was to mark a new beginning, an opportunity to "reset" America's approach to the world.

The president's chosen course of action for Afghanistan suggests he may well squander that opportunity. Rather than renouncing Bush's legacy, Obama apparently aims to salvage something of value. In Afghanistan, he will expend yet more blood and more treasure hoping to attenuate or at least paper over the wreckage left over from the Bush era.

However improbable, Obama thereby finds himself following in the footsteps of Richard Nixon. Running for president in 1968, Nixon promised to end the Vietnam War. Once elected, he balked at doing so. Obsessed with projecting an image of toughness and resolve -- U.S. credibility was supposedly on the line -- Nixon chose to extend and even to expand that war. Apart from driving up the costs that Americans were called on to pay, this accomplished nothing.

If knowing when to cut your losses qualifies as a hallmark of statesmanship, Nixon flunked. Vietnam proved irredeemable.

Obama's prospects of redeeming Afghanistan appear hardly more promising. Achieving even a semblance of success, however modestly defined, will require an Afghan government that gets its act together, larger and more competent Afghan security forces, thousands of additional reinforcements from allies already heading toward the exits, patience from economically distressed Americans as the administration shovels hundreds of billions of dollars toward Central Asia, and even greater patience from U.S. troops shouldering the burdens of seemingly perpetual war. Above all, success will require convincing Afghans that the tens of thousands of heavily armed strangers in their midst represent Western beneficence rather than foreign occupation.

The president seems to appreciate the odds. The reluctance with which he contemplates the transformation of Afghanistan into "Obama's war" is palpable. Gone are the days of White House gunslingers barking "Bring 'em on" and of officials in tailored suits and bright ties vowing to do whatever it takes. The president has made clear his interest in "offramps" and "exit strategies."

So if the most powerful man in the world wants out, why doesn't he simply get out? For someone who vows to change the way Washington works, Afghanistan seemingly offers a made-to-order opportunity to make good on that promise. Why is Obama muffing the chance?

What Afghanistan tells us is that rather than changing Washington, Obama has become its captive. The president has succumbed to the twin illusions that have taken the political class by storm in recent months. The first illusion, reflecting a self-serving interpretation of the origins of 9/11, is that events in Afghanistan are crucial to the safety and well-being of the American people. The second illusion, the product of a self-serving interpretation of the Iraq War, is that the U.S. possesses the wisdom and wherewithal to guide Afghanistan out of darkness and into the light.

According to the first illusion, 9/11 occurred because Americans ignored Afghanistan. By implication, fixing the place is essential to preventing the recurrence of terrorist attacks on the U.S. In Washington, the appeal of this explanation is twofold. It distracts attention from the manifest incompetence of the government agencies that failed on 9/11, while also making it unnecessary to consider how U.S. policy toward the Middle East during the several preceding decades contributed to the emergence of violent anti-Western jihadism.

According to the second illusion, the war in Iraq is ending in a great American victory. Forget the fact that the arguments advanced to justify the invasion of March 2003 have all turned out to be bogus: no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction found; no substantive links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda established; no tide of democratic change triggered across the Islamic world. Ignore the persistence of daily violence in Iraq even today.

The "surge" engineered by Army Gen. David H. Petraeus in Iraq enables proponents of that war to change the subject and to argue that the counterinsurgency techniques employed in Iraq can produce similar results in Afghanistan -- disregarding the fact that the two places bear about as much resemblance to one another as North Dakota does to Southern California.

So the war launched as a prequel to Iraq now becomes its sequel, with little of substance learned in the interim. To double down in Afghanistan is to ignore the unmistakable lesson of Bush's thoroughly discredited "global war on terror": Sending U.S. troops to fight interminable wars in distant countries does more to inflame than to extinguish the resentments giving rise to violent anti-Western jihadism.

There's always a temptation when heading in the wrong direction on the wrong highway to press on a bit further. Perhaps down the road a piece some shortcut will appear: Grandma's house this way.

Yet as any navigationally challenged father who has ever taken his family on a road trip will tell you, to give in to that temptation is to err. When lost, take the first offramp that presents itself and turn around. That Obama -- by all accounts a thoughtful and conscientious father -- seems unable to grasp this basic rule is disturbing.

Under the guise of cleaning up Bush's mess, Obama has chosen to continue Bush's policies. No doubt pulling the plug on an ill-advised enterprise involves risk and uncertainty. It also entails acknowledging mistakes. It requires courage. Yet without these things, talk of change will remain so much hot air.

Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University.

[Cuchulain]

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 by Creators Syndicate
Obama's War

by Jim Hightower

Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to war we go! Pound the drums loudly, stand with your country proudly!


I always got a kick out of Jim Hightower. He's a down-home populist and a real character. I enjoyed his book 'Thieves in High Places'.
http://www.jimhightower.com/

What a mess. I don't see how 30k more troops will matter in a giant country filled with superstitious illiterates, run by a gang of crooks. Our troops and equipment are worn out and where's the money coming from? When Rep. David Obey suggested we employ a war tax to cover the costs of these military adventures, the Repukes screamed bloody murder and the President remained conveniently mum. I'm thinking America would have a lot fewer Hawks if we actually passed such a tax.

I'm sure the Presidents' main worry is Pakistan's nukes, and since we can't just march in there, he figures Afghanistan is the next best thing.

I'll admit Barry O gave a hell of a speech, or as Ben Mankiewicz from The Young Turks ( http://www.theyoungturks.com/ ) put it, he "really got his Obama on". He probably swayed enough of the public to buy a little time.

Does anybody really think this will end well? What do you guys think of the war surtax? Why would anyone trust that weasel McChrystal? We know the family of Pat Tillman doesn't...

[hippifried]

What a mess. I don't see how 30k more troops will matter in a giant country filled with superstitious illiterates, run by a gang of crooks.

Does anybody really think this will end well? What do you guys think of the war surtax? Why would anyone trust that weasel McChrystal? We know the family of Pat Tillman doesn't...
It's not really all that gigantic, but it's rugged country. The people there are neither illiterate or stupid, & really no more superstitious than we are. Don't think so? Try getting elected to something in America without claiming a faith.

As for the gang of crooks: They run Kabul, & not much else. They're just getting rich off Uncle Sam. Afghans are tribal. The closest thing they've ever had to a homegrown central government is the Taliban. Every centralized system they've ever had has been imposed on them at the point of a gun, & nobody's ever bothered to ask them what they want. After 20 some odd years of civil war, at least the Taliban were Afghan & didn't answer to a foreign power. That's why they were tolerated for a while. Everybody was tired. But when the CIA & other coverts approached the Mujahadeen with more weaponry & air support, it was all over in a week or 2. The Taliban was out of power & on the run before any NATO troops hit the ground. Here we are, 8 years later... Who's the enemy? Al Qaeda? A couple hundred clowns, max, scattered & hiding all over Hindu Kush? Good luck seeing any of them before the spring thaw.

This whole thing is a loser, & has been since the beginning. The military's the wrong tool for the job. They're not police. It's a totally different mindset. Al Qaeda are criminals. The military doesn't catch criminals. They engage the enemy, & we've already established that we really don't know who that is. Same goes for the Afghan central government. They don't need a big army. We're the only invaders. They don't need more fighters. They need people who can step between the fighters & diffuse the situation. That's a police function. You can't get credible advice from generals about operations that should be civilian. Different mindset. They don't understand or deal well with finesse.


Change the mindset & you change the world.

[Cuchulain]

What a mess. I don't see how 30k more troops will matter in a giant country filled with superstitious illiterates, run by a gang of crooks.

Does anybody really think this will end well? What do you guys think of the war surtax? Why would anyone trust that weasel McChrystal? We know the family of Pat Tillman doesn't...
It's not really all that gigantic, but it's rugged country. The people there are neither illiterate or stupid, & really no more superstitious than we are. Don't think so? Try getting elected to something in America without claiming a faith.


You're right. I checked the map and the country is not nearly as big as I thought. A bit of googling does suggest a very high adult illiteracy rate and a low percentage of kids enrolled in school. No argument about the silliness of American politicians having to mention God in every other sentence.

As I've come to expect, I actually learned something from your post.

[hippifried]

They have a literacy rate over 40% for males. That's easily comparable to colonial America. We take this shit for granted nowadays. As a baby boomer, I'm the first generation of Americans who were expected, just because I'm an American, to continue my education past the elementary level. So,,, Compared to what?

Now women fare much worse over there. They're treated as property. Islam is a very conservative religion & the sexes are rigidly segregated. The Shia are actually the more tolerant & liberal of the 2 major divisions, & Afghanistan is 80% Sunni. Now figure a total dearth of schools, along with 3/4 or more of the population out in the hinterlands scratching the ground: Who do you think will get preference at getting taught to read? The literacy rate of women is barely above 10 or 12%. That drops the average. I keep hearing that that's changing & girls are going to school in droves. My stats are from 2000, so I would hope there's been a major leap in literacy all around in the past 8 years.

The stats are wierd. The median age is 17 & a half, with an average life expectancy of less than 45 years. 43% of their GDP is services, but 80% of the labor force is in agriculture. They have a 40% unemployment rate, a 50% poverty rate, & a national debt they'll never get out from under. Must suck to be Afghan.

Now add to all of that, the fact that most Afghans have never known anything but war, military occupation, or Taliban rule Why is anybody surprized that they're cynical, uncooperative, & a tad pissed off? The Taliban gets stronger daily. It occurs to me that we could have crushed the entire Taliban movement years ago by inviting them to participate in the electoral process.

Source:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/af.html

[trish]

Gee, it sounds like the perfect libertarian paradise: no government interference or entitlement programs. Fantastic. Why are we trying to improve it?!

[El Nino]

It's always wise to invade other Countries as your own is coming undone by the seams. Great policy right there

[Ben]

December, 03 2009By Street, Paul
Paul Street's ZSpace Page

Like a Judas of old
You lie and deceive...

You hide in your mansions
While young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And gets buried in the mud

- Bob Dylan, "Masters of War," 1962


War President Barack Obama's Afghan "surge" address from West Point [1] last night was unsurprising, given the fact that, as Alexander Cockburn has noted, "Obama has...surrounded himself with the same breed of intellectuals who persuaded Lyndon Johnson to escalate the [ Vietnam ] war." [2] As Tom Engelhardt has pointed out, Obama's "civilian advisors" on Afghanistan include a large number of military men, all predisposed by career background and philosophy to advocate increased force levels. Did it really make sense to be surprised, Engelhardt wondered more than two months ago, that Obama would opt for more troops, money, and war when the president had "turn[ed] crucial war decisions over to the military...functionally turn[ing] our foreign policy over to them as well?" [3]

The decision to escalate was never much in doubt.

LIES AND DECEPTION

Security Council Trickery

If there was anything surprising about Obama's December 1st address, it was the extent to which he was willing to distort history on behalf of his militaristic policy. "Just days after 9/11," Obama proclaimed last night (I am writing on the morning of Wednesday, December 2, 2009), "Congress authorized the use of force against al Qaeda and those who harbored them -- an authorization that continues to this day...For the first time in its history, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization invoked Article 5 - the commitment that says an attack on one member nation is an attack on all. And the United Nations Security Council endorsed the use of all necessary steps to respond to the 9/11 attacks. America , our allies and the world were acting as one to destroy al Qaeda's terrorist network and to protect our common security."[4]

Obama clearly meant here to create the false impression that the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) authorized the Bush administration's attack on Afghanistan in October, 2001). But the UNSC did no such thing since the attack met none of the UN's criteria for legitimate self-defense. The United States ' attack on Afghanistan met none of the standard international moral and legal criteria for justifiable self-defense and occurred without reasonable consultation with the United Nations Security Council.

As the prominent U.S. legal scholar Marjorie Cohn noted in July of 2008, "The invasion of Afghanistan was as illegal as the invasion of Iraq ." The U.N. Charter requires member states to settle international disputes by peaceful means. Nations are permitted to use military force only in self-defense or when authorized by the Security Council. After 9/11, the Council passed two resolutions, neither of which authorized the use of military force in Afghanistan .

Assaulting that country was not legitimate self-defense under article 51 of the Charter since the jetliner assaults were criminal attacks, not "armed attacks" by another country. Afghanistan did not attack the U.S. and 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia . Furthermore, there was no "imminent threat of an armed attack on the United States after September 11 or Bush would not have waited three weeks before initiating his October 2001 bombing campaign." As Cohn added, international law requires that "The necessity for self-defense must be 'instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.' This classic principle of self-defense in international law has been affirmed by the Nuremberg Tribunal and the U.N. General Assembly."[5]


"The World According to Washington"

The suggestion that human civilization ("the world") was united in support for Washington 's attack on Afghanistan is completely incorrect. An international Gallup poll released after the U.S. bombing began showed that global opposition was overwhelming. In 34 of the 37 countries Gallup surveyed, majorities opposed a military attack on Afghanistan , preferring that 9/11 be treated as a criminal matter rather than as a pretext for war. Even in the U.S. , just 54% supported war. [6] "In Latin America, which has some experience with US behavior," Noam Chomsky noted (in a 2008 column titled "The World According to Washington"), "support [for the U.S. assault] ranged from 2% in Mexico, to 18% in Panama, and that support was conditional on the culprits being identified (they still weren't eight months later, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported) and civilian targets being spared (they were attacked at once). There was an overwhelming preference in the world for diplomatic/judicial measures, rejected out of hand by [ Washington , claiming to represent] 'the world.'"[7]

"Only After the Taliban Refused to Turn Over bin Laden"

"Under the banner of this domestic unity and international legitimacy - and only after the Taliban refused to turn over Osama bin Laden -- we sent our troops into Afghanistan " [8], Obama said. This was completely false. In the actual history that occurred, the U.S. refused to respond to the Taliban government's offer to turn bin-Laden over to a foreign government for a trial once elementary evidence pointing to his guilt was presented. The U.S. deliberately made sure that bin Laden would not be turned over through legal and diplomatic channels because (quite frankly) the Bush administration wanted war and did not wish to follow the UN Charter's requirement that nations pursue "all means short of force before taking military action" (Rahul Mahajan).[9]

"Safe Haven" Mythology

Six times in his war speech Obama used the phrase "safe haven." Afghanistan , Obama wants the American people to think, is a "safe haven" for past and potential future terror attacks on the"homeland." This, too, is deceptive. As Harvard Kennedy School of Government professor Stephen Walt noted in an August 2009 Foreign Policy essay, Obama's "safe haven myth" rests on the fundamentally flawed premise that al Qaeda or its many and various imitators couldn't just as effectively plot and conduct future terror attacks from any of a large number of other locations, including Western Europe and the U.S. itself. At the same time, Walt observed, Obama's expanded engagement in the "ambitious social and political reconstruction and re-engineering of Afghanistan and perhaps even Pakistan, trying, with slight chances of success," to creating a centralized democratic state in the former country, was reinforcing al Qaeda's core claim that the West's and the above all the United States' presence in South Asia was about imperial control. The more the U.S. is seen as "trying to restructure their societies along lines that we think are appropriate," Walt notes, "the more we play into the narrative that they use to try and attract support and recruit people in Afghanistan itself." [10]


EMPIRE AND INEQUALITY 2.0

"The United States is Broken...Yet we're Nation-Building in Afghanistan ."

The president said nothing in his address about the tens of thousands of private military contractors deployed by the Pentagon in Afghanistan (57 percent of the U.S. force presence there at the end of last June!) [11] or about the deadly, largely secret Predator drone war he has dramatically escalated against Afghan and Pakistani "terrorists" and civilians [12].

He also failed to mention the absurdity of his decision to spend untold billions more dollars on a futile, massively expensive colonial operation abroad as misery and destitution expanded at home. The domestic social uplift and opportunity cost of his imperial policy - the twisted misplacement of resources that Martin Luther King, Jr., described in the late 1960s as symptomatic of America's "spiritual death" [13] - is certainly enormous. By the White House's own calculations, the Afghan escalation is going to cost $1 million a year per every single new soldier deployed [14] - a giant investment that could be diverted to meet growing unmet social needs across the U.S.

Echoing Dr. King's late-1960s sermons and speeches against the U.S. military state's "perverted priorities," New York Times columnist Bob Herbert marked the day of Obama's West Point Address with an eloquent lament:

"the president has arrived at a decision that never was much in doubt, and that will prove to be a tragic mistake. It was also, for the president, the easier option."

"It would have been much more difficult for Mr. Obama to look this troubled nation in the eye and explain why it is in our best interest to begin winding down the permanent state of warfare left to us by the Bush and Cheney regime. It would have taken real courage for the commander in chief to stop feeding our young troops into the relentless meat grinder of Afghanistan, to face up to the terrible toll the war is taking - on the troops themselves and in very insidious ways on the nation as a whole."

"More soldiers committed suicide this year than in any year for which we have complete records. But the military is now able to meet its recruitment goals because the young men and women who are signing up can't find jobs in civilian life. The United States is broken - school systems are deteriorating, the economy is in shambles, homelessness and poverty rates are expanding - yet we're nation-building in Afghanistan , sending economically distressed young people over there by the tens of thousands at an annual cost of a million dollars each." [15]

"A Chance to Shape Their Future"

Of course, "nation-building" is a euphemism for imperial assault and occupation. Loot at the unimaginable devastation - more than 1 million plus killed before their time, millions more injured and displaced, and massive social and technical infrastructure destroyed - "we" (our unelected agents of Empire) have inflicted on crippled Iraq, about which Obama had the noxious imperial chutzpah to say the following last night: "Thanks to [U.S. troops'] courage, grit and perseverance, we have given Iraqis a chance to shape their future." [16]

Yes, you read that correctly: "we have given Iraqis a chance to shape their future."

Call it Empire and Inequality [17] Re-Branded. Combined and interrelated, mutually reinforcing, and caught up in a dark, dialectically inseparable duet of destruction...the forces of domestic disparity and imperial violence continue their dangerous, viciously circular dalliance of death. "Like Bush's America ," John Pilger notes, "Obama's America is run by some very dangerous people" [18].


Paul Street is a writer, author, activist and speaker based in Iowa City , IA. He is the author of many books and articles, including Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 ( Boulder , CO : Paradigm, 2004) and Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis ( New York : Rowman & Littlefield, 2007). His next book Empire's New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power, will be released next year. Street will speak next week (twice) in the Twin Cities on the topic "Does Obama Deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?" at 7 pm, December 9 (Wednesday, at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN) and (Thursday) and at 7 pm, December 10, 2009 (at the University of Minnesota). The location for the December 9th event (Macalester) is Humanities Room 226 (map: www.macalester.edu/about/mapbyalpha.html. The location for the December 10th event (U of Minnesota ) is University of Minnesota , West Bank Blegen Hall Room 010 (map: www.umn.edu/twincities/maps/BlegH/index.html)



NOTES

1. George W. Bush also liked to make militaristic pronouncements from military settings like West Point, Annapolis , the Carlisle War College , and the USS Abraham Lincoln.

2. Alexander Cockburn, "War and Peace," CounterPunch (October 9, 2009), read at http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn10092009.html

3. Tom Engelhardt, "A Military That Wants its Way," TomDispatch (September 24, 2009), read at, http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175118

4. "Text of Obama's Speech on Afghanistan " (December 1, 2009), read at
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/12/01/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5855894.shtml

5. Marjorie Cohn, "End the Occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan ," ZNet (July 30, 2008), read at http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/18303. "Resolutions 1368 and 1373 condemned the September 11 attacks, and ordered the freezing of assets; the criminalizing of terrorist activity; the prevention of the commission of and support for terrorist attacks; the taking of necessary steps to prevent the commission of terrorist activity, including the sharing of information; and urged ratification and enforcement of the international conventions against terrorism."

6. Abid Aslam, "Polls Question Support for Military Campaign, Inter Press Service, October 8, 2001; Gallup International, Gallup International Poll on Terrorism " (September 2001); Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, "' Obama's Foreign Policy Report Card': Juan Cole Grades His President -- and Very Positively," MR Zine (November 9, 2009), read at mrzine.monthlyreview.org/ hp091109.html

7. Noam Chomsky, "The World According to Washington ," Asia Times (February 28, 2008).

8. "Text of Obama's Speech on Afghanistan ."

9. See Rahul Mahajan, The New Crusade: America 's War on Terrorism ( New York : Monthly Review, 2002), 28-31; Noam Chomsky, Hegemony Over Survival: America 's Quest for Global Dominance ( New York : Metropolitan, 2003), 198-202.

10. Stephen Walt, "The Safe Haven Myth," Foreign Policy (August 18, 2009), read at http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/08/18/the_safe_haven_myth ; Stephen Walt, interview by Amy Goodman, "Democracy Now," August 25, 2009, read at http://www.democracynow.org/2009/8/25/the_safe_haven_myth_harvard_prof. See also Paul R. Pillar, "Whose Afraid of a Terrorist Safe Haven?" Washington Post, September 16, 2009, read at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/15/AR2009091502977_pf.html "By utilizing networks such as the Internet," Pillar noted, "terrorists' organizations have become more network-like, not beholden to any one headquarters." A significant jihadist terrorist threat to the United States is alive, Pillar argues, but "that does not mean it will consist of attacks instigated and commanded from a South Asian haven, or that it will require a haven at all. Al-Qaeda's role in that threat is now less one of commander than of ideological lodestar, and for that role a haven is almost meaningless." Pillar was deputy chief of the counterterrorist center at the CIA from 1997 to 1999. He is director of graduate studies at Georgetown University 's Security Studies Program

1l. Congressional Research Service, "Department of Defense Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan : Background and Analysis," CRS Report number R40764, September 21, 2009, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R40764.pdf

12. For a chilling account see Jane Mayer, "The Predator War," The New Yorker (October 26, 2009).

13. "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." Martin Luther King Jr., "A Time to Break the Silence," Riverside Church , New York City, April 4. 1967

14. Christi Parsons and Julian E. Barnes, "Pricing an Afghanistan Troop Build Up is No Simple Calculation," Los Angeles Times, November 23, 2009.

15. Bob Herbert, "A Tragic Mistake," New York Times, December 1, 2009.

16. "Text of Obama's Speech on Afghanistan "

17. Please see Street, Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 ( Boulder , CO : Paradigm, 2004) - written at the height of self-described "war president" George W. Bush's reign, but equally applicable to the first year of the "progressive" presidency of Barack Obama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

18 John Pilger, "Media Lies and the War Drive Against Iran," Pakistan Daily, October 15, 2009, read at http://www.daily.pk/media-lies-and-the-war-drive-against-iran-12189/

[trish]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/world/asia/06reconstruct.html

[hippifried]

It's always wise to invade other Countries as your own is coming undone by the seams. Great policy right there
Seems like we've been hearing about how the US is coming apart at the seams for what, the last 200 years or so? I think it's British propaganda.



Gee, it sounds like the perfect libertarian paradise: no government interference or entitlement programs. Fantastic. Why are we trying to improve it?!
We're not. We're trying to create a new nation in our image, knowing full well it can't be done.

We're also trying to bottle up Iran so they can't build a direct pipeline to China, without we should be gettin a piece of the action. That deal's already in place. They're just waiting for everybody else (us) to get out of the way. This is really about eurocentric control of trade from east to west & vice versa. There's already a trade pact & talks about a common asian currency, & rumor has it that Iran has signed on.

You change others through example. Pointing guns just makes them obstinate & slows the process. The military is the wrong tool for the job.

Change the mindset & you change the world.

[El Nino]

Well, apparently it seems to be disintegrating for real now. BUT, you know what they say... when one door closes, another one opens.

[hippifried]

Yeah, I keep hearing that too.
"It's for real, this time!"

WOLF! WOLF!

[El Nino]

The facts are in right in your face and are omnipresent in many facets of the nation. Things are certainly changing, fried.. In fact, that IS the only constant. And I ain't talking about the Obama kind of change...

[hippifried]

"Facts" are omnipresent. So are opinions. So what? The sky still isn't falling. Let me know when things stop changing. I'll worry then.

[El Nino]

This convo took a left turn away from the OP's thread title. Point is, all the sheep were duped into getting another war president... plain and simple

[InHouston]

Obama's folly...
Rather than trying to salvage Bush's policy in Afghanistan, the president should show real courage and just pull the plug.


And that's courage? What Obama should do is send 100,000 troops to stomp some Taliban ass all over the region.

Interesting is it not, that the suicide bombers are making a come back in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan since Obama has been in office.

It is what it is.

[InHouston]

This convo took a left turn away from the OP's thread title. Point is, all the sheep were duped into getting another war president... plain and simple

So ????? Bush was stupid and duped America into his war? Now, Obama who speaks well and is highly intelligent duped you guys now? Looks to me like you Obama supporters duped yourselves with your vote.

Obama reminds me of an excerpt from Colon Powell's book. He wrote of individuals who tend to have all the answers to any question they're asked (like Obama). Those people are full of data ... and zero experience.

Obama is a pussy. And he is sympathetic to the "brown-power" cause in America and around the world. It's written in his eyes, his words, and his actions.

[hippifried]

This convo took a left turn away from the OP's thread title. Point is, all the sheep were duped into getting another war president... plain and simple
What "duped"? He let everybody know his position on Afghanistan back before the primaries & all through the campaign. This isn't a surprize to anyone but you & others who weren't paying attention. There was hope among some that his mind could be changed, but there was never an expectation. 2 months from the conventions, there were no candidates for the office who were talking about pulling out of Afghanistan. The ones who did at the start had no popular support to speak of. Nobody was "duped".

Personally, I think the war in Afghanistan was a mistake to start with. I would definitely do it differently. But I'm not in a position to dictate policy, & the President is privy to a lot more information than myself, you, Ron Paul, or Alex Jones. He's a smart guy, & I trust him to keep the interests of America first, & to give due consideration to his decisions. So far, I have no regrets for my vote.

[El Nino]

Who wasn't paying attention? Come again?
You say you have trust in him to do what is right for America first? LOLZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

[hippifried]

Yes. I trust his intentions. I've seen no reason not to. If you actually find one, one not predicated on somebody's claim of clairvoyance, let me know.

[El Nino]

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

I would it rather vote for the people attempting to make this world a better place than those profiting off the destruction.

And that's just for starters.

[chefmike]

This convo took a left turn away from the OP's thread title. Point is, all the sheep were duped into getting another war president... plain and simple
What "duped"? He let everybody know his position on Afghanistan back before the primaries & all through the campaign. This isn't a surprize to anyone but you & others who weren't paying attention. There was hope among some that his mind could be changed, but there was never an expectation. 2 months from the conventions, there were no candidates for the office who were talking about pulling out of Afghanistan. The ones who did at the start had no popular support to speak of. Nobody was "duped".

Personally, I think the war in Afghanistan was a mistake to start with. I would definitely do it differently. But I'm not in a position to dictate policy, & the President is privy to a lot more information than myself, you, Ron Paul, or Alex Jones. He's a smart guy, & I trust him to keep the interests of America first, & to give due consideration to his decisions. So far, I have no regrets for my vote.

:claps

[hippifried]

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$Wow! That's some vocabulary you have there. Fall asleep with your finger stuck on the wishing key?


I would it rather vote for the people attempting to make this world a better place than those profiting off the destruction.What profit? What destruction? What what what? Were you expecting sack cloth & ashes? You're talking about the chief executive officer in a land of 300,000,000 people with the world's largest economy & a budget of trillions. Yeah. There's a lot of money moving around. That's how you afford to sit on line & make lame posts. If you want a vow of poverty, go find a priest. You won't find it in politics, even with Ron Paul running things.


And that's just for starters.Starters? Where? All you've done is parrot slogans. Come to think of it, that's all you ever do. Anybody can read a teabagger's picket sign.


Teabags, the new kool-aid.

[El Nino]

What... are you blind, hippi? About a trillion + dollars has been robbed from the American people's pockets and dispersed over to a network of insiders. But everything is going great in the Country, right?
http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html

You and Chef have a credibility level of about Zero, at this point! So go on and continue to straight up humor yourselves

[hippifried]

What's your point? Everybody already knew things were bad & getting worse, long before the election. That map is misleading. It was economic problems that got the republicans booted in 2006. The first stimulous was done in 2007, in the form of a tax rebate. It was too little too late, & didn't stop the hemmorage. People saw this coming as far back as 2005, even though the "official" start of the current recession is mid 2007. By late 2008, the economy was in freefall. The President took office in January of this year. Nobody expected an overnight turnaround. The big stimulous is in its 8th month of a 2 year timetable. Look at the unemployment numbers from earlier this week, & you'll see that the hemmorage has slowed to a trickle. We're looking at another 2 years of recovery at least. You don't know what you're talking about. You're not going to learn anything from infowars. Your guru, Alex Jones, doesn't know what he's talking about either. My eyes are wide open.

[El Nino]

I like how you guys judge my character, i.e. that I spend all day studying Alex Jones articles, that I attend tea parties and that I am some how associated with Ted kaczynski, etc.. Nice guilt by association smear techniques there boys. Truth is, you know next to nothing about my character. I have never once even mentioned support for Ted K., his sentiments or the things that he did. I have never attended one of those contrived partisan tea parties, which try to shift the larger issues into litte right Vs. left petty social things... those people are truly missing a larger perspective; and may I add, by design. And Hippi, sorry dude but your talk and hopes of a Stimulus actually working are negligible.

Now, I am tending to think that maybe your kind is just a little jaded because of your support for either side (doesn't really matter which one) of the two party system failure and its politcal sock puppets; has proven to be a sham. I would also say that conversely Hippi, it is you who doesn't know what you are talking about as everything you said regarding politics over the past couple of years; the opposite usually manifests or transpires, if you will. Perfect case of Cognitive Dissonance, actually.

But keep up the political pipe dreaming if that is what blows your skirts up!

[El Nino]

What's your point? Everybody already knew things were bad & getting worse, long before the election. That map is misleading. It was economic problems that got the republicans booted in 2006. The first stimulous was done in 2007, in the form of a tax rebate. It was too little too late, & didn't stop the hemmorage. People saw this coming as far back as 2005, even though the "official" start of the current recession is mid 2007. By late 2008, the economy was in freefall. The President took office in January of this year. Nobody expected an overnight turnaround. The big stimulous is in its 8th month of a 2 year timetable. Look at the unemployment numbers from earlier this week, & you'll see that the hemmorage has slowed to a trickle. We're looking at another 2 years of recovery at least. You don't know what you're talking about. You're not going to learn anything from infowars. Your guru, Alex Jones, doesn't know what he's talking about either. My eyes are wide open.

Like most people, You're missing the POINT. I said nothing about dems, repubs, the election, or a new administration. You see that's just it, they are all one in the same. Wake up

[hippifried]

I'm wide awake, & they're not the same. It's a different mindset & approach. The law is the law of course, & the President can't change them, negate them, or make new ones. The Constitution deliberately makes sure of that. Maybe you should wake up & look at how things actually work.

[Ben]

An article by Norman Solomon:

Mr. President, War Is Not Peace
by Norman Solomon

Eloquence in Oslo cannot change the realities of war.

As President Obama neared the close of his Nobel address, he called for "the continued expansion of our moral imagination." Yet his speech was tightly circumscribed by the policies that his oratory labored to justify.

Lofty rationales easily tell us that warfare is striving for the noble goal of peace. But the rationales scarcely intersect with actual war. The oratory sugarcoats the poisons, helping to kill hope in the name of it.

A few months ago, when I visited an Afghan office for women's empowerment, staffers took me to a pilot project in one of Kabul's poorest neighborhoods. There, women were learning small-scale business skills while also gaining personal strength and mutual support.

Two-dozen women, who ranged in age from early 20s to late 50s, talked with enthusiasm about the workshops. They were desperate to change their lives. When it was time to leave, I had a question: What should I tell people in the United States, if they ask what Afghan women want most of all?

After several women spoke, the translator summed up. "They all said that the first priority is peace."

In Afghanistan, after 30 years under the murderous twin shadows of poverty and war, the only lifeline is peace.

From President Obama, we hear that peace is the ultimate goal. But "peace" is a fixture on a strategic horizon that keeps moving as the military keeps marching.

Just a couple of days before Obama stepped to the podium in Oslo, the general running the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan spoke to a congressional committee in Washington about the president's recent pledge to begin withdrawal of U.S. troops in July 2011. "I don't believe that is a deadline at all," Stanley McChrystal said.

War is not peace. It never has been. It never will be.

Actual policy always, in the real world, profoundly trumps even the best rhetoric. And so, for instance, when President Obama's Nobel speech proclaimed that "America cannot act alone" and called for "standards that govern the use of force," the ringing declaration clashed with the announcement last month that he will not sign the international Mine Ban Treaty.

As Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams pointed out, "Obama's position on land mines calls into question his expressed views on multilateralism, respect for international humanitarian law and disarmament. How can he, with total credibility, lead the world to nuclear disarmament when his own country won't give up even land mines?"

At the outset of his speech in Oslo, the president spoke of his "acute sense of the cost of armed conflict." Well, there's acute and then there's acute. I think of the people I met and saw in Kabul who are missing limbs, and the countless more whose lives have been shattered by war.

In the name of pragmatism, Obama spoke of "the world as it is" and threw a cloak of justification over the grisly escalation in Afghanistan by insisting that "war is sometimes necessary" -- but generalities do nothing to mitigate the horrors of war being endured by others.

President Obama accepted the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize while delivering -- to the world as it is -- a pro-war speech. The context instantly turned the speech's insights into flackery for more war.
Norman Solomon is co-chair of the national Healthcare Not Warfare campaign, launched by Progressive Democrats of America. He is the author of a dozen books including "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death." For more information, go to: www.normansolomon.com

[El Nino]

Ok. maybe not "the same" but so damn similar that they are virtually indistinguishable. I am not talking about petty social issues either like gay marraige etc. I am speaking of large issues that truly affect people domestically and abroad. Like empirialism, war on drugs/drug trafficking, economic slavery (Private Fed Reserve), corporate control of Government, illegal taxation, freedom opressing/anti-constitutional legislation like the "Patriot Acts etc"... Man the list goes on and on. They are the same, sorry pal, try again.

[El Nino]

Nice post Ben. Sad but true words.

[trish]

This convo took a left turn away from the OP's thread title. Point is, all the sheep were duped into getting another war president... plain and simple
What "duped"? He let everybody know his position on Afghanistan back before the primaries & all through the campaign. This isn't a surprize to anyone but you & others who weren't paying attention. There was hope among some that his mind could be changed, but there was never an expectation. 2 months from the conventions, there were no candidates for the office who were talking about pulling out of Afghanistan. The ones who did at the start had no popular support to speak of. Nobody was "duped".

Personally, I think the war in Afghanistan was a mistake to start with. I would definitely do it differently. But I'm not in a position to dictate policy, & the President is privy to a lot more information than myself, you, Ron Paul, or Alex Jones. He's a smart guy, & I trust him to keep the interests of America first, & to give due consideration to his decisions. So far, I have no regrets for my vote.

:claps :claps :claps

[El Nino]

^ ^ ^
Typical 'Liberal' Response ;)

[notdrunk]

Mr. President, War Is Not Peace
by Norman Solomon

Solomon has no idea what is he talking about. Certain groups of people have to be beaten into submission and then you give to an avenue to submit. Only a gullible fool would think there is some good in the heart of an evil person. I guess the author wants people to take it up the ass and just deal with oppression. Oppression with peace...sounds like a good combo!

Additionally, the Ottawa Treaty is incompatible with the United States military. For starters, the US has a shit load of ap mines on the Korean DMZ that prevents North Korea from crossing into South Korea.

[chefmike]

You and Chef have a credibility level of about Zero, at this point! So go on and continue to straight up humor yourselves

Sweet Fancy Moses!!!

El Kaczynski attacking someone's credibility level....now that's a hoot...

[El Nino]

Big words from your chef, ladies and germs...