War Cries From a Defeated Man

War Cries From a Defeated Man By Alexander Cockburn

"Obama didn’t make the case and he pleased few. The liberals seethed as they heard him say that it is “in our vital national interest” to send 30,000 more troops to a mission they regard as doomed from the getgo. The cheers of the right at the news of the deployment died in their throats as they heard his next line, “After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.”

No mature American, seasoned in the ineradicable graft flourishing down the decades in every major American city, believes a pledge that corruption will be banished from Afghanistan in a year and a half, or that Karzai has any credibility as the wielder of the cleansing broom.

Each proposition of Obama’s rationale collapses at the first prod ..."

Here We Go Again By Robert Scheer

"It is already a 30-year war begun by one Democratic president, and thanks to the political opportunism of the current commander in chief the Afghanistan war is still without end or logical purpose."

How about that it provided a diversion from the criminal invasion of Iraq and the murder of many thousands of innocent people?


The rise and fall of MySpace By Matthew Garrahan

Murdoch is Neocon goon. If these events are signaling his downfall, good riddance.

America's 'Surge' May Only Expand, Intensify and Prolong the Afghan Conflict by Eric Margolis

This article is so loaded with well articulated insight that I've quoted most of it here:

"Obama faced the choice between guns (Afghanistan) or butter (his national health plan). The Nobel Peace Prize winner chose guns.

The president insisted his objective remains destroying al-Qaida. But al-Qaida barely exists in Afghanistan. Only a handful remain in Pakistan. His real target may be Pakistan.

Anyone who understands Afghanistan's deep complexities knows that Obama's surge won't win the eight-year war. Afghanistan's Pashtun tribal majority will continue to resist western occupation.

At best, it will be an exercise in managing failure.

Americans are turning against the war. Congress is fretting over its mounting costs: $300 billion US for 2009 in a $1.4-trillion deficit year. This war is being waged on borrowed money.

It costs $1 million US to keep each American soldier in Afghanistan. Renting Pakistan's assistance will cost $3 billion per year. Thousands of U.S. troops will remain stuck in Iraq. Obama vowed to fight al-Qaida in Africa and Asia. No wonder many angry Democrats are calling him "George Bush's third term."

But things are not going well in Pakistan, without whose co-operation, bases and supply routes the U.S. cannot wage war in Afghanistan.

Most Pakistanis support the Taliban, see the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan as driven by lust for oil and increasingly fear the U.S. intends to tear their unstable nation apart in order to seize its nuclear arsenal.

Obama's advisers have convinced him an early U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan will provoke chaos in Pakistan. They don't understand that it is the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan that is destabilizing Pakistan and creating ever more anti-western extremism.

What Obama should really have been concerned about was Osama bin Laden's vow to break America's domination of the Muslim world by luring it into a final battle in Pakistan, a nation of 175 million

The longer U.S. forces wage war in Afghanistan, the more the conflict will spread into Pakistan, where 15% of its people and 25% of its military are Pashtuns who sympathize with their beleaguered fellow Taliban Pashtuns in Afghanistan.

A grimmer view is that Obama has become a captive of the military-industrial complex, Wall Street and Washington's rabid neocons who seek permanent war against the Muslim world. Obama's "surge" may only expand, intensify and prolong the Afghan conflict.

In the end, there will be a negotiated peace that includes Taliban. But how many Americans, allies and Afghans must die before it comes?"

Thank the President for Waking the Sleeping Giant by Jodie Evans

"... Really, we are going to send 100,000 troops, over 100,000 contractors and 100 billion dollars to deal with 100 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan? It reminds me of an Afghan woman's tirade to me when I was there, "You want me to believe that the most powerful nation in the world is being held hostage by those skinny, lice covered, illiterate, dirty men in those craggy hills of this broken country?" "

Bill