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

Another valuable writer: Nicolas J S Davies

Obama with Blood on His Hands By Nicolas J S Davies

"Editor’s Note: For many Americans, the promise of the new Obama administration was that finally the United States would reject the neocon concept that America can ignore international law and use indiscriminate violence around the world to assert its interests.

That hope was largely snuffed out Tuesday when President Obama gave his hawkish generals and the neocon pundits most of what they wanted by expanding the eight-year-old Afghan War and guaranteeing more violations of the laws of war, as Nicolas J S Davies writes:"

Bill

The Secret US War in Pakistan

The Secret US War in Pakistan By Jeremy Scahill

Jeremy Scahill describes some of the workings of Blackwater's activities inside Pakistan.

As applies to this and the whole military adventure in the Middle East, try imagining that there are soldiers from another country in your town.

Really - stop for a minute and think about that. What would you do?


Bill

The Twin Frauds of Obama

The Twin Frauds of Obama By Paul Craig Roberts

"There was a time when Democratic presidents represented the little man, and Republicans represented business. Today both parties represent the moneyed interests."

The Democrats have become brownshirt Republicans.

The American people, except for the one percent of super-rich, have been abandoned.

This article is loaded with thoughts and words I would offer if I were a better writer. I marvel at some of our writers, and Mr. Roberts is certainly one great example. People like Mr. Kucinich and Mr. Roberts are our heroes, the people we SHOULD be listening to (which is precisely why I'm using this blog: to cull the good stuff from the garbage heap of propaganda flooding our information supply)


Bill

"Iraqi good enough"

Did you catch the propaganda machine's new catch phrase: "Iraqi good enough" yet?

From The Last Day of the Iraq War

"It's too late to fix Iraq before the pullout date. All U.S. troops can do now is keep trying to slow the killing and get out. They call it 'Iraqi good enough.'"

"The situation is summed up in a phrase you hear among American combat troops and trainers: "Iraqi good enough." The term expresses their resignation—realism, they'd call it—about the limits of what America can accomplish in Iraq."

"America's expectations have plunged. Officials on the ground now envision an Iraq roughly like other nondemocratic states in the Middle East. The government will no doubt be repressive—not as bad as when Saddam Hussein was in charge, but even now Iraq's jails hold thousands of prisoners who have been held for months without hearing the charges against them. Corruption is rampant, in part because the state isn't strong enough to haul the biggest wrongdoers into court without touching off a rebellion. Residents of Mahmudiyah sarcastically call their mayor's neighborhood Owja, after Saddam's hometown—the lights stay on there even when the power is out everywhere else. And Tehran already has far more influence in the new Iraq than it did under Saddam."

Bill

Kucinich: Prolonging Afghan war a ‘threat to our national security’

Kucinich: Prolonging Afghan war a ‘threat to our national security’ By Daniel Tencer

"Far from being a necessary part of the US's national security strategy, the Afghanistan war is actually a threat to it, says Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich."

“America is in the fight of its life and that fight is not in Afghanistan -- it's here," Kucinich declared. "We are deeply in debt. Our GDP is down. Our manufacturing is down. Our savings are down. The value of the dollar is down. Our trade deficit is up. Business failures are up. Bankruptcies are up.

“The war is a threat to our national security. We’ll spend over $100 billion next year to bomb a nation of poor people while we reenergize the Taliban, destabilize Pakistan, deplete our army and put more of our soldiers’ lives on the line. Meanwhile, back here in the USA, 15 million people are out of work. People are losing their jobs, their health care, their savings, their investments, and their retirement security. $13 trillion in bailouts for Wall Street, trillions for war; when are we going to start taking care of things here at home?”

“The people of Afghanistan don’t want to be saved by us," Kucinich said on the House floor Wednesday. "They want to be saved from us. Our presence and our Predator drones kill countless innocents, creating more US enemies and destabilizing Pakistan."

Dennis Kucinich is one of a very few people in Washington who isn't corrupt and has the guts to speak the truth. The fact that he isn't more popular is clear and convincing testimony to the power of the propaganda machine that has been playing America for the fool for a long time now.

"Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards" -Diogenes


Bill

Obama’s War Speech

Obama’s War Speech:An Unconvincing Flop by Justin Raimondo

As usual, Justin Raimondo articulates feelings most Americans, certainly I, have on this subject.

A few points I'd add to Justin's:


1. Did you notice what Obaba didn't do? He didn't turn to the West Point audience and say "some of you are going to die or become crippled for life as a direct result of my decision to escalate rather then withdraw. Other Americans are going to suffer too, and because this decision for more war will likely not end with Afghanistan, even more of you will suffer then any of us realizes today. But you have absolutely nothing to worry about, because my speech-writers will craft just the right words to make you forget all that pain"

2. Doesn't anyone realize that the entire notion of geography, as in seizing and retaining land anywhere, has nothing whatsoever to do with America's problem with Muslim terrorism being directed our way? Our next attackers could as easily come from the Philippines, South America, Asia, etc., and a clever strategist would pick one from each country. We do understand that there are over one billion Muslims spread across the globe, in addition to untold others who have built up a hatred for America's foreign policies? Can they recruit some Vietnamese, Koreans, Japanese?

3. Clearly the neocon gang still runs Washington and is behind these speeches and talking points. This is why Obama spoke like Bush: it's the same handlers, think tanks, financiers and speech-writers.

4. This whole Afghanistan thing is essentially a giant diversion from the monumental debacle of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Nobody thinks Afghanistan can be won in any sense of the word, but it's custom form fit as the right size to replace headlines about Iraq. It's not a coincidence.

5. When is someone going to point out that, as we sink deeper and deeper into the morass of war that this planet is brimming with horrible weapons we must be ridding ourselves of - rather then playing with fire and edging closer and closer to seeing them used?


Please see:

The Long-War Trifecta by Jeff Huber

Kucinich on Obama’s Escalation: Great Speech, Bad Policy

Here We Go Again By Robert Scheer

Obama Has Spoken; Now, Let's Have a Debate by John Nichols

Obama's War by Jim Hightower


Bill