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Déjà Vu: Obama Plans to Send 34,000 More Troops to Afghanistan
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama met Monday evening with his national security team to finalize a plan to dispatch some 34,000 additional U.S. troops over the next year to what he's called "a war of necessity" in Afghanistan, U.S. officials told McClatchy.
ESCALATION -- US Marines search a compound in Lakari, Helmand Province on November 21, 2009. US President, Barack Obama, has huddled with his war cabinet for what officials indicated could be the final time before he decides whether to dispatch tens of thousands more US troops to Afghanistan.
(AFP/Manpreet Romana) Obama is expected to announce his long-awaited decision on Dec. 1, followed by meetings on Capitol Hill aimed at winning congressional support amid opposition by some Democrats who are worried about the strain on the U.S. Treasury and whether Afghanistan has become a quagmire, the officials said.
The U.S. officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the issue publicly and because, one official said, the White House is incensed by leaks on its Afghanistan policy that didn't originate in the White House.
They said the commander of the U.S.-led international force in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, could arrive in Washington as early as Sunday to participate in the rollout of the new plan, including testifying before Congress toward the end of next week. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry also are expected to appear before congressional committees.
As it now stands, the plan calls for the deployment over a nine-month period beginning in March of three Army brigades from the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky., and the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y., and a Marine brigade from Camp Lejeune, N.C., for as many as 23,000 additional combat and support troops.
In addition, a 7,000-strong division headquarters would be sent to take command of U.S.-led NATO forces in southern Afghanistan - to which the U.S. has long been committed - and 4,000 U.S. military trainers would be dispatched to help accelerate an expansion of the Afghan army and police.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to brief America's NATO allies after next week's announcement, and the allies are to meet again on Dec. 7 in Belgium to discuss whether some other nations might contribute additional troops.
The Monday evening meeting was the ninth that Obama has held on the crisis in Afghanistan, where the worsening war entered its ninth year last month. This year has seen violence reach unprecedented levels as the Taliban and allied groups have gained strength and expanded their reach.
A U.S. military official used the term "decisional" to describe Monday evening's meeting among Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Gates, Clinton, National Security Adviser Jim Jones, Eikenberry and senior U.S. military commanders.
The administration's plan contains "off-ramps," points starting next June at which Obama could decide to continue the flow of troops, halt the deployments and adopt a more limited strategy or "begin looking very quickly at exiting" the country, depending on political and military progress, one defense official said.
"We have to start showing progress within six months on the political side or military side or that's it," the U.S. defense official said.
It's "not just how we get people there, but what's the strategy for getting them out," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday.
The approach is driven in part by concerns that Afghan President Hamid Karzai won't keep his promises to root out corruption and support political reforms, and in part by growing domestic opposition to the war, the U.S. officials said.
As McClatchy reported last month, the Obama administration has been quietly working with U.S. allies and Afghan officials on an "Afghanistan Compact," a package of political reforms and anti-corruption measures that it hopes will boost popular support for Karzai and erase the doubts about his legitimacy raised by his fraud-tainted re-election.
The British government is offering to host a conference early next year to win international support for the compact.
Last week, Clinton suddenly adopted a more conciliatory tone toward Karzai, whom she and other administration officials had been pressing to clean up the rampant corruption and cut his ties to local warlords, some of whom traffic in opium.
In an interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, she said that Karzai had demonstrated "good faith" and added: "Well, there are warlords and there are warlords."
As part of its new plan, the administration, which remains skeptical of Karzai, will "work around him" by working directly with provincial and district leaders, a senior U.S. defense official told McClatchy.
The plan adopted by Obama would fall well short of the 80,000 troops McChrystal suggested in August as a "low-risk option" that would offer the best chance to contain the Taliban-led insurgency and stabilize Afghanistan.
It splits the difference between two other McChrystal options: a "high-risk" approach that called for 20,000 additional troops and a "medium-risk" option that would add 40,000 to 45,000 troops.
There are 68,000 U.S. troops and 42,000 from other countries in Afghanistan. The U.S. Army's recently revised counterinsurgency manual estimates that an all-out counterinsurgency campaign in a country with Afghanistan's population would require about 600,000 troops.
The administration's plan is expected to encounter opposition on Capitol Hill, where some senior Democrats have suggested that the administration may need to raise taxes in order to pay for the additional troops.
Obama campaigned saying that he'd fund the Iraq and Afghanistan wars from the defense budget, but Mullen has said that the Afghan war - which some administration officials privately concede could cost $700 billion to $1 trillion over 10 years - might require a supplemental funding bill next year.
The administration's protracted deliberations have escalated into open warfare between McChrystal and his supporters and advocates of a more limited strategy led by Biden and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel that often played out in dueling leaks to news organizations.
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Show AllThe administration's plan contains "off-ramps," points starting next June at which Obama could decide to continue the flow of troops, halt the deployments and adopt a more limited strategy or "begin looking very quickly at exiting" the country, depending on political and military progress, one defense official said.
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As I said last month the decision had already been made.
All they were doing was polishing the propaganda.
This is essentially the only difference between Bush and Obama.
Bush just f*cking outright lied to us.
Obama packages his lies within the context of confusing b*llshit.
The country wanted a President who got A's at Harvard instead of C's.
Your wish has been granted.
I wanted a President with courage and a conscience.
yeah and we watched a proud black man run for office. now we watch a step and
fetch yes sir to the corporations man who has no shame only to serve the
corps and repugs. and his daughters will pay the price for everything that
he should have done to save their generation from global warming war etc.
this man has no business being president. he did all he could to fuck us on the left
starting last july and the telecom vote. and now sending more kids to
their deaths. he has no dignity he has no shame its all about money and
power. and last week he started forcing the re authorization of the
patriot act! snuck it under the radar while the health care business
was happening. hope all of you here who voted for him are happy now.
we will be at war until our treasury is dry. this is a analogy to
the soviet era war in afghanistan that war drained the soviet treasury
this is happening to us now!
Yes, you got it right.
The 2008 election was decided by sophisticated liberals from Blue-states like Massachusetts, rather then those conservative rubes from Red-states like Kansas --- so the Empire's lies had to be ever so more sophisticated and subtle to fool these "wicked smart" liberals --- but the results are exactly the same for the hidden EMPIRE.
So, "What's the Matter with Massachusetts?" should be Thomas Frank's next top-selling, but under appreciated book of truth about how the EMPIRE works its propaganda.
It's really not all that complex: The EMPIRE scam can be easily understood by simply looking at two analogies and extending each one to fool those supposedly "wicked smart" Bostonians.
1. The Empire is putting on a 'show' (some might say, a Three Card Monte) that looks exactly like the old laughable "Peanuts" cartoon that ran each fall football season.
'Lucy' would vehemently (and apparently sincerely) promise to hold the ball this year, even though she had pulled it away in all past seasons, and that naive rube 'Charlie Brown' would believe her again. Well, you all know how the cartoon ended every season -- and we all laughed about what a fool ol Charlie was.
Well, with the cartoon of democracy, the EMPIRE simply places two Lucys (one Dem. and one Repub.) on the 'playing' field each fourth fall 'voting season' and gets the exact same results with these supposedly smarter rubes who had the nerve to laugh at Charlie!
2. The Nazi Empire set-up a thinly veiled, one-party 'Vichy' government in a foreign country that it had captured and obviously occupied --- which didn't fool the French people, but got the U.S. to recognize 'Vichy France' as a real government (proving perhaps that the U.S government is even dumber than French people).
Well, the simple change and extension to that EMPIRE's trick (which Goebbels would turn over in his grave and cry about if he could see it now) is merely to install a slightly more sophisticated two-party 'Vichy' government right in the 'homeland' (to which Goebbels would shout, "Mein Furher, I have failed you, How could I not see that what the Global Empire has done in America is what we should have done to build a Thousand Year Reich.")
So there are two extended analogies of how a smart Global Empire fools not only ill-educated conservative Americans, but "wicked smart" liberal Americans into voting themselves into stayin gin the belly of the beast of EMPIRE.
As they say in baseball and hand-grenades, "A win's a win". And the EMPIRE won again --- they just fooled a different demographic with different message from a different shill.
But unlike baseball ----- "There's (not) always next year."
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine [a 'Non-Empire' state regardless of color]
Morals and ethics would be nice too.
Yes, it's Déjà Vu --- but Déjà Vu of EMPIRE --- and now, finally, even the supposedly "wicked smart", liberal, 'blue-state' citizens may finally wake-up!
Obama's speech and his 'supposed' decision about Afghanistan will reveal far more than the war strategy in Afghanistan. For those who watch with careful eyes it will reveal EMPIRE.
The decision will be voiced through the mouth of Obama to be sure --- but the decision was already made before he was president, in fact before he even ran, and the decision itself was made by the EMPIRE.
America, our country, is now part of an arrogant, unresponsive, un-democratic, but quite sophisticated 'Vichy' Empire ---- which only pretends to allow the people to have any influence over any choices, directly, or through their supposed representative government.
This fact of sophisticated and guileful Empire manipulation and trickery of the people was well documented in 1994 by Thomas Frank in his "What's the Matter with Kansas" --- showing how contrived social 'values' manipulation was used by the Empire-controlled 'Republican Party' to trick stereotypical anti-intellectual conservative Kansans into voting against their own interests.
But now the coin has been flipped, and we need Frank to write a new book, "What’s the Matter with Massachusetts" in which he would lay bare how the Empire-controlled 'Democratic Party' tricked stereotypical self-described liberal and supposedly highly educated intellectuals into voting for a second well educated (and now post-racial) president promising different 'values', but singing the same songs about "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow" and waving banners of 'hope' and 'change' --- which have now been ignored with the same level of contempt and impunity as the last several Empire-controlled Republican and Democratic shills --- who did exactly NOTHING they promised!.
When such obvious contradictions to a government structure of supposed democracy occur many times in a row, but with both supposedly different political parties, and with differing levels of sophistication employed to fool dull and bright voters, the issue is not 'values' but one of deep 'government structure'. And the only conclusion to be made is that we are dealing with a deep and deadly problem of ‘government structure’, which Ben Franklin would have immediately recognized as his fear of Empire supplanting a democratic Republic.
"The problem is not with our stars, Dear citizens, nor with this Obama, nor the previous Clinton nor Bush nor Reagan, nor even with ourselves, but with EMPIRE”
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
I share your rage, man, believe me. We see it the same way.
Oh... but, but ,but it is the rights of women that Obama cares about.
In 1978 the Afghan government of Mohammed Daoud Khan moved against the leading Afghan opposition political party, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). A leader of the party, Mir Akbar Khyber, was murdered and most of the leadership of the party were arrested during his funeral (reportedly at the instigation of the CIA). In response, the remainder of the PDPA staged an uprising which won power in April of 1978. The party immediately published a series of reforms which echoed the failed attempts at reform in Afghanistan going all the way back to the overthrow of the "reformist King", Amanullah Khan, in 1929.
Within days, the CIA began to organize and fund the reactionary and Islamist "opposition forces" in the countryside of Afghanistan, who had already been the fundamental barriers to reform for over a century. This was 2 years BEFORE the Soviets intervened in Afghanistan. Zbigniew Brzezinski has openly bragged that the purpose of the U.S. operations was to FORCE Soviet intervention.
The issues on which the CIA organized were the PDPA's Land Reform and the elimination of debts in the countryside (both of which attacked the power of the rural "warlords"), religious freedom (or the elimination of Sharia Law), and, most important of all, the granting of equal rights for women (which had also been central to the overthrow of Amanullah in 1929).
For the first time in Afghan history, a woman - Dr. Anahita Ratebzad, had become a member of the ruling Revolutionary Council. Less than one month after the uprising, Ratebzad wrote a famous May 28, 1978 New Kabul Times editorial which declared: “Privileges which women, by right, must have are equal education, job security, health services, and free time to rear a healthy generation for building the future of the country … Educating and enlightening women is now the subject of close government attention."
In response, the CIA distributed leaflets throughout Afghanistan with Dr. Ratebzhad's face displayed prominently on them.
Obama must not have any sense of irony and his "moral high ground" sits lower than the Marianas Trench. The Taliban was created out of whole cloth by the U.S., hatred of women's rights and religious freedom were the pillars of that creation, and the hand wringing now, concerning those "poor Afghan women", is light years beyond hypocrisy.
SIMPLE FACT- US INVASION OF AFGHANISTAN IS ILLEGAL
The invasion of Afghanistan was not legitimate self-defense under article 51 of the Charter because the attacks on September 11 were criminal attacks, not "armed attacks" by another country. Afghanistan did not attack the United States.
Barack Obama is a war criminal.
Right you are, mcoyote, and Obama should join Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II as "war criminals" of the EMPIRE at the Hague --- although Reagan 'the gipper' ran our the clock.
Alan
Of course you also have to realize that the rulers of the UK and Russia are also war criminals. And they all work in conjunction with the US elite for the common purpose of profit over common decency (there may be several groups of power elite but they all seek greed). These separate groups will come to blows at some point, but long after the world has lost all sense of decency and compassion and we fall into each of us having to fight for the power elite or die if they refuse.
Some people saw this coming, and know that the US character is opposite of what the majority of the American people think.
This deception is also meant not so that the power elite could continue to degrade and debase other countries, but for the time when our military will turn against us and catches us unaware or impotent to prevent it.
mcoyote 8:59 ---------
Thank you for the precise, accurate, and necessary information, as to the 30 year destruction and slaughter in Afghanistan instigated and funded by the USA and it's taxpayers.
We are starting to see the other nations raise the cudgel of law to smash the collapsing imperial monster as it falls to its knees.
All levity aside, we do need an "USA Pact" to eliminate corruption, and predatory capitalism, with CEO's as only slightly masked warlords.
I remain amazed at how intelligent, kindhearted people still remain loyal to Obama.I can only surmise it being the result of over exposure to MSM and fostering denial rather than facing the most awful moral,financial,social and enviornmental condition the USA is in.
At least we were kind enough to give the WH an updated list of war protestors with our mass call in yesterday.
Everyone should spread mcoyote's true words so that all will know what a disgusting player the USA is.
Look at this site and you will see all political varieties of posters we need to accept each other into a big tent unified populist movement with the sole objective radically transforming the government into one which serves the USA citizens and harms no others.
Otherwise everyone except the bloated will be working for a few dollars( as in $5-$10) a day as some Banksters are now proposing.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Thank you for making these points very clearly.
Now here's an important note from Obama's favorite foreign policy adviser:
Jimmy Carter adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski stated: "According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, December 24, 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise." Brzezinski himself played a fundamental role in crafting US policy, which, unbeknownst even to the mujahideen, was part of a larger strategy "to induce a Soviet military intervention." In a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Brzezinski recalled: "We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would...That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap...The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War."
ZBiggy and Carter murdered hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Russians and ZBiggy gloated over it. War criminal ZBiggy is the man Obama has said he respects the most in foreign policy. Brzezinski equals Kissinger. Tell me again how Democrats and Republicans are different?
Where are all these Liberal/Progressive who want "officials" prosecuted?
The smell of hope and change is different than the smell of napalm in what way?
A very good and factual point, mcoyote, which demonstrates that while the parties and figure-head presidents change, the Global ruling-elite corporate/financial Empire --- which hides behind the facade of its two-party 'Vichy' sham of democracy --- is both immortal, immoral, and inhuman.
Best luck, mcoyote, in your efforts to disclose and confront the Empire at the heart of all our "sorrows" as Chalmers Johnson says --- and as Hannah Arendt warns, "Empire abroad (always) entails tyranny at home",
Alan
Nanoo
Yesterday being the big national call in day to the white house. Sure I had the number written down and thinking about calling when on the news I'm informed Obama was to meet with the war mongers. Figured Mr. Compromised already decided, so I didn't bother to call.
I'm sorry you people of Afghanistan that this country of my unfortunate birth is doing this to you. I do not honor the troops or support them.
The die has been cast. In theory Obama had the chance to become a peace president. Instead he will now be compared [but will the talking heads on television actually go ahead and point out the obvious?] to another Democratic president named Lyndon Baines Johnson who also escalated a war that was deemed necessary in a place called Vietnam. But it must be pointed out that Congress can end this conflict by cutting off the funds for this misadventure by Obama. Will the Democrats allow Kucinich to be the only one who calls for the war money to cease flowing or will they, as in Vietnam, allow their emotions to overrule their heads by supporting their president by accepting his demand for more death and destruction? Undoubtedly [and unfortunately] the latter as Democrats never fail to justify the name of a book that came out during the 2008 campaign and that was to accurately describe the Democrats as being Savage Mules.
It should also not be too surprising to see an atmosphere of nationalism and hysteria being used and promoted in the coming weeks as those who dare to criticize this escalation will be quickly branded Un-American and/or traitors to their country because they have questioned and criticized the policies of their government. The Democrats, like the Republicans, must claim that the United States is fighting a third world country in order to protect their "vital interests." The question becomes, will the American people remain complacent and continue to buy the party line or will they finally rise up and say NO to American militarism and America's alleged agent of hope and change?
"What you do not done to yourself, do not do to others"-Confucius [551-479 BC], Chinese philosopher
"Imperialism, like dictatorship, sears the soul, degrades the spirit, and makes individuals small, the better to rule them. Fear and cowardice are its allies. Imperialism is government of other people, by other people, and for other people."-Louis Fischer [1896-1970], American journalist
There is a word missing in the Confucius citation: "What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others."
Abendland
You are correct. My apologies as I erred by not including the word want before the word done. I suspect that it was my anger over Obama's escalation getting in the way of my thinking more coherently and cogently as I am usually want to do. Here are a couple of other quotes regarding the idiocy of war:
"Do not men die fast enough without being destroyed by each other?"-Francois Fenelon [1651-1715], French Roman-Catholic theologian
"The least pain in our little finger gives more concern and uneasiness than the destruction of millions of our fellow beings."-William Hazlitt [1778-1830], English writer
It's time to fire-up some "Lincoln Park" and .50 caliber DU and rock and roll Democrats. You are the WARMONGERING PARTY HANDS DOWN! GEORGE WALKER BUSH SMILES UPON YOU ALL! DICK CHENEY BLESSES YOU! (Donald Rumsfeld is still a little confused by it). BRING IT ON OBAMA, the oppressor! REID! PELOSI! BRING IT ON! Oh, the irony.
The Nobel Prize committee should disband itself in disgrace. Giving someone the prize for the potential to create peace is equivalent to locking someone up for life for their potential for terrorism.
Here we go again. We have to burn the village in order to save it. Or more likely because the napalm is approaching its pull date.
When is the borrowing of moneys for all these revolting policies finally going to come to an end? When is it all going to tip over into total bankruptcy?
Abendland, your question reminds me of a recent Toles political cartoon asking how much Karzia needs to be paid to stop being corrupt, with the little bubble at the bottom from a sly Karzai saying, "How much do you have?".
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/cartoons/20091116_ink_tank?pg=12
Well, that cartoon could apply to your question of how much money the Global ruling-elite corporate/financial Empire that controls our former country will extract before this ends.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
"We have to start showing progress within six months on the political side or military side or that's it," the U.S. defense official said.
That is almost word for word a repeat of Vietnam. In case you missed that, they kept escalating for 8 years; 50,000 U.S. dead, over a million Vietnamese dead, tens of thousands with PTSD, and the U.S. lost.
Millions of Southeast Asians dead, Laos secretly had more bomb tonnage dropped on it than the USA dropped in WWII.
Cambodia also was heavily bombed instigating the Kymer Rouge genocide.
Estimates are up to 10 million Southeast Asians killed because of the USA prevention of UN mandated Veitnamese elections and ensuing conflicts.
And the toll continues today from buried bombs,landmines and agent orange birth defects.
And people get all touchy feely when we cry Nazis.
Overheard from the protracted deliberations:
If you want to live, boy, you'll do what we tell you.
Hamster 10:19 --------- Please not even a semblance of an excuse for this warmongering criminal.
If he did not wish to risk his life he should not have run for office.
Karzai and Maliki operate in far more dangerous venues and even have the Courage to oppose the invaders on occasion.
Stop with this "their going to kill him" nonsense that is the risk every leader has accepted since the first leader arose.
Obama's life is not worth one bit more than anyone elses, including the Afghan childs life.
You're right, of course, Obama announced repeatedly in the campaign for president that he was going to increase the war in Afghanistan. I suspect he was fully on board with the MIC before he ran.
"Obama's life is not worth one bit more than anyone elses, including the Afghan childs life." Amen.
hamster, the EMPIRE never makes the mistake of leaving the microphone on when they are giving orders.
Remember, the mic was definitely NOT on when former Exxon CEO Lee Raymond said in Cheney's office at the supposed "Energy Task Force" secret meetings, six months before 9/11, and to the Generals who Cheney had strangely invited to an 'Energy Task Force' that, "The time is ending when we will be able to acquire oil for America through 'normal market mechanisms'. [ie. buying the stuff] Oil will need to be secured through 'extra-market forces'".
To which neither Cheney nor the Generals had any questions about what the term 'extra-market forces' meant --- they just had to look in the mirror to understand their orders.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
well, this puts the nail in the coffin for Obama and demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt his complicity in an illegal and immoral war!!! He will join the depraved and spiritually bankrupt company of Bush, Cheney and the others in the criminal cabal at the helm of US leadership!!!
Don't forget, Mr. 'I feel your pain' Clinton.
Alan
It'll take four years to get Obama's crappy health insurance enrichment program up and running but the beast of war will be fed on a timely basis.
The only thing this country can do anymore with efficiency is destroy.
One 10:31 --------- Again I am amazed at how so many make the illogical conclusion that if someone is publicly dissenting and posting crucial information, bonding, supporting and encouraging others, discussing strategies and tactics,this internet activity somehow indicates they are not physically participating in other worthwhile endeavors.
I guess if the judgemental allowed this clear reasoning they would lose one avenue of self rightousness.
As an aside, did you all notice that the obama statement that KSM was going to be found guilty and executed did not get the earthshaking attention it deserved. This is definitely as bad as anything Bush uttered and is a complete travesty of USA justice and ideals.
Even the Soviets publicly made believe their Show Trials were just.
Obombers "Race to the Bottom"
GARBAGE FROM THE RICH
Above post makes no sense, surely a paid actor hired by the rich. Comes now light to force such darkness to give way.
"The logic being that planet earth is a wasteland of meaningless fiction, and though the Creator is in submission, not by choice. For he does it so that through his subjection, during that time, full trust in him be established. For then the Creator will be set free from being enslaved by such corruption, and we shall have the liberty and glory of being the children of God.
"For it is self-evident that, with all of us, the Creator laments and suffers the same agony to this very day." Romans 8:20 OGV
EMPIRE USA ---- BRAIN-POWER DICTATORSHIP
Intelligence: speed at which one rationalizes a problem and takes corrective action. For ability to kill in combat, ability to achieve in a competition based economy, this is in direct proportion to speed of thought, the brains a man happens to be born with.
For war is in reality an intelligence contest, a survival of the fittest where victory goes to a nation with the highest collective intelligence. A most unstable way of ruling planet earth, as from one generation to another there is a shift, with the greatest intelligence moving from one nation to another. Such as from Babylon to the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Comes now the Moslem nations to challenge Empire USA, and such a battle of wits to unfold.
Alabama_john, and here I thought Obama's whole purpose in gong to China was to recruit some 'bain-power' to the Global ruling-elite corporate/financial Empire which currently controls our former country and is now recruiting other former nation-states.
Their smoothest 'front-man', Obama, is currently trying to square the circle between the new Empire's failing image of 'democratic capitalism' (moron Bush's oxymoron) with the reality of China's 'corporate communism' (as Dylan Ratigan accurately describes the Empire here and there).
But Obama's silky smooth fabrications will not sell to people anywhere ---- starting with a sales collapse right here in River City.
The American people are already suffering the worst income inequality in the world (GINI Coefficient). They can already palpably feel it --- and it's going to get worse fast --- which is why the American people are going to be the true vanguard of a fast developing Global People's Movement (which will make the fall of the Berlin Wall look like a slow motion news reel --- news that the CIA will similarly and incredulously watch on TV).
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Right on, and its quite possible you will succeed.
For the purpose of this world is to prove the harm in it,
and as soon as things cannot possibly get any worse,
all things will turn toward the good.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
This is poser non-strategy by a trio of posers: Obama, Rahm and Hillary. Especially the "Compact" + "off ramps" part--like a wicker tub plug with a yank chain on it. Bereft of true intellect or national or global vision they are trying to pose their way through Amurka's hypermaterialist zombie lurch toward imperial & biosphere collapse--repeating as many obvious historical mistakes as possible by trying to look, if not exactly tough, then at least cubscoutishly prepared.
"Well, there are warlords and there are warlords," sez wifey-poo warlord. She's going to have more innocent blood on her hands than warlord Madeleine Albright, but maybe not quite as much as warlord Condileeza.
This is policy DESIGNED to fail in every aspect. Possibly as a political expedient toward focusing on the domestic economic quagmire--unless they try to pose their way through that one as well (entirely possible given what a spineless corporate genuflector Obama is). I say that because the "off-ramps" are designed to be triggered by next June--one to three months (depending on the number of extensions we've seen thus far) before the first big wave of unemployed that hit November 2008 starts exhausting their Federal and State unemployment benefits--and even larger waves of unemployed AND homeless start piling up on a monthly basis. Then again, DLC illogic suggests they will drag out and delay any withdrawal from Afghanistan (propping up zombie foreign policy with more zombie banking policy) if the GOP's infotainment cadres blast them enough for it.
A 2010 withdrawal would mean that the oil/pipeline/munitions oligarchs will have to curtail or delay their Central Asian Great Game--until another pack of neo-cons can get in there again by hook or crook. Next time they will probably use Pakistan as their entrée back into the region and thereby militarily reverse the situation on the ground between Afghanistan and Pakistan now--with Pakistan being used to base and expand a war within Pakistan and Afghanistan as "indians off the reservation" territory they can drone incinerate at will. After all, they will say, Pakistan is a nation which has nuclear weapons and A.L. Khan (whose nuclear weapons proliferation network that supplied North Korea has never been completely dismantled according to Sam Nunn).
This is "Compact + off-ramps" is a glossed over version of Nixon's "peace with honor" schtick. But the wiley Pathans are, no doubt, clapping each other on the back and Rudyard Kipling's shade is telling Bismarck's about the Westerners who got hussled once again by trying to hussle the East. No military historians of whom I am aware are ripping the neo-cons for biting off more than they could chew before they digested Afghanistan in the first place and they deserve supreme scorn for this and what it has cost the U.S. and the regions involved.
That said, my gut feeling about all this is: It's bad enough, Lord, that we must tolerate a wireless Gumby place-holder like Obama, and brittle corporate hairspray queen Hillary, can't you please at least rid us of this pretentious rat-phuck Rahm Emmanuel?
metal, reprising an old SNL skit with Garrett Morris about baseball, EMPIRE would say to Cicero, "freedom been berry, berry good to Empire."
Alan MacDonald
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
That's because so extremely few of us participate in power, and thus, actual freedom.
metal 10:44 ----- One point -------- I very much doubt the Pastuns are happy at having to battle tens of thousands more invaders. The cost to these battle weary heros are their families,property and lives.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
I agree they are not happy on that point, but I think they know by the militarily weak size and half-hearted nature of this escalation that it is signaling an inevitable defeat for U.S. policy in Afghanistan. Obama is sending 34,000. By Petraeus' own numbers he should be sending 600,000 if he wants effective "counterinsurgency." The "Compact" won't work because of the degree of entrenched corruption there, the culturally embedded drug trade that only the Taliban ever briefly squashed, the plethora of warlords and surrounding regional enemies and competing interests. The U.S. and NATO presence only aggravates the corruption problem without providing a solution. There never was any coherent rebuilding plan for Iraq or Afghanistan--no Marshall Plan for the region, either. The enemies the neo-cons and neo-libs have made over there will guarantee their distrust and hatred of us for decades. Pipeline routes through Afghanistan will never be secure for any period of time that will make them cost effective to the oil companies on a scale the broader economy can now tolerate. The U.S. can't buy cooperation there as readily as with the Sunni chieftains in Iraq. Afghani politics have always been much more complex, the borders are much larger and more treacherous with many more enemy factions on all sides. No great empire who ever tried ever took and then HELD what is now Afghanistan more than a handful of years.
And so ends another presidency. Fascinating to see how it is all going to end for Obama three years before it happens. Once again, a President has opted to dig himself deeper in the hole rather than risk being called a coward come 2012. Ambition has again trumped morality and common sense. And, as in the Lyndon Johnson case, the same price will be paid by Obama. Most likely, Hillary Clinton will run against him for the 2012 primaries. What a waste of a good mind. All that potential and nothing good to show for it in his administration.
Given what he has done and will do, how in good conscious can you say obama has "a good mind"?
He has an intelligent, perceptive mind. It may not be "good" in the moral sense, but that is just underscoring the waste of his mind. It would be fun to do a parody of the United Negro College Fund ads with their slogan " A Mind Is A Terrible Thing to Waste," superimposed over a picture of Obama yukking it up withe Geithner, Summers and all, fronting a background of foreclosures and board-ups.
Your bumpersticker says "peace," but your tailpipe says "war."
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Autosprawl wastes energy,
Waste increases demand.
Demand empowers suppliers.
Suppliers buy government.
Government tries to control supply.
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Want peace? End the automobile and sprawl.
http://frepubtra.blogspot.com
CONFUSION BY "teddy" BELOW ---- JUMP PAST BIG POST
CONFUSION BY "teddy" BELOW ---- JUMP PAST BIG POST
Alexander the Great failed in Afghanistan. Ghengiz Khan failed in Afghanistan. The Brits failed in Afghanistan. The Soviets failed in Afghanistan.
A crumbling American empire failed in Afghanistan under Bush but is now going to succeed under Obama?
Aren't we all tired of this stupidity?
By the time the watered down Health Care Reform come on line, the money to pay for it will have been already wasted in Afganistan chasing the 100 or so Al Qaeda fanatics running around there.
Meanwhile the Afgan Warlards will make their billions and retire to the south of France.
"Well, there are warlords and there are warlords." -Hillary "Warlord" Clinton
But its only $1.4 trillion for war this budget year, including the military share of the National Debt. Its pure glory man, pure glory.