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TechnoratiBeware a Times/Pentagon 'Virtual Coup' on Aghanistan
Some military coups are still done the old-fashioned way. Tanks surround the capital, generals grab the radio station, the slaughter begins.
Here, the Declaration of Independence scorned King George III for elevating his army over our colonial legislatures. The Founders opposed a standing army. Our first Commander George Washington warned against military entanglements. So did Dwight Eisenhower nearly two centuries later. These "quaint" monuments to civilian rule form the core of our constitutional culture.
So when the Pentagon wants to trash inconvenient opposition and escalate yet another war, it seeks subtler means. For example: the "virtual coup" now being staged in league with the New York Times, aimed at plunging us catastrophically deeper into Afghanistan.
It's how they drove us into the abyss in Vietnam and Iraq. It demands we decide who will rule---the Pentagon, or the public.
It was the military's manipulative mis-reporting in Vietnam that fueled Lyndon Johnson's 1965 disastrous escalation. With the much-medalled William Westmoreland front and center, the Pentagon concocted a non-existent attack in the Gulf of Tonkin, warned that a communist victory would bring on the Apocalypse, told LBJ he could win, and ran its occupation army up to 550,000 troops.
When its last advisors fled in shame off that Saigon rooftop, the Pentagon blamed those who had opposed the war from the start. It assaulted the heroic independent reporters who exposed the war's true horrors. It even attacked the corporate media that had been its willing partner in the war's creation.
To its credit, the Times broke from its early support, making welcome history by publishing the Pentagon Papers, among much else. As today, it published opposing views all the way through.
But its big guns enlisted again in Iraq. The Bush Administration needed no convincing, but the American public did. Led by warhawk cheerleaders Thomas Friedman and Judith Miller, the Journal of Record sold a war based on Weapons of Mass Destruction and Dick Cheney's "grateful" Iraqi citizenry, both of which were non-existent.
Today central casting has brought us Stanley McChrystal to re-run the role of Westmoreland/Cheney. Now the hero of an endless stream of hauntingly familiar puff pieces, the General's carefully leaked "secret" demand for "a bare minimum" of 40,000 more troops to avoid "mission failure" has become the ultimate blackmail note, the core of a virtual coup in the making.
It comes as the Times concocts a report on "frustrations and anxiety [that] are on the rise within the military." Among "active duty and retired senior officers" there is "concern that the president is moving too slowly, is revisiting a war strategy he announced in March and is unduly influenced by political advisers in the Situation Room."
"Unduly influenced by political advisers"? Does this mean that for the Commander in Chief, elected by the people of the United States, advice is duly acceptable only from hawks in uniform?
Joining Tom Friedman (again!) is the Times's Roger Cohen, who says Obama needs "endurance" because if we lose in "Afghanistan, Pakistan and Pashtunistan" there "would be a disaster for Western security."
Sub in "Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos" and you can be reminded that our military is again backing a cabal of world-class heroin dealers.
And would the "loss" of AfPak, whatever that means, be a greater "disaster for Western security" than another trillion dollars diverted from education, health care, the environment, and domestic employment in a nation in deep financial chaos?
McChrystal is certainly entitled to his First Amendment rights. But so far, the American public is not buying. Polls show the country deeply divided, with slight majorities opposed to McChrystal's demand for more troops. That means, there is nothing like the public consensus that should be required for any military excursion.
The key may be the money. In the booming sixties, we could "afford" to blow $100 billion or more on a futile, senseless war merely by bankrupting our health care system, blowing college tuitions through the roof, sacking our infrastructure, failing to upgrade our grid and power systems, debasing our currency, falling from an exporting powerhouse to an import addict, and much more.
The Pentagon's gratuitous squander of another trillion in Iraq has helped squeeze the last of that "fat" out of our economy. A US far beyond the brink of bankruptcy is being told to "stay the course" in the Graveyard of Great Powers, a country the size of Texas, a deathtrap to every invader for the past 2,300 years, including the Soviet Union. Pakistan is about twice the size of California. AfPak together have more than 200,000,000 people, more than 2/3 the population of the US.
Official military reports say there are about 100 members of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Despite the global nature of terrorism we are allegedly there to stamp out, no other nation seems compelled to join us there in any meaningful way.
Obama was elected in large part because the American public has sensed that---unlike his predecessor or opponent---he is intelligent enough to grasp all this. He ran promising a full commitment in Afghanistan. Now he has dared to take his time making a final decision. But will he have the courage to stand against the brass at crunch time?
Robert Gates, the Bush holdover at Defense, who won't set a timetable for withdrawal, has gone public with his demand for more troops. As Yale's David Bromwich puts it, [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bromwich/war-fever-at-the-emtimese_b_327159.html ] the brass at The Times wants "a large escalation in Afghanistan. The paper has been made nervous by signs that the president may not make the big push for a bigger war; and they are showing what the rest of his time in office will be like if he does not cooperate."
In other words, the virtual tanks have again surrounded the White House.
We cannot let them win. Another bloody, trillion-dollar Lone Ranger fiasco will definitively end any hope for health care, employment, education, the environment, a decent life for our children.
As usual, the Pentagon will be enriched and empowered. We will be impoverished and disenfranchised. Isn't that what coups are all about?
So when the military and its minions demand we defer to their "experts," we might recall the Cuban Missile Crisis. At its most terrifying peak, President John Kennedy---himself genuine war hero---polled the Joint Chiefs on how to respond to Soviet warheads in the western hemisphere. The generals unanimously demanded a nuclear attack. Thankfully, the president and his brother, the Attorney-General, stood their ground.
Obama must now do the same. There are nuances in all global conflicts. But in an electronic age, when perception means virtually everything, the question is not just what happens in Afghanistan.
It is who rules here at home-----the Pentagon, or the public.
51 Comments so far
Show Allharvey wasserman / solartopia.org
thank you all for your excellent comments. one reason i love being published at CommonDreams is the quality of the responses, from which i always learn much.
a small correction: obama's school in honolulu in Punahou. it is definitely an upper crust, high quality school funded by a complex legacy tied to native lands. it is an intriguing place that does deliver a quality, diverse education
they key for me in writing this is despite all his obvious corporate ties and proclivities, obama DOES have the power to make the right decision in afghanistan, and he does have a majority of the population behind him. so it is essential that we do all in our power to push this administration away from the catastrophic option of national suicide, which an escalation would surely be.
by the way....a while ago i wrote a number of articles passionately arguing/hoping for a release for Leonard Peltier. since his parole was turned down, i have been unable to think of what needs to be said. there MUST be an angle beyond just asking obama for a pardon. anyone with any concrete suggestions, please don't hesitate to write them here.....i will check back in.....thanks, harveyw
Thanks for your excellent article. I strongly believe that we should apply every ounce of pressure possible on Obama and Congress to stop the wars in the Middle East, but I think we should do so without accepting any of the corporate media framing. To accept that the war in the Middle East has something to do with "National Security" is to concede the battle before it is fought.
If only it were a matter of rationally weighing up the costs of war versus the benefits of universal health care. Unfortunately, we need to become serious about the real interests involved in the war in Afghanistan. As you say, there are about 100 Al Qaeda members in Afghanistan. Obviously, we are not spending $1 trillion to stop these 100 nobodies from attacking America.
We must ask rather, "What are the geopolitical interests which transnational corporations are pursuing in the Middle East?" Once we ask the serious question, a rich explanatory field emerges. For instance, the vast energy reserves in Central Asia and the Middle East might be of interest to the US ruling elite. The US is engaged in a ferocious global competition with its rivals over cheap labor, markets and raw materials.
The peace movement must abandon the parameters of political debate deployed by the corporate media. No victory is possible within that framework of discourse. Shifting this framework must begin with the denial that the war in Afghanistan has anything to do with American security and a great deal to do with gaining control of the energy resources of that region. Once we face the obvious facts, then our strategies can be made effective by a recognition of the realities of power.
hit nail on head RIGHT ON HARVEY
Where does the Pentagon get such hubris? From USans willingly donating over half of their tax dollars to the Pentagon. Suggestion: Cut your taxable income to zero and in place of federal taxes, support your local community directly.
The Pentagon is controlled by Congress and the White House but you are sort of correct that all of us taxpayers are also indirectly responsible.
Though I applaud Wasserman's plea, I think the coup took place some time ago. The election of Barack Obama was a reflection, one of many, of a change in tactics by the U.S. ruling elite. I think we need to shift the frame we use to talk about the Obama administration.
When we focus on President Obama as a key factor in a policy such as the escalation of troops in Afghanistan, we are attributing to him powers that no longer reside in the Executive Branch. What the corporate media refers to as "Obama" or the "Obama administration" is the idealization of a power structure. "Obama" represents a marketing strategy designed to cover a series of moves which the ruling elite is carrying out to protect their interests in energy resources, military power, and financial control. To attribute these moves to the man Barack Obama helps reinforce their strategy. For instance, if it is widely believed that the war in Afghanistan is Obama's responsibility, then the inevitable "failure" can be blamed on him. Another President can win power by repudiating the "liberalism" that led to this defeat.
The resistance must continue to target the principalities and powers that enforce the strategy rather the man who is its transitory incarnation. Like John F. Kennedy who was removed from power when he began to deviate too far from the interests of the military state, Barack Obama has very narrow range within which he can operate. And, as Wasserman intimates, he has the example of John F. Kennedy's defiance of the generals to guide him.
Don't be so sure. Obama has plenty of powers and he has a hell of responsibility as president to lead and push for changing direction. Reagan and Bush had no problem defying even their moderate "advisors". Obama has no trouble happily keeping the same people in charge of the Pentagon who wrecked it under Bush's 8 years. As a leader, it is his responsibility to lead. What a waste of billions of dollars on fraudulent election campaigns just to elect one mediocre leader after another.
Obama works within a tightly constrained band of corporate and military interests. His performance will be judged on his capacity to forward those interests. So far, he has done a spectacular job.
"So far, he has done a spectacular job." ????
So he's sorta constrained but that does not exonerate him from his responsibility for the people.
We voters of VA and NJ for this year's gubernatorial elections will soon decide if Obama has really done a spectacular job now that national politics has made its way into this year's gubernatorial races just like it happened in 1993 and 2005. In 1993, Mary Sue Terry wasn't doing as poorly compared to Democrat Creigh Deeds this year.
I'd go and buy me a few beers on this one but I gotta drive to work tomorrow. Obama doing a spectacular job? PFFT ! LMAO !
I'll try to make as plain as possible. He's done a spectacular job for the corporate and military interests that he serves. They put him in power and their investment is paying off handsomely.
The reason the peace movement should not fall into pinning all the responsibility on Obama is that this tactic plays directly into the strategy of those who are promoting resource wars in the Middle East. Eventually, despite his best efforts to escalate troops in Afghanistan, he will be blamed for the failure of the Afghanistan war. This will set the stage for the emergence of a right-wing demagogue as the answer to Obama's "weakness." Let the peace movement beware of buying into a framework fine-tuned to the purposes of those who will profit.
Ah, thanks for the clarification. For a minute there, you had me going nuts.
What you say about the peace movement reminds me of George Lakoff and his art of framing. I take it you know George Lakoff very well, yes? But you do raise a valuable lesson. Most of the peace groups who endorsed Obama expected a lot from him and justifiably so after Bush's 8 years of wars was more than enough. I still don't see how Obama can sleep at ease for playing slick and keeping the status quo. Are you saying that the peace movement gets cranky go getting warlike just to oppose the war?
Sending more troops to get us out of Afghanistan is like eating more food to lose weight.
We need to build, not bomb.
There was something, some small statement, that Republican Senator Jim DeMint said on the Washington Times' America's Morning News on June 18 that was pretty revealing, and pretty damn scary.
One of the co-hosts, Melanie Morgan, kept bringing up Senator Boxer's request that a general address her as "Senator" instead of "ma'am" during a briefing, and Senator DeMint said something like this: "A far as I'm concerned, the military people have a rank above ours, even though they give us the courtesy and power of a civilian government."
I wonder how many other conservative congressmen think civilian control of the military and government is a "courtesy".
Martin Luther King Jr. received the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize; Bishop Desmond Tutu 1984; Nelson Mandala 1993; Kofi Annan 2001; Wangari Maathai 2004.
President Barack Obama has a very nice wife and kids; but, the 2009 Peace Prize, prematurely awarded, should have gone to Jane Maher after the October 28th publication of her article in The New Yorker Magazine called "The Predator Wars."
President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vice-President Joe Biden, Special Assistant Richard Holbrooke, General Stanley McChrystal and any other person prominently involved in the Af-Pak war should address in detail the substance of Ms. Maher's article, referring to her by name, or perhaps step down.
This simple account of every implication of our drone attacks is an example of a reporter having a great story to tell and keeping things simple similar to New York Times reporter David Rohde's account of his kidnapping and seven-month captivity at the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
My favorite brother James Young here in Winston-Salem, NC, who spent much time in Chicago and is familiar with Illinois politics, had many positive things to say after the last presidential election but added: "If a white snake can bite you, so too can a black snake."
I am white but have been called an "honorary brother" by certain persons in W/S-- an appellation that pleases me.
Is President Obama a Martin Luther King Jr.? Is that a fair question? I think so. Obama is an extremely intelligent and eloquent man, who suggested in his preliminary Nobel Prize acceptance that there might be a way for him to live up to the prize.
There is: A U-turn in Afghanistan. I cannot imagine any good reader disagreeing after carefully reading Ms. Maher's latest article. In fact, it should be required reading for every American no matter what their interest and reading level.
The wrong-- oh so wrong-- Af-Pak killings by us Americans extend from top to bottom of all Military-Corporate involvement in the two countries, and can in no way be justified unless we are all Al Capones or John Dillingers or perhalps Bonnie and Clyde.
We need a more reasonable American-centered defense policy that keeps ourselves more at home. And less hysterics about the people who most want to kill us. We need a more mature and rope-a-dope type outlook toward Al Qaeda similar to that shown by the Brits to Irish terrorists or the French to Algerian terrorists.
Our modern lifestyle/economy runs mostly on oil. We kill for it and it is killing us. 6 billion people on a planet that is choking and browning out. Better gamble big on alternative energy breakthrough. Beautiful day for a bike ride, Im outa here!
Seven billion now.
"McChrystal is certainly entitled to his First Amendment rights."
As a member of the military McChrystal is still bound by the chain of command. He has no 1st Amendment rights when it comes to military matters. He should be relieved of command and thrown in the brig. His statements to the press are outrageous. McCrystal's opinions need to be shared with the Commander In Chief, not the New York Times. I spent 8 years in the special forces during the late 80's and early 90's and I am ashamed of what the military has become. (not that it was ever very honorable to begin with)
I want to second this notion; obama shoulda kicked
his whiny ass all the way to south korea...
!!
Harvey Wasserman - Great framing of the phenomenon that is the Pentagon.
Richard Coleman - Most astute comment. Well done.
Fenner - You've got to get over your obsessive hatred for the power elite, it's turning you into a pedant.
Here's a ranking of my obsessive hatreds for what they are worth:
1) War, gratuitous killing, particularly of children, particularly by unmanned drones.
2) The role of hypocrisy and lies in the service of the above.
3) The role of the above, 1 and 2, in the service of the power elite.
I care not a wit about the power elite themselves, just the phenomena that gives birth to their actions.
As an opponent of U.S. imperialism I say listen to "Uncle" Thomas L. Friedman of the Government Gazette and escalate involvement in Afghanistan, increase drone attacks in Pakistan, and leave as many troops as possible in Iraq. Take all the time you need. The empire is operating on borrowed funds and the sooner it punches itself out the better off the world will be.
Hey Thatch,
This is a good restating of something Chris Hedges quoted from a Russian anarchist of the 19th Century. "We think we are the doctors. We are the disease." Is it time to start thinking like a disease, not to make this country work but to help it fall apart? We can do what the Russians are doing, encouraging the US military to get deeper involved in "Af-Pak," to hasten our destruction.
It's scary.
That's what the corporate class and the conservatives are doing. Are you sure you want to join that side?
Very well said, thank you Mr Wasserman.
This is an excellent piece. The Times is once again banging the war drums. And yet they do have some excellent reporters in the field. Unfortunately, the bulk of the editorial board are a select group of elitists who are drawn toward power, provided it is of the elite variety. Their hatred of Bill Clinton was due mostly to his trailer trash upbringing, not to his policies, and their love for Obama is mainly due to his attending one of the wealthiest prep schools in the U.S. with an endowment reported by some sources of around 1/2 billion, Panou, and then his apparently effortless climb up the elitist ladder from Occidental to Columbia and finally to that bastion of superiority, Harvard. I saw him on the Vineyard right after his teleprompter MLK imitation recitation at the 2004 kickoff. He's a true golfer, the kind who wears the white shoes and white gloves and tosses the caddy a dime every so often and asks him to go fetch his lemonade. While George Bush was the son of the owner of the club who should have been put in some titular position like "assistant manager of the pro shop," Obama is one of the thoroughbred members admitted not only because of his hybrid genes but his neo-conservative disdain for those outside of the club and his role in combating discrimination lawsuits to avoid entry from non-members. He does not like the stain of poverty except as a cover on his resume. Like Bush, he's done a masterful job of sequestering his past views and his academic records. Few people have fit the New York Times model so perfectly, and with the perfect cover of the absent black father. Few people could so masterfully employ invisible death and destruction to so many of the invisible poor, semi-literate tribes people no less in a part of the world where no Western witnesses are allowed to roam, a bit like Houdini who was said to make an elephant vanish before a circus crowd.
So Obama is a country club Democrat? Maybe. Still, he did get the juices flowing within the black community. Best voter turn-out in many election cycles. He certainly can conceal his aristocratic background in front of the homeboys, can't he though? Is that because the homeboys all want to be like Barack?
His prep school upbringing comes out in his (lack of) understanding of the public school education system. More uniforms, militarism, forced politeness, choral learning responses, and emphasis on high stakes testing--just what the elite imagines those undisciplined peasants need. Harvard, too. That institution gave him the connections to the Oligarchs--the Times, the Kennedys, the guys entitled to three homes and six cars. Just look at Obama's past--how could we have missed his allegiance to the capitalist creed? It's plain as his hard-to-find report cards.
drosera, you probably know he was in fact playing golf for 5 hours or so with the UBS CEO whilst their tax cheat whistle blower was being sent off to jail. I remember driving around the South Bronx the day after election day. So many kids celebrating. I felt so sad for them. They too are fooled into thinking that the key barrier is the color of their skin when it's culture and class. No, none of the people I was looking at could speak like Obama or could afford the 17k a year tuition of a place like Panou. I am sure they were all hoping he was one of them deep down. I know that recruitment is up in part because of the recession, but I wonder how many of these poor kids turned eighteen and enlisted because they trust Obama with their lives. And off they go to kill others far poorer than any single person in the South Bronx, and to perhaps be killed themselves.
"They too are fooled into thinking that the key barrier is the color of their skin when it's culture and class"
Take a look at the US census. Even with equivalent academic qualifications, African Americans still get significantly less income.
The key barrier is class AND colour.
If we are going to generalize, color, as Mr. Obama has handily proven, is a subset of class. Class trumps all. Ask my ten year old son who had to sit in the principal's office for an hour because he refused to watch Mr. Obama on television due to my son's anitwar views, that is in a public school where Mr. Obama has never dared tread. Color is of course a factor and in the past has certainly been triumphant but class has far overtaken its power due to its pernicious invisibility as a factor for exclusion and inclusion. To pretend otherwise is how we've gotten into our current situation: voting against hate crimes while voting for war, which is the ultimate hate crime.
I repeat, look at the most recent US census. Across all levels of education, from not having completed high school right up to advanced degrees / professional degrees, African Americans have significantly less income.
Obama is one man out of 300+ million citizens. He does not "handily" prove anything. If anything, Obama is the exception that proves the rule. Are you next going to claim that now that the US has elected a black (yes, I'm aware that Obama is mixed) man as president, it is now a post racial society?
Class AND colour.
Sioux Rose
FENNER: Intelligent post.
I watched "Born On The Fourth of July" a few nights ago, and it is perhaps Oliver Stone's best film in demonstrating the evolution of an insulated young man, raised on idolatry towards the "heroism" of military service, who experiences a painful breakthrough when he can no longer ignore the TRUTH of what direct experience has taught him.
The film vividly depicts the anti-war movement, and how the medical help at a run-down hospital for wounded Vets apprise the broken soldier of the facts of life: that he was hardly fighting for what the propagandists would have him believe.
It's a powerful film, and a DIRECT mirror to exactly what's going on now. The loss of a current empowered anti-war movement is due to several dovetailing factors:
1. The media is bought out by right wing and/or pro-militarist interests so "the other side" of any debate doesn't exist on air. (out of sight, out of public mind.)
2. Music was the force that moved my generation to rush to protests, but today's music, only aired through the powerful conglomerates that have amassed almost total control of the airwaves, rhapsodies nothing remotely akin to anti-militarism.
3. Economics: The two-working parent/overtime model as costs continue to rise while wages for most continue to fall creates an "awareness gap" as lots of persons are too tired to seek out independent news, and thus allow the media to do their thinking for them, shaping their consent.
4. Religious fundamentalism of all three patriarchal creeds: Here we find allegiance to authority figures spilling over into a forced respect for government officials that is neither earned, nor based on their actual performances. But such types are taught NOT to question authority. For them it's either a sin or mark of heresy.
5. The power of the Surveillance state, homeland security, the FISA ruling that allows spying on citizens, the pre-emptive arrests, the offshore prisons that have erased the Writ of Habeas Corpus, the vile acts of high officials (theft, war based on fixed pretexts, sell-out to Wall St, big pharma, big coal, etc.) all going unredressed. Proof that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
6. Obesity, depression, alcholism, drug addiction, gambling addiction, porn addiction: so many are so broken inside themselves, that much of their day to day experience relates to fighting their personal demons. There isn't any juice left for anything else.
7. The unemployed, the homeless, the ill, the aged: These haven't the energy, for the most part, to fight for anything much apart from their own survival.
8. The ignorant or brainwashed: As David Michael Green related in his article yesterday, there truly are a sizable number of persons who when confronted with facts or truth, pass it off as irrelevant.
This is one of Wasserman's finest pieces because it connects so many dots. At the insistence of some in this forum, I just began reading "JFK and the Unspeakable." I am anxious to learn the factual data that not only supports the conspiracy theories around his assassination, but show us the type of underworld that has shaped US foreign and domestic policy for the past 40 years. It it likely this group so enamored with foreign wars would be unlikely to shy away from such "Pearl Harbor" necessary triggers as 911 to get what they want: profits from the make-war state on macho steroids, armed and dangerous to anything and everything living. The real enemy to sentient citizens is today's US military, bar none.
SouixRose:
"JFK and the Unspeakable." is on my reading list too. You and Fenner have well described the tangled web we live in. I would suggest that you take a look at a very small book, War is a Racket by General Butler.
The Butler describes the tactics used by the elite to manipulate the military and the public for their monetary and political gain. The tea parties of today were describe by Butler in 1930. Of course many of the same players are still alive today.
I would disagree that the enemy to sentient citizens is the military, in that the military are only tools used by the elite just as the police are. Many sentient military have retired since their opposition to Bush and the absurd wars left them no future. The lesson of the French revolution and Russian revolutions has not been lost on the elite. The ruling class wants to be sure that the masses that it abuses daily can not rise up against it or take back by force of legislation or taxes the wealth that the elite has stolen from the common people. Cheap docile labor, paying their taxes, fighting the wars and dying when used up that's the kind of common people the elite want.
Sioux, You make many, many excellent points. I think you're dead on. I just put Born on the 4th in my Netflix Que. Thanks for the tip! I never even thought about the music factor and how that so perfectly plays into this. Was listening to Nat Hentoff on antiwar.com talking about Race to the Top as well as the legalization of surveillance by Obama. It's all one and the same, perfectly predictable and yet shocking at the same time.
I also repeat that this is idiocy to expect to solve 'Afghanistan' or even 'AfPak' in isolation from the global US military effort set in motion by a very stupid Congress (except Barbara Lee, she got it correct, and only she).
Progressives will fail as long as they consider the US military efforts against al-Qaeda in AfPak separately from the efforts against al-Qaeda in Iraq and separately again from the global efforts to prevent future terrorism.
Comparing AfPak to Vietnam is legitimate, as long as you realize that the US is waging aggression worldwide now, and not in only one tiny corner of SE Asia. AfPak is only the hottest of the war theaters.
That said, big bombs keep going off in Iraq. US soldiers will have to stay there to prevent future terrorism, won't they?
We need to end all the aggressions caused by the madness of P.L.107-40, the DAFT law.
We shouldn't continue using the same failed strategy (that has already failed for 9 months), that of begging Santa, who is just as stuck as we are in this insanity (that is Congress's fault).
"AfPak is only the hottest of the war theaters."
The US bombs Pakistan without permission from its government, which, as a puppet installed by the US, is widely hated by the citizenry. Call it what you want, but the US has convinced Pakistanis to fight against Pakistanis. It is a civil war fomented by Obama in the pursuir of "terrorists" and "insurgents" who are resisting attacks and occupation by the U.S.
The Pakistani ISI and the US assisted in the formation of the Taliban, and various elements within the ISI may still favor that group. The Taliban brought order, although strict religious order, to Afghanistan after the US abandoned the al Qaeda Mujihideen (samo samo) after the Soviets left Afghanistan.
The U.S. does little to distinguish between just who are Taliban and who are al Qaeda. Taliban come from the Pashtun tribe which has existed in the same geographic location for centuries, and only lately has found itself occupying land that spans a "border" line drawn by the British decades ago. Al Qaeda formed in Afghanistan from Saudi Arabian "Mujahideen" with US assistance to fight the Russians who had invaded Afghanistan in support of its at that time leftist or communist leader.
Today, it is a confused mess and the US has no business meddling militarily in that and any other part of the world. A military is supposed to be for self defense. The military meddling creates "terrorists" and "insurgents" which it supposedly is fighting against in so many far flung global locations.
It is a hopeless situation with adolescent mentalities at the helm of most world governments.
It is because America's government and military are at war that the generals have disproportionate power (the American public won't be at war until rationing and shortages appear).
Congress started this mess when it enacted P.L.107-40 and set the military's goal as preventing future terrorism. The US military is stuck in a war that will last forever.
America will be stuck in this DAFT war as long as America refuses to realize that it is.
- Obama must now do the same. -
So once again the Progressive strategy is to beg Santa Obama to bring us what we wish for. This strategy will continue to fail.
When Progressives focus on the law that causes this madness, maybe then we can stop the coup (because America won't be at war anymore and war advisers will make way for peace advisers).
"The US military is stuck in a war that will last forever."
This is one of the tenets of neoconservatism as defined by its godfather, Leo Strauss.
Harvey: Thanks for NOT 1) Blaming Vietnam on JFK and 2) Blaming the missile crisis on JFK's alleged violent anti-communism. (cf anything written by Alex Cockburn or Noam Chomsky that refers to JFK.)
Max: What planet did you land here from? The Vietnam war was no longer tenable for Nixon. 58,000 Americans were dead and the MIC had made its blood$$$.
The "jealous man" desperately shouted his innocence: "I'm just a patsy"; "I emphatically deny these charges" and "I didn't shoot anybody, no sir."
What did I say to cause a stire? Of course it was no longer tenable for Nixon. It was never tenable the minute the US got involved in a war it had no business with in the first place. JFK, LBJ, and Nixon were irresponsible leaders on ending the Vietnam War otherwise it wouldn't have taken public protest to eventually bring Congress and then the president to its senses.
We saw what happened to Kennedy when he thought about withdrawing from Vietnam.
Kennedy didn't lose his life for that. By your logic, Nixon should have also lost his life for withdrawing from Vietnam. Kennedy was just shot by a jealous man.
George HW bush??? Oh- wait, you said a jealous MAN.... nevermind.
I'm referring to Lee Harvey Oswald. I might be off on my assumption that he killed JFK out of jealousy. I just remembered that Jack Ruby killed Oswald only two days later.
So you're sayig Kennedy was really killed by Joe Dimagio? Or was it Arthur Miller?
Oh brother ! It was Lee Harvey Oswald who killed with just one gunshot. Then it was Jack Ruby who killed Oswald or something like that. None of that matters now. We need to get out of this mess and stop letting fear keep us there.
OH BROTHER WHERE ART THOU ?
try "the man who wasn't there"
lee oswald was killed because he carried to
ussr the means of bringing down the u-2 spyplane
to rationalize an increase in the pentagons budget
based on false premises. Everything you see on the
media screen is based on a false premise...thats
why Glenn becks screed is 90% correct...but his job
is to misdirect us about "who dunnit" and who deserves
retribution.
Pick up and read a copy of JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. Afterward I think you might not say that none of that matters now.
46 years is a long time for lots of improvement. I don't know what JFK would have done about Vietnam had he lived to complete his first term and possibly his second. Eisenhower started the Vietnam War but JFK's campaigning against communism on the other hand leaves me in limbo as to what he would have done.
I'll keep that book you recommended in mind and try to piece this together. Thanks.