Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Obama Has Spoken; Now, Let's Have a Debate
President Obama delivered a carefully-constructed and nuanced call Tuesday night for the extension of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. Obama came to the wrong conclusion about a military adventure that should be coming to a conclusion, rather than ramping up. But Obama's attempt to find a middle ground between anti-war forces and supporters of a Iraq-style occupation at least recognized that the debate over Afghanistan has many sides and many players.
At times, Obama seemed so tortured in his attempt to placate both those who want to send more troops (he's dispatching an additional 30,000) and those who want a bring-the-troops-home exit strategy (he says they will start coming home in 2011) that his speech had the ring of Greek tragedy - or, perhaps, "fall of the Roman Empire" history.
Unfortunately, there has been nothing artful about the media coverage of Obama's speech.
Most of the coverage has followed the predictable patterns of the post-September 11 "war on terror" era.
Compromise, even bad compromise that keeps the U.S. involved in a quagmire, is portrayed as rational, and probably necessary, while blunt calls for rapid withdrawal or all-out war are dismissed as outside the realm of reason.
So it is that we are left with in murky-middle moment where prominent Democrats rally, for the most part, to back the president even when he embarks on what House Appropriations Committee chair David Obey, D-Wisconsin, refers to as a "fool's errand," while prominent Republicans such as House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, whine that the president is not doing enough.
In fact, the picture has more shades of grey than the pundits would have us believe.
There remains substantial Democratic discomfort with Obama's plan to surge tens of thousands ofd additional troops into what - despite all that talk of an exit strategy - is sounding more and more like an endless war of whim. One hundred members of the House, the vast majority of them Democrats, have now sponsored Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern's call for the development of a formal plan to bring the troops home. In the Senate, Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold and Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders make no secret of the fact that they believe the president is making a mistake, as does House Appropriations Committee chair David Obey, D-Wisconsin, the author of the "fool's errand" characterization.
Perhaps even more significant, however, is the fact that there is a good deal of division within the ranks of the Republican caucus, particularly in the U.S. House. Not every member of the Grand Old Party is banging on Obama for taking too long to do too little in Afghanistan. In fact, some key congressional conservatives are echoing the call of liberals for a "Bring the Troops Home" plan.
The first cosponsor of Jim McGovern's resolution was North Carolina Republican Walter Jones Jr., who says of the Afghanistan occupation: "We're trying to police the world. Every great nation prior to America that tried to police the world has failed economically. That's why I tell people that I'm a Pat Buchanan American. I want to stop trying to take care of the world and fix this country. Our problems are so deep that there is no easy way to fix them."
Jones has repeatedly gone to the floor of the House to deliver calls for an exit strategy, as has his fellow "old-right" conservative, Texas Congressman Ron Paul.
Among the other stalwart conservatives who do not merely reject a surge but who are outspoken in their advocacy for the development of a plan to withdraw U.S. forces in Afghanistan are California's Dana Rohrbacher and Tennessee's John Duncan Jr.
They were joined on the eve of Obama's speech at West Point by an unexpected Republican dissenter, Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz, who used a speech Monday at the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah.to declare: "Mr. President, it is time to bring our troops home."
Chaffetz, a pristine conservative by just about any standard, says Obama's surge strategy makes no sense.
"We're talking about having nearly 100,000 troops in Afghanistan. If the mission is to root out al-Qaida, we do not need to risk the lives of tens of thousands of troops to fulfill it," the congressman, who has traveled to Afghanistan and met with the top generals on the ground there, argues that: "If our mission in Afghanistan is simply to protect the populace and build the nation, then I believe the time has come to bring our troops home. ... I am opposed to nationbuilding. I do not believe it is the role and responsibility of the United States of America to be involved in every aspect of the globe."
Chaffetz announced his stance prior to Obama's speech because he did not want to be seen as just another Republican critic of the president. And he did so with a seriousness that merits attention, issuing a detailed assessment of the conflict and of his views regarding more serious threats facing the United States.
The Utah Republican is not an anti-war firebrand - he wants out of Afghanistan; but if the U.S. is going to maintain a military presence there, the congressman suggests that it might as well go all out militarily.
Chaffetz is trying to push the envelope, maybe even to open the debate up - within his own party and beyond its boundaries.
That's something Obey is trying to do with his talk of a "war surtax."
One is a conservative. One is a progressive.
One is a Republican. One is a Democrat.
But these two members of the House, and a good many of their colleagues in both parties, are offering every indication that they are ready for a real debate.
And that debate is what is needed. Indeed, hte best news from Tuesday was the signal, sent before the president's speech by progressive Democrats (including Senator Feingold and Congressman McGovern), and a few conservative Republicans, that efforts might be made to block funding for at least some aspects of the troop surge.
No matter how Congress might eventually decide the issue, that's a discourse and a vote that Congress should embrace.
The executive branch is not supposed to define the discussion about war.
Presidents, according to the Constitution, are supposed to engage in a dialogue with Congress -- the legislative branch that was empowered to check and balance the executive precisely because the founders wanted to "chain the dogs of war."
Obama laid out an agenda Tuesday night. Now, the Congress should start debating whether it wants to go along with that agenda. And the media should cover that debate - not just as Democrats versus Republicans, or liberals versus conservatives. It should pay attention to all the scope and character that is on display.
This is the essential discourse of the republic - the discourse that James Madison, the father of our Constitution imagined, and demanded, when he warned more than 200 years ago:
Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.
In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.
The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manner and of morals, engendered in both.
No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it.
In war, the public treasuries are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them.
In war, the honors and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed; and it is the executive brow they are to encircle.
The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venal love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.
Democrats and Republicans both like to claim Madison as their founding father.
So be it.
Let's be Madisonian.
Now that the president has spoken, let's have a real debate about whether he is right -- and about whether this nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
63 Comments so far
Show AllSoetoro is just a boring Bush wannabe. I regret having voted for him.
I regret donating to his campaign more than voting for him.
We were forced to give up habeas corpus, our 4th amendment protection of privacy along with a great deal of our 1st amendment rights during the first eight years of war.
My question for you, Mr. President...
Which liberties will we have to concede during the next four years of your war?
Please be SPECIFIC!
The loss of the Fourth Amendment rights started with the drug war; albeit it is a war - on the American people, but let's place the loss of our civil liberties in the proper context. The removal of the bulk of our civil liberties started with the announcement of a "War on Drugs."
The Patriot Act, Military Commissions Act, new FISA laws and "Free Speech Cages" all followed as a result of 9/11 and the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.
John Nichols is way too easy on the President, here.
Obama's attempt to find middle ground is no cause for celebration--it just makes the war more baffling than ever, and shows that this man has absolutely no convictions and is in way over his head.
Surge then withdraw?
Clearly this strategy is about Obama's inability to take a side.
Kucinich was getting a lot of media coverage last night and he was stellar.
After all the discussions the top dogs have carried out these past several months, the result is a speech that says nothing new, that wallows in myths and lies, that promotes the false fable of American exceptionalism, and that leaves the United States sinking deeper into a guns-and-butter swamp. Obama and his speechwriters dressed up the old whore in Obama rhetoric and paraded her as if she were a virgin.
Obama and his crew have confused the geography of South Asia with the landscape of the terrorist mind. And the Taliban, if they're so smart and tough (and let's face it, they are tough, and no dopes either) could make the smart decision to just lay back to ensure that the Americans leave, and then, knowing that corruption and all the old ways will still rule, strike again. And if not Taliban, then some other. There is no end. Kill them all and thousands more will rise up and take up arms against the killers of the killers.
The United States cannot make the United States safe and secure by fighting in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Somalia or Yemen. It can be made secure (a relative term, to be sure) by protecting the ports and borders; by cooperating in intelligence and police efforts around the world; by funding education to the hilt in the United States; by building industry and science to fight global warming; by forcing the country to cut its dependence on fossil fuels; by fighting the extremists within the country - the religious fundamentalists, the abortion terror bombers and assassains, the right wing militias, the corporate thieves and their political accomplices in Congress; by providing all Americans with fear-free health care. Those things would be a good start on creating true national security. Killing religious extremists in an impoverished South Asia does nothing good for America.
Pretending that we can change a centuries-old culture of tribalism and corruption and poverty by using soldiers and bombs is indeed a fool's errand. Pretending that Afghanistan is responsible for September 11 is an exercise in blindness. And compromising to satisfy all the political elements is nothing more than an exercise in pretense that will cost untold lives and expand the panorama of misery in South Asia and in America.
No sale, Obama.
Since they can't use the threat of the commie under the bed anymore, they had to conjure a new boogieman to justify threats to our security: The Muslim terrorist. Dovetails perfectly into the Zionist agenda, demonizing the Arabs suits political objectives and moves the target in new anti-semitism by demonizing the Arab as evil incarnate, positions the US geo-politically for those still oriented on the old Coldwar axis and profiting from defense industry investments as the only product the US has left to market. And of course, Oil, although from the looks of Iraq contracts, the US lost that gamble and quite a cost.
You know what they say about terrorists being someone's freedom fighters? The way to make us more secure would be to address the legitimate grievances of the "terrorist"--like US policy in Israel, for example, without dismissing it as "letting the terrorist win".
So much for Obama's touted politics of hope over the politics of fear.
"the Commie under the bed" is SO 1950s.
It is now the 21st century, it is now updated to "the terrorist under the bed".
The only problem with your analysis and prescription for sane alternatives to perpetual war, is that it's just TOO INTELLIGENT. You're futiley trying to counter madness with reason and clear logic. What do you want, a world where justice prevails? That's just so old school!
Well, hell, they only let me out of my padded cell an hour a day to use the computer, so it's a struggle to get everything right when I'm so rushed.
It's OK, everyone makes some minor mistakes of emphasis.
Your posting was cogent, well stated and comprehensively intelligent. But having said that, Ephraim's rejoinder is totally on point: One must 'cut to the chase.'
Things have long, long been far past the point that abstract concepts like 'truth' 'reason' and 'justice' –or for that matter– intelligence, can act as influences for 'the good' in America.This is not an argument against those things or communicating them.
Granted, this leaves 'slim pickings,' but it is better to see things as they are. There has been an 'unmooring' and an 'unraveling.' Sometimes when one's thinking does not take those realities into account as a given, one begins to sound pedagogical, if not pedantic or counter-intuitive.
It is indeed sad to live in a country where stating the obvious matters so little, if at all.
–(Jill Bains)
"...it is better to see things as they are."
When I try this, I always 'see' the same thing: Human Extinction.
There is an obvious confluence of rising temperature and rising inequality on the horizon. Neither is sustainable. And most assuredly, the US Empire will not go down without a fight (which may very well come in the shape of a mushroom cloud).
I see the same thing. Maybe I need to find a new optometrist, or, even better, an optimitrist.
I'd settle for a change-of-pardigmatist.
"the US Empire will not go down without a fight (which may very well come in the shape of a mushroom cloud)." –(Old Foghorn)
–Then let the "fight" begin, otherwise the 'extinction' you correctly prophecy may not yet be imminent, but it is most certainly immanent in our present historical situation.
The inimical "confluence" you cite between the rapacity of climate change, nuclear destruction and the American Empire makes perfect sense. I do not see it as merely conjectural. It may even be true that you can't have one without the other.
Can the 'non-existence' of the American Empire be taken seriously? Perhaps that 'non-existence' is indeed the ONLY thing that should be taken seriously? It will not be wished 'away' or reformed. It must only end.
The very existence of the American Empire is a globalized catastrophe taking its cues from the Apocalypse fetish which drives it. "Moby Dick" rises with dreadful eye on the far horizon! When he comes, nothing remains.
–In the time of the ostrich the blind man pretends he is king. –(Jill Bains)
And your point?
Not sure if your harangue is intended as agreement or insult.
I don't know how much more obvious I can make it that I was in complete agreement with what you said. Unless it was you who was being sarcastic and I missed it– misreading your posting entirely.
In no way was I insulting you. I thought you made some important points, and I was trying to amplify them. Your response here really surprised me.
Apologies for the mistaken 'Old Foghorn' reference rather than your correct screen name 'Old Peculiar.' They are both, I believe, barley style ales, so that is how I got them conflated, not being a beer person myself. Our neighbor brews his own beer and works for the Anchor Brew company where we live. 'Old Foghorn' is good stuff and packs a wallop.
Oh, but If I did misread you, I do take the above back. Then I was insulting you.
–(Jill Bains)
The question is: Do we see things as THEY are, or WE are? And Man made truth and justice may not be the only kind there is, abstract as they may be. Perhaps that is why they are indeed beginning to unravel, and being exposed as the farce they always were.
It's easy to be cynical when one is aware only of the dark field of human interaction and totally immersed within it; there seems to be no way out; he remains locked within a fragment of something greater which he is, as of yet, unaware. This, of course, is the limitation the cynical mind imposes upon itself, and is not so much incorrect as it is incomplete. And thinking one's way out of the mess that thought created is impossible, no matter how 'intelligent' or elaborate that thinking may be.
So, then, what are we to do? If one is at the point where he is asking such a question, he is at the doorstep of something only he can understand for himself. To know where the answers do not lie, is the beginning of knowing where they do, and the beginning of real 'hope' as well.
"Pretending that we can change a centuries-old culture of tribalism and corruption and poverty by using soldiers and bombs is indeed a fool's errand."
And pretending that this 'culture of tribalism and corruption and poverty' is a foreign affliction is a very old trick.
"I do not believe it is the role and responsibility of the United States of America to be involved in every aspect of the globe." Congressman Chaffetz
I agree with the congressman.
And there would be no war without soldiers.
Want to end war?
Enlisted men and women: STAY HOME!
Sue1403
Extremely well said. More soldiers need to belong to the GI movement and realize that former Green Beret Donald Duncan was right when he said, when talking about his experience in Vietnam, in the powerful documentary Sir! No Sir!:
"I was doing it right but I wasn't doing right."
The sure way to stop this madness is to reintroduce the DRAFT.. As long as the only kids in this fight are the ones who can not find a job or just want a legal way to kill, no sanity will come to this country.. When the rich kids get that letter in the mail that I got so many years ago you will see this insanity over in a short time..
I will never forget the day that Amerika sent me that letter, it will really focus you on reality.
I am tired of watching these folks on tv in $2000 dollar suits debating what they really have no idea about.
WAR
Erclone
I agree. I still find it hard to believe, after all these years, that the young people today do not have to deal with receiving a letter that I and hundreds of thousands of others like ourselves had received that started off with that ominous word:
Greetings:
But I think it would be far better if the politicians in Congress would have the courage and commons sense to advocate what one of my buttons says and that is:
Draft the Rich-It's Their War.
"Enlisted men and women: STAY HOME!" –(sue1403)
Yes. Real cracks in the system will have to begin with organized mass resistance within the military coupled with, and perhaps ignited by, the reinstitution of the draft. –(Jill Bains).
Who will "win" in Afganistan? As an Afganii who would you support? That's a hard one. Let's see, on the one hand the Taliban is brutal and repressive but on the other the existing government is a corrupt puppet of a foreign power. It's so hard to decide. I'll venture a prediction. Whoever kills the greatest number of innocent civilians will lose the war. Advantage Taliban.
John Nichols is also way too easy on the Democrats. Mr. Nichols believes that it is a sign of progress to behold the "discomfort" of the Democrats while failing to note that it has taken the Democrats eight long years to finally work up being unsettled as to what is occurring in Afghanistan. Mr. Nichols lauds such Democrats as Russ Feingold for stating [in the video link] that one of the options that they have they is that they "could" cut off the funds. Feingold also talked about advocating a "flexible timetable" for removing the soldiers from Afghanistan. Feingold also said that his primary concern is the protection of Americans in the region.
All this is supposed to be cause for elation on the part of John Nichols? This occupation of Afghanistan has gone on as long as the first influx of troops in Vietnam in March of 1965 to when they were finally all withdrawn in the spring of 1973, i.e. for eight long years. After eight years Feingold is finally saying that the funds for the occupation "could" be cut off? Why in the world is he not DEMANDING of his fellow Democrats that that money be halted? Nichols and Feingold actually believe that a flexible timetable is an admirable thing to push for while ignoring the fact that while a discussion is being made to determine what and where America's supposed interests may lie, more Afghans continue to be blown apart by 500 lb. American bombs. Unfortunately this is to be expected, as U.S. leaders always, always, place the supposed needs of America first while rarely if ever giving a damn about those people who have become the victims of American aggression.
Flexible timetable? If Feingold actually possessed an ounce of empathy for the Afghans, he would soon realize that the only timetable that they want to see is the one that tells them what day in December the first American soldier and airman will be boarding a plane in order to get the hell out of their country.
Get those soldiers out of that country [and also Iraq] now!
Correct and well said.
Russ Feingold's "flexible timetable" could pass as embarrassingly stupid, were it not so categorically obscene and morally bereft.
It is one of those 'nuanced' or 'contingent' phrases that has no 'meaning' whatsoever. As such, it shows no real concern for the human situation and the actual suffering caused by American imperial fascism.
A real Senator would call for the razing of the torture site known as Bagram Air Force Base.
The "flexible timetable" concept remains one of the most insidiously repugnant and vulgar in the whole Orwellian lexicon of Congressional absurdity.
The only 'timetable' one looks forward to in both Afghanistan and Iraq is similar to the one that occurred in Vietnam: When the victorious North Vietnamese Army entered Saigon as the last fascist American helicopters absconded from the rooftops in ignominy and defeat.
Now that's a "timetable" one can believe in!–(Jill Bains).
I'd have said Bush Hogs of War, but Obomba as the dog of war? How apt. But unconfined by DEM broken "chains", characterized by the phrase, "efforts MIGHT be made, to block funding of AT LEAST SOME 'aspects' of the troop surge."! Gauge how successful that'll be from the same idle threats of the last 3 YEARS of DEM Congressional "control"!! Manifest Insanity epitomized!!!
Once again it has become obvious that President Obama does not understand the nature of the Taliban and why many Afghans support the Taliban without becoming active partisans themselves. The Taliban is a classic radical Muslim offshoot of which there have been numerous in the past. It's basic message is: "The rich and powerful are Godless hence must be overthrown if not killed. It will please Allah. If you are not for us you are against us". President Obama obviously wants to work with the rich and powerful, albeit rotten Afghans. The result will obviously be a strengthening of the Taliban.
ricg -
You beautifully stated what needs to replace the sickeningly counterproductive wars. Hope you don't mind my sharing it with family.
What?! I have a choice? Okay, you can share it with your sisters and your younger brother, but not with your parents or older brother - the one in Denver. :)
It would be nice if your family included Obama, of course...
Why do we need a debate when the Afghan people, most American people, and even some Democrats and conservative Republicans are speaking against the war? There is nothing to debate about whether Obama is right or wrong. Whether the Republicans speaking against the war are actually sincere about it may be something worth debating but there is no question that Obama is following the wrong ideas on Afghan surge.
Sort of like the jobs summit, right?
Going through the motions.
"Why do we need a debate...There is nothing to debate about whether Obama is right or wrong." –(Kirsten Lowry)
–Correct.
'Debates' in American politics no longer matter, nor can they. What passes for debate is at best bad theater and distempered fulminations, signifying nothing. It is not that kind of a country. No one but professional pundits like John Nichols pay them–when they actually occur– much heed. Nichol's concocts the existence of "debates" that are entirely figments of his imagination.
John Nichols and his sodden cohorts at the Nation Magazine continue-somehow–to still believe there is a functioning 'democracy' in America. Trapped in the stale nostrums of his Pollyannaish optimism and delusional claptrap– Nichols produces sophomoric pabulum of extreme– and all but useless, tedium.
One does not have to doubt there wont be "debate," that is axiomatic. Nor do you have to doubt your voices will ever be heard, as they won't be. That too, is a fait accompli. In fact, you probably know that already. This perverse belief system of 'non-belief' is endemically American, 'lock, stock and gun-smoking fascist barrel.'
The truth is that no one believes in those things. But bizarrely–and paradoxically–these ridiculous ideals work better when no one believes them.
No one questions the fact that 'democracy' and 'justice' in America do not work; everyone knows they are entirely compromised and corrupt, yet people continue to participate in them, 'display' their belief in them, because they assume that they MUST work, when in truth everyone knows they do not.
Clinging to the scaffolding of an ideology so full of holes as to resemble nothing so much as a fine Swiss cheese, the result is a near total incoherence: There are NO politics in America. Similarly, there is NO public to even actuate a politics.
As someone has said about Italy's 'over the top' Silvio Berlusconi–paraphrasing Groucho Marx?:
"The man looks like a corrupt idiot and acts like one–but this should not deceive you–he IS a corrupt idiot!"
Nothing could be more apropos in describing the abysmal truth of America's 'democratic' representatives. How on earth can John Nichols believe these wretches will 'debate' anything–much less act on the results in what is operationally a dictatorship that is rapidly careening into a fascism run out of Tel Aviv?
Yet the 'dog and pony show' trudges onward in happy optimism– imagining a 'future' when the future has been all but paralyzed, if not strangled in advance. It does no one a scintilla of good to pretend otherwise.
"Let's have a debate," my ass! –(Jill Bains)
"Presidents, according to the Constitution, are supposed to engage in a dialogue with Congress -- the legislative branch that was empowered to check and balance the executive precisely because the founders wanted to "chain the dogs of war."
At least that's the theory. But Bush/Cheney obliterated that provision with their "unitary executive" claim against constitutional protocols. And Obama has stood by their authoritarian diktat. He wanted exactly the same power Bush sought and got, with Gonzales's slimy help, so he's never overturned the unitary executive option. It makes him a full-fledged wartime president, and he has lusted for that license every bit as much as Bush the Complete and Total Idiot did.
We saw the real face of Obama last night. He wants desperately to please his military commanders, and if that bothers some members of Congress, so be it. He's gone over their heads like any good dictator would, and only if they can stop him by voting against funding this insanity will his war fantasies be held in check. I'm all for the Republican dissenters to Obama's war, but I'm afraid there won't be enough from either wing of the duopoly to block it.
There are many generals and upper echelon officers from all four branches who oppose this, and that's still not enough. The real power obviously wants to thoroughly destroy any credibility we have left in the Middle East, and much of this of course is because ISRAEL insists we keep meddling in the affairs of all their perceived enemies. And Obama is as enamored of AIPAC as Bush was. Continuity We Can Count On. The real power in the Pentagon and select mega-corporations like Halliburton, General Dynamics et al., don't care how hated we remain in the Mideast or even how hated they are at home, since they don't recognize the US as home anyway. They're out for the whole fucking world and they're not going to let anything or anyone stop them. It's Full Spectrum Dominance time, folks, and Obama is the captain of this mercenary vessel. The fact that it's headed straight into the rocks of certaiin disaster is apparently too much information for our genius president to process.
"Obama Has Spoken; Now, Let's Have a Debate"
or
"The Decision has been Made, Let's Have a debate."
(purely for political theater)
"Politics makes strange bedfellows."
As I read this piece of pandering and pile of shoulds, I had a different interpretation.
It is as if the progressive democrats are married to a philandering and murderous liar who "married" them because they will provide social status and money for gambling.
As they are prominent in "the social world", they are always going to and hosting "parties".
At the current party, they become frustrated as their spouse becomes increasingly intoxicated, loud, flirtacious, and mean. So, in order to find some peace, they go into another room, where they find one of the notoriously greedy and racist "bachelor bankers". They have always suspected that these guys might be homosexual (because of their blatant homophobia), but they can't deny the fact that they are the best at accumulating money for themselves. They tentatively make eye contact and the progressive isn't sure, but perhaps, well, I mean, they ARE in a bedroom you know.....
Tune in next week to see if love can be found in the wake of disillusionment (and who gets to keep the house)!
Great words of Madison. The founding fathers continue to spin in their graves.
Paul Craig Roberts:
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts12022009.html
On the nose.
Vern
I think that another article in Counterpunch today, entitled Afghanistan: The Roach Motel of Empires by Zoltan Grossman, who teaches at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wa., is also right on target.
President Obama delivered a carefully-constructed and nuanced call Tuesday night for the extension of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan
Here we go again - the use of the word "nuance" as regards to His Excellency, The Great Obama. I wish I had a dollar for every time the word "nuance" has been trotted out and used with regard to Obama. There was nothing "nuanced" about last night's speech. Obama, possibly the greatest empty suit ever to be president (I include George Wanker Bush), should have delivered the speech in front of Sleeping Beauty's Castle at Disneyland. He took the path of least resistance and told the USA that we're in but we're also out. Abracadaver. Huh? The gut grinding, outrageous absurdity requires the ghosts of George Carlin and Bill Hicks to visit us right now and angrily riff on the hopeless stupidity of the United States and the drooling, knuckle dragging morons called the government of this nation.
I'm sure that Afghani and Pakistani families will be very much consoled that your darling President Obama merely blew their skulls out their asses with 'nuanced' missiles.
If you are an American then I think that makes President Obama your president as well. I had to put up with the Bush bots for eight years and the crybabies can't handle a year without being in power. Did anyone step back for just one second and wonder what kind of speech McCain would have given in this situation, Iran anyone?
Yeah, he'd give the same damn speech.
What's your point?
Do you honestly think a person in Afghanistan or Pakistan gives a flying ---- if their kid's head was blown off while a Republican or a Democrat was in office?
Stop apologizing for war crimes like a Nazi and join the human race!
Correct. It is a piece of pure fluff. To even read it demeans ones intelligence.
–(Jill Bains)
You're right. Nichols and his cohort of movement wreckers are at it again. The only way any real antiwar movement will form in this country is if it's grown where the democratic party partisan slugs can't find it and rip out it's roots.
Dear War Mongers,
You honestly believe perpetual non-declared 'war' against small numbers of vague 'boogymen' will keep us 'safe?'
Fine. Put your money where your mouths are.
Demand the profit incentive be removed from the 'war' equation.
Insist it is the patriotic duty of all Military Contractors to serve their country, not their Swiss bank accounts and country club shareholders, during a 'time of war.'
Accept nothing less than 'cost/plus zero' contracts across the board - IOW, all PMCs will break even. No profits.
Until the 'wars' are over, of course. Then PMCs may return to standard Peace-time free market business practices.
Hypocrites.
Signed,
Normal People.
Well said.
And while we're at it, let's make sure their accountants don't include their fringe benefits, gold plated health insurance policies, 4,000 square feet houses and leased luxury cars as busines expenses. These fuckers would steal the gold fillings from their mothers and call it "efficient allocation of resources".
Debate?
Here's my position:
ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR,
WE DON'T WANT YOUR FUCKING WAR!
five, six, seven, eight,
life lost for profits won't be my fate.
nine, ten, eleven and twelve,
your term and career we will shelve.