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Obama’s Rhetoric in Afghanistan Prolongs US Role in Civil War There
President Obama showed courage in going to Afghanistan to talk to the troops, but he's just getting the U.S. in deeper over there.
The rhetoric he used on Sunday was at times distorting, and the thrust was distressing.
Like Bush, he summoned the 9/11 attack, saying, "We did not choose this war." And he added: "This is the region where the perpetrators of that crime, al Qaeda, still base their leadership."
That's clever phrasing, to use the word "region" and not "country," since Al Qaeda's forces are no longer in Afghanistan. They're in Pakistan.
So the U.S. is not waging a war against Al Qaeda anymore-and hasn't been for years. It's taking sides in a civil war, with the Pashtuns and the Taliban squaring off against warlords from the north and Karzai's government.
But that's a harder sell, so Obama didn't make it.
Instead, he told the soldiers: "Your services are absolutely necessary, absolutely essential to America's safety and security." And he said, "The United States of America does not quit once it starts on something. You don't quit, the American armed services does not quit, we keep at it."
So how does he square that rhetoric with his previous declaration that we're going to bring troops home from Afghanistan starting next summer?
It's all but impossible for the U.S. to "defeat and destroy Al Qaeda and its extremist allies," though that's what Obama said our goal is. It will be difficult to root out Al Qaeda's leadership in Pakistan, and even then, Al Qaeda would still flourish n its offshoots around the world. It will also be very difficult to "defeat and destroy" Al Qaeda's "extremist allies." Obama seemed to recognize this in another part of his speech, where he said part of U.S. strategy was to "reverse the Taliban's momentum"-not vanquish it. Then there are Al Qaeda's other "extremist allies," ensconced in Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI. And the United States to this date has not put enough pressure on the Pakistani government to sever this alliance.
Sixteen months from now, the odds are that the civil war in Afghanistan will look much the way it does today. And because Obama asserted that the outcome in Afghanistan is "absolutely necessary, absolutely essential to America's safety and security," then there is no way the U.S. will be able to leave.
So prepare for a longer war. Obama's rhetoric guarantees it.
- Posted in
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30 Comments so far
Show AllMatt, just another reason I voted for Ralph Nader in 2008.
Obama is immune to fact.
We need a reality-based president.
The article overlooks the fundamental flaw in U.S. policy. The president, like Bush before him, has been seduced by the myth that we are in a war with the terrorists. Or, if you're more cynical, Bush and Obama have tried, knowing it's a myth, to sell it to the country.
This Great War on Terrorism isn't a war at all. It's being promoted as such because that provides a raison d'etre for the military industrial complex Eisenhower warned against. The terrorists are criminal gang members, not nation states with standing armies. Al Qaeda is analogous in many ways to the drug cartels based south of the United States. Contrary to the hype in mass media reports, Al Qaeda has wrought far less damage to us than drug cartels, the mafia, or other groups that we fight using law enforcement. The relatively small damage to the U.S. from Al Qaeda can be understood by comparing it to the damage caused by lack of universal health care in the U.S. We lose 15 times more men, women, and children every year from lack of medical care than the loss from 9/11 – and that ignores the great physical suffering by people who are harmed but not killed by lack of medical care, unlike 9/11, which caused relatively few non-fatal injuries. The toll from inability to afford medical care, something Obama never mentions, is about 123 per day. That is, 45,000 U.S. residents who died last year would still be living if they had been born in Britain, France, Germany, Japan, etc.
To fight the serious but relatively modest threat of international terrorism, boots on the ground are not only very inefficient but also counterproductive. We need to forget about reforming middle eastern regimes by sending in armies. We should cooperate with them to stop the terrorists using law enforcement methods, and divert resources from our bloated MIC into saving lives in this country. In Afghanistan, we need to work with whoever's in power in cooperative international efforts to prevent terrorist attacks by capturing, and subjecting to trial, criminal gangsters like Al Qaeda.
Another myth -- it may seem tedious to hear it again, but it really needs frequent saying -- is that it is probably the case that 9/11 was an "inside job." A nice website to visit is http://www.patriotsquestion911.com/ , where you can read statements from more than 2000 engineers, architects, professional pilots and other aviation professionals, 9/11 survivors and family members, senior military, intelligence service, law enforcement, and government officials, and more. Not a mere listing of names, you can read each of their individual statements, where some of them question one or another part of the "official conspiracy theory" and want to see a new investigation, while others say it's a complete scam. Really worth taking a look at.
You're right! I meant that the "official conspiracy theory" is a myth that needs to be refuted.
I thank the author for calling this what it is - a civil war.
Just like Korea and Vietnam, we have no business throwing our weight around trying to mold a country into what we think is an acceptable society. Al Qaeda went here because they knew there was civil unrest, not because the Taliban were real supporters.
But here, at last, someone is calling the Afghan War what it is - not a war on terror(whatever the hell that is) - but a civil war.
"The United States of America does not quit once it starts on something. You don't quit, the American armed services does not quit, we keep at it."
REALLY?????
Can we all say V I E T N A M .....????
LOL! What a moron for saying some shit like that, huh? Perhaps the Prez' speechwriter should take a refresher class in 20th Century American History.
---------------
The dirty Fu<#1^g hippies... were right - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKEZoY-TMG4
lmao
I wrote the same comment on the article for the original speech.
But keep in mind we can't assume if America pulled out all would be right in the world.
The Taliban had a nasty habit of terrorizing its own population and was already in a conflict with other militant groups... Anyway since were going to have to give refuge status to Afgani's once we admit we can't fix there nation, what shall we call the new communities "Little Kabal" or "Afghanistan Town"
Obama is a very intelligent con man and he has to know better and that in my view, is what makes him so dangerous. I am sure he has read General Smedley D. Butler's War is a Racket." WAR IS A RACKET. IT ALWAYS HAS BEEN. IT IS POSSIBLY THE OLDEST, EASILY THE MOST PROFITABLE, SURELY THE MOST VICIOUS. IT IS INTERNATIONAL IN SCOPE. IT IS THE ONLY ONE IN WHICH PROFITS ARE RECKONED IN DOLLARS AND THE LOSSES IN LIVES". The only people that ever win in war is the war profiteers. I believe Bush was like Palin; so politically stupid that THEY actually believe their own mendacious, rhetoric, but Obama has to know better. Obama's allegiance like his predecessors, is to the MIC and folks we will be in Iraq and Afghanistan for a long,long time because the war profits are astronomical and even if we end up losing and leaving many years down the road...the war profiteers never lose a war!
You're right to suspect that Obama 'knows better.' (Although I suspect that Bush --- remember him calling the 'have's and the have-more's' his "base" --- and Palin know the score as well.)
This means there will be no serious attempt at creating any jobs with BrandObama (or any future corporate candidate), because high employment ensures high military recruitment.
Perpetual war requires perpetually high levels of unemployment, fear of an omnipotent "enemy", the disintegration of critical thinking in our schools/textbooks, a complicit press, and the snake-oil salesmanship of the cure-all elixir known as "The American Dream" (or, historically speaking, national pride - exceptionalism/patriotism - and the resultant scape-goating and demonization of the marginalized).
I doubt if Bush knew better, but I just about can guarantee you the pistol,packin,mama from Alaska is politically, dumber than the three Stooges!
Yeah, the ambiguous "courage" reference doesn't make sense.
It's not worth parsing TOO closely, but it's not clear where the putative "courage" comes in.
Does it simply refer to Obama's willingness to travel secretly and with maximum security into a "war zone" of his own making-- or does Rothschild find it remarkably "courageous" that Obama is addressing troops in the field?
It seems like a throwaway line to me; I take it as an obligatory rhetorical flourish to establish the author's bona fides-- i.e., that he's not an Obama "hater".
Your last paragraph pretty much sums up how I took the line.
Also, as per the post above you, such writers have to avoid blatantly stating that presidents routinely lie people to death.
Only Anarchy,
Well said.
More to the point, Obama knows EXACTLY what he's doing. He's not some poor, ignorant boob.
Civil war? How could it be so if there was not one before the US invaded?
The Afghan Civil War was fomented by the USA in 1979 and continues today.
Unless we want to imagine that the US government does NOT wish to control the Middle Eastern hydrocarbon deposits, we have to imagine that it does NOT wish to or intend to withdraw from any country in the region.
Still, one finds a dominant rhetoric even among antiwar writers that assumes that some different intention exists among leading members of one or another corporate party.
That leads to an unfortunate blurring of otherwise perceptive work:
0's wording that al Qaeda was in the region may have been "clever," but the US never waged a war against al Q, but against Afghanistan. Further, it is not ". . . taking sides in a civil war . . ." but continuing an occupation in a land too torn to unite against it.
Finally, while 0's rhetoric may indeed have some role in keeping the US at war and is certainly designed to do so, this seems to give some impression that another option was at some point under consideration.
But this occupation or other control has been a matter of consistent American policy under one president after another since Jimmy Carter.
Bummer Obomber is just another dirty corporate sock puppet living in the White House at our expense.
This is, quite simply, CORPORATE FASCISM AT WORK
At the expense of the American taxpayer, our fascist military is serving corporate Big Oil while attempting to clear the way for trans-Afghan oil and gas pipelines that are intended to market Central Asian resources.
These will be Asian energy markets, not American.
However, as in Iraq, more money is being wasted on these war crimes that the resources are worth.
Yet, win or lose, the MIC will profit from these crimes.
Once again, public debt for private profit.
President Obama can stop the bloodshed in Afghanistan any time he wants since all it'll take is troops out now, along with his cutting off U.S. military and financial aid to the settler-state Israel. That he refuses even to consider these measures tells us that his top priority isn't saving lives (American, Afghani or any other), it's promoting the interests of Empire USA. Yet instead of leveling with our troops on this, he told them that their service in Afghanistan is absolutely essential for America's safety and security, a lie, of course, because national security depends, once again, upon our troops getting the hell out of Afghanistan (also out of Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen & Somalia) + Justice for the Palestinian people. What's more by his placing Empire before the safety and well-being of the people, he's violating the oath of office of the President of the U.S. of A., which is an impeachable offense. And how's that for change we can believe in?
I don't buy that this war is about 9/11.
Since when do we (The US) care about the lives of others?
One just needs to look at our healthcare system to judge.
More people have died at the hands of the insurance cartel
and poverty than have died at the hands of these terrorists---not that I am justifying these 9/11 deaths--I just don't buy it as the REAL premise for war.
I believe these wars are all about control/domination and gaining natural resources.
9/11 as awaful as it was, Obama, like Bush uses it as an excuse for war.If Obama really cared about the American people,he would stop the US policies that invite this terror.
Also, (on another subject) at the very least he would open up and expand MEDICARE to every American who wants to enroll--that is what caring about people is all about--their health and safety.
Now that Russia has declared war on terrorists, how long do you think it will be before the terrorists that attacked Russian trains today came from a nation that Russia would like to occupy??????
They will have a major attack like 9/11 , and they will have some one of interest to blame, and the worlds super powers will allow follow suite , and they will scream empire for all.
Russia and China can play the game of Empire too,,
My what a web we weave when we practice to deceive.
Pax American, Pax Russia , Pax China They all want oil and gas reserves.
How will they carve up Earth, how many millions will die, and those of us left standing will have what kind of life.
Terrorist are criminals , not reasons for war, can you not see where this is headed.
So far he is living up to his mentor and idol;sneak in and sneak out.To bad it was not Thanksgiving then he could have a fake turkey din-din with the troops.Havent made up my mind whether he is a bigger liar but he is ahead in points because he is heads above bush in being two faced.Tony
I saw this as an Audacious official announcement from O that the war is on simmer for a good long while. Be it that Afghanistan has its own peculiar attractions for the MIC, war is inexorable for the USA. Until some really good profit can be reaped, it's best to keep all that apparatus of catastrophe right where it is. Canada and Grenada can take a breather.
Obama is incapable of standing up to the War Machine. It is business as usual. Meanwhile the severe lack of empathy for Muslims displayed by a large percentage of Americans only serves to help his cause.
From "Democracy Now" via "AntiWar.com" comes this excoriation of Obama's multi-criminal-war policy of lying to all Americans and soldiers in Afghanistan while wearing his Bush-like 'bomber jacket'.
Pentagon Paper's hero of the criminal multi-million killing in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, Daniel Ellsberg exposes Obama for the serial war criminal that he is.
Although Obama is certainly under intense pressure --- if you can call being threatened with death by the "Secret Team", CIA, shadow government, MIC, and Global corporate/financial/militarist EMPIRE intense --- Obama is certainly not showing the courage that JFK and MLK did under the exact same EMPIRE that ultimately eliminated them.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/30/our_president_is_deceiving_the_american
Only by a massive majority and multitude of honest, average, working-class, and 'democracy-thinking' Americans and global citizens joining the consolidated Global 'Anti-EMPIRE' Peoples' Movement (started by Kevin Zeese, David Beito, and Ralph Nader to confront and fight for 'democracy-thinking' over 'empire-thinking' is it going to be possible to have the solidarity, strength, and focused commitment to excise this cancerous tumor of disguised ruling-elite Globe corporate/financial/militarist EMPIRE --- which now controls 'our' country by hiding behind the facade of its modern, sophisticated, and guileful TWO-PARTY 'Vichy' sham of faux democratic government.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine