I watched the majority of Barack "George W. Bush II" Obama's address this evening - staged at West Point in a manner reminiscent of the Chimperator - and I felt sick to my stomach. Is Obama oblivious to Afghanistan's history? It has ultimately proven ungovernable not for centuries but rather for thousands of years dating at least back to the time of Alexander the Great who married Roxanne, a Bactrian princess, as part of his effort to tame the area and stop marauders from attacking more civilized areas of the Persian Empire he had conquered. *
Wikipeda has an good run down on Afghanistan's history and it is not pretty. The British basically spent over 70 years trying to control Afghanistan before washing their hands of the disaster. The former Soviet Union invested a decade in its effort to control Afghanistan before withdrawing in defeat. For those with memories, the Afghanistan adventure was one of the factors fueling unrest which ultimately resulted in the overthrow of the communist regime in Moscow. Yet, "George Bush" Obama somehow thinks that an approach not so unlike that of the Soviets will somehow magically work this time. I doubt it. Bob Herbert has a good op-ed column in the New York Times that looks at the idiocy of what Obama is doing. There was a narrow window of opportunity that the Chimperator and Emperor Palpatine Cheney botched when they took the nation to war in Iraq based on deliberate lies. Here are some column highlights:
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I suppose we’ll never learn. President Obama will go on TV Tuesday night to announce that he plans to send tens of thousands of additional American troops to Afghanistan to fight in a war that has lasted most of the decade and has long since failed.
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After going through an extended period of highly ritualized consultations and deliberations, the president has arrived at a decision that never was much in doubt, and that will prove to be a tragic mistake. It was also, for the president, the easier option.
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It would have been much more difficult for Mr. Obama to look this troubled nation in the eye and explain why it is in our best interest to begin winding down the permanent state of warfare left to us by the Bush and Cheney regime. It would have taken real courage for the commander in chief to stop feeding our young troops into the relentless meat grinder of Afghanistan, to face up to the terrible toll the war is taking — on the troops themselves and in very insidious ways on the nation as a whole.
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More soldiers committed suicide this year than in any year for which we have complete records. But the military is now able to meet its recruitment goals because the young men and women who are signing up can’t find jobs in civilian life. The United States is broken — school systems are deteriorating, the economy is in shambles, homelessness and poverty rates are expanding — yet we’re nation-building in Afghanistan, sending economically distressed young people over there by the tens of thousands at an annual cost of a million dollars each.
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I keep hearing that Americans are concerned about gargantuan budget deficits. Well, the idea that you can control mounting deficits while engaged in two wars that you refuse to raise taxes to pay for is a patent absurdity. Small children might believe something along those lines. Rational adults should not.
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Afghanistan is not Vietnam. There was every reason for American forces to invade Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. But that war was botched and lost by the Bush crowd, and Barack Obama does not have a magic wand now to make it all better. . . . We still haven’t learned to recognize real strength, which is why it so often seems that the easier choice for a president is to keep the troops marching off to war.
*
I suppose we’ll never learn. President Obama will go on TV Tuesday night to announce that he plans to send tens of thousands of additional American troops to Afghanistan to fight in a war that has lasted most of the decade and has long since failed.
*
After going through an extended period of highly ritualized consultations and deliberations, the president has arrived at a decision that never was much in doubt, and that will prove to be a tragic mistake. It was also, for the president, the easier option.
*
It would have been much more difficult for Mr. Obama to look this troubled nation in the eye and explain why it is in our best interest to begin winding down the permanent state of warfare left to us by the Bush and Cheney regime. It would have taken real courage for the commander in chief to stop feeding our young troops into the relentless meat grinder of Afghanistan, to face up to the terrible toll the war is taking — on the troops themselves and in very insidious ways on the nation as a whole.
*
More soldiers committed suicide this year than in any year for which we have complete records. But the military is now able to meet its recruitment goals because the young men and women who are signing up can’t find jobs in civilian life. The United States is broken — school systems are deteriorating, the economy is in shambles, homelessness and poverty rates are expanding — yet we’re nation-building in Afghanistan, sending economically distressed young people over there by the tens of thousands at an annual cost of a million dollars each.
*
I keep hearing that Americans are concerned about gargantuan budget deficits. Well, the idea that you can control mounting deficits while engaged in two wars that you refuse to raise taxes to pay for is a patent absurdity. Small children might believe something along those lines. Rational adults should not.
*
Afghanistan is not Vietnam. There was every reason for American forces to invade Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. But that war was botched and lost by the Bush crowd, and Barack Obama does not have a magic wand now to make it all better. . . . We still haven’t learned to recognize real strength, which is why it so often seems that the easier choice for a president is to keep the troops marching off to war.
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Obama continues to disappoint. Perhaps the mess he inherited from the Chimperator was too great. But i still cannot wonder if Obama deliberately lied to the public at large and gays in particular to get elected. I had hoped he was different, but increasingly it seems not to be the case.
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