Indian Crisis "Tests" Obama

by John Nichols

This transition period was supposed to be all about getting a grip on the financial crisis -- and it looked this week as if Barack Obama has succeeded sufficiently to take the Thanksgiving holiday off. But on Wednesday, the president-elect was reminded that he is inheriting messes far beyond Wall Street.

The devastating attacks in Mumbai -- which have left more than 100 dead and three times that number seriously wounded -- have put the war on terror back in competition for Obama's urgent attention. And the reported focus of the attackers in U.S. and European visitors to India makes this anything but a foreign affair.

Wednesday's developments do not quite qualify as the "test" famously anticipated during the fall campaign by Joe Biden, the outgoing Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair who will now serve as Obama's loose-lipped vice president. But Obama and his aides are scrambling to refocus after a key American ally suffered a devastating attack that John McLaughlin, the former acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency refers to as "India's 9-11."

Read on...

Just because someone says this is "India's 9-11" doesn't make it so. Just because someone says this validates Obama's choices of Clinton and Gates doesn't make it so. And just because someone says this is a test of Obama doesn't make it so. Peacenik thinks the U.S., Obama, and the world need a whole new approach to "terrorism". Peacenik thinks everyone should re-read the Rand Report on fighting terrorism before embracing more of the same. Peacenik thinks the neocons should shut their pie holes.

There's Something Happening Here

What it is, Is exactly clear

by Peacenik

Peacenik wonders whatever happened to the post cold war peace we were all supposed to enjoy. The world is more chaotic now than at any time for decades, with dangerous conflicts wherever one looks.

The conflict in Georgia raged on while George Bush played beach volleyball at the Olympics and Condoleezza Rice was on vacation and nowhere to be seen. Charitably, she was reported to have made some phone calls. Making phone calls is hard work. Heck of a job, George and Condi.

To help Peacenik try to make sense of what is happening, he read some sites that are noted below. The article from Globalresearch highlights an ominous buildup of US forces in the Persian Gulf. It's hard to believe that this doesn't have some purpose other than burning tons of fuel while tooling around the Gulf.

The posts from Boomantribune, Slate and Dailykos all try to make sense of the Russia -Georgia conflict. There are lots of issues: an oil and gas pipeline to Europe, accusations of Georgian ethnic cleansing in the pro-Russian territory of Ossetia, Bush's empty promise to the Georgians that they would not stand alone on their path to freedom and democracy, Georgia's imminent joining of NATO and Russia's total lack of respect for, and fear of, the near toothless United States.

And in case we forget the origins of Bush's failed foreign policy, there is a new report out from the Rand Corporation that says the US is all wrong in its approach to fighting the war on terror. Read it all, then you and Peacenik will at least have an inkling as to why the world seems to be going to hell.

Oh yeah, and while you're reading, have CNN on in the background and listen to the warmongers and politicians try to outdo each other in demanding an escalation of the conflict. Peace seems to to be an alien concept in the testosterone driven world of what passes for public discourse. That much is clear.