When the Tough Should Get Going

punditman says...

A little levity for these panic-ridden times is just what Dr. Punditman has ordered for you today.

You may know Garrison Keelor as the American author, storyteller, humorist, columnist, musician, satirist, radio personality and the host of the Minnesota Public Radio show, "A Prairie Home Companion," who also wrote the screenplay and appeared in the '06 movie of the same name. Or you may not.

Here, he makes a series of witty points about about stubbornness and futility we are seeing on the part of officialdom as the Afghan War continues to drag on...and on.

By Garrison Keillor
www.antiwar.com

The former Marine officer Matthew Hoh, who resigned his Foreign Service post in Afghanistan because he feels the war is pointless and not worth dying for, deserves all the attention he’s gotten and more. The Obama administration faces hard decisions there, and the man made a good case against deeper American involvement. He says that our presence among the Pashtun people, the rural, religious people, is only aggravating a civil war between them and the urban, secular (and, it seems, fraudulent) government of Kabul, and the role of the Taliban and al-Qaeda is not central – the real issues are tribal and cultural.

American families, he said, "must be reassured their dead have sacrificed for a purpose worthy of futures lost, love vanished, and promised dreams unkept. I have lost confidence such assurances can be made any more."

It is rare that a high-level official – he was the senior State Department guy in Zabul province – resigns in protest, and in all the to-do about his four-page resignation letter [.pdf], nobody had a single bad thing to say about Matthew Hoh.

The American people tend not to admire quitters, which is maybe why protest resignations are so rare. You can get up on your high horse and talk about your principles, but we suspect that you’re just another slacker looking for an easy way out. Your old football coach told you that when the going gets tough, the tough get going, and by "get going" he didn’t mean "write a four-page letter about your disillusionment with his coaching and the split-T offense in general" – he meant, Toughen Up, Assume the Three-Point Stance, Hit ‘Em Hard, Eat Some Turf, Get Up and Hit ‘Em Again.

Keep Reading...

CNN Poll: US Support for Afghan War Plummeting

punditman says...Perhaps there is hope after all. Americans are waking up to a new/old quagmire: "Oh yeah. ..Afghanistan, thanks for reminding us, Mr. President. We think it's a mess. Please tell us when we can leave." Obama may find himself in Lyndon Johnson's shoes soon enough. Instead of, "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?", try this: "Hey, hey, Barak, how many kids did you zap today?"

Where do Canadians stand on the ongoing debacle? Has anyone seen a recent poll lately?

By Jason Ditz

www.antiwar.com

Following July’s record death tolls, a new CNN/Opinion Research Corp poll shows that US popular support for the war is also at an all-time low, with 54 percent of respondents opposed to the ongoing war and 41 percent in favor.

This was a monumental change from the May version of the same poll. which showed 50 percent in favor of the war and only 48 percent against. President Obama has made escalating the war the centerpiece of his foreign policy campaign.

The finding was largely in keeping with an AP-GfK poll released late last month, which also showed growing opposition to both wars, and a 53-44 percent split on the Afghan war. This poll too showed a strong split along party lines, with most Republicans supporting the continued conflict and the vast majority of Democrats opposed.

While opposition to the Iraq War has been significant for years, it is only recently that opinion on the nearly eight-year long Afghan conflict is starting to shift. Ironically, it is perhaps President Obama’s desire to escalate the war that has made it significant enough to catch the attention of an increasing number of Americans, and sparked the growing war exhaustion the polls are now showing.

Obama Goes Ahead With Missile Defense Shield Despite Disarmament Pledge

The United States would continue to develop a missile defence shield until Iran abandoned its nuclear ambitions, President Barack Obama said in the Czech Republic.

by Toby Harnden and Bruno Waterfield

"As long as the threat from Iran persists, we will go forward with a missile defence system that is cost-effective and proven," he told a crowd of about 20,000 gathered in Hradcany Square, next to Prague Castle.

"Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile activity poses a real threat, not just to the United States, but to Iran's neighbours and our allies."

Read on...

Peacenik read this story. And re-read it. And re-read it. Peacenik can only shake Peacenik's head and wonder what in the bejezzus Obama is thinking. Obama wants to go ahead with a completely discredited, wildly expensive, missle shield that will not work. Obama talks about Iran like it is the old Soviet Union. The U.S. no longer can afford a pot to piss in yet it continues to spend like crazy on the military. Empires collapse. Empires deserve to collapse.

A Soldier’s Soul Screams ‘Get Out’

posted by Katrina vanden Heuvel on 04/06/2009 @ 12:14pm

Last week, the Congressional Progressive Caucus held its second of six scheduled forums on Afghanistan. It was the first non-classified public forum on Capitol Hill to address the Obama Administration's newly released Afghanistan/Pakistan strategy. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (Ret.) -- a Vietnam Veteran and former chief of staff for Secretary Colin Powell -- offered some powerful words of caution.

"My soldier's soul screams at me to get out," Wilkerson said. "Part of that is some 38,000 names on a Wall that I do not fail to visit twice a year every year for the last 25 years….Counterinsurgency is not a very optimal experience. It rarely is won, it rarely results in what we might call a viable civility, prosperity and dignity. Look at Iraq right now… We never solved the problems in the Gulf."

Read on...

Colonel Wilkerson was a fairly constant critic of the Bush foreign policy. Unfortunately he still has a role, as a critic of Obama's foreign policy. Everyone assumes Wilkerson is speaking for Colin Powell. It would be nice if the discredited Powell would come out on his own and denounce the Iraq and Afghanistan mistakes. Neither follows the Powell doctrine. Peacenik agrees with Wilkerson. It is time for Canada to get out of Afghanistan. Bring the troops home now.

Signs of Progress...And danger

by Justin Raimondo
www.antiwar.com

I suppose progressives and others hopeful for a more rational foreign policy are going to have to be content, for the moment, with crumbs from the presidential table, such as Barack Obama's recent statement to the New York Times that we might consider negotiating with elements of the Taliban. This is, however, not entirely good news, because the counterinsurgency doctrine that animates this proposal aims at replicating our alleged "success" in Iraq, where the U.S. military allied with hard-core Sunni fundamentalists against largely foreign forces said to be affiliated with al-Qaeda. The blowback from this tactic has yet to hit the fan, but you can be sure that when the U.S. military begins to downsize its presence in Iraq, these soldiers of the "Awakening" – armed and subsidized by us – will move to fill the power vacuum and run straight into the Shi'ite militias. The resulting conflict will no doubt cause the Obama administration to think twice about leaving, as the Iraqi government asks us to intervene. Having planted the seeds of the coming civil war, we'll have ample pretext to renegotiate the status of forces agreement.

The two faces of the Obama administration illustrate the principle that foreign policy, far from being formulated with the solving of actual problems in mind, is almost entirely driven by domestic political concerns. On the one hand, we have the Good Obama – the one who says he's going to stop the practice of torture by U.S. military and intelligence personnel – except that Leon Panetta, his pick for CIA chief, says we're going to continue "renditioning" prisoners when we don't want to dirty our own hands by subjecting them to methods that, say, the Egyptians or the Saudis wouldn't blink at.

The Obama administration has made overtures to the Russians that we might be willing to forgo the anti-missile system Bush installed in Eastern Europe, which Moscow is up in arms about. On the other hand, the clueless Hillary Clinton's State Department can't get a decent translator. When she handed Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov a toy button, she thought it was labeled "reset." The idea was to follow up on Vice President Joe Biden's remarks in Munich, where he suggested that relations between the two countries needed to be reset on a new course – while demurring when asked if Obama intended to drop the missile-shield deployment. For a long moment, as Clinton presented the button to Lavrov, the mask of "competence" slid down to reveal the utter ridiculousness of the Americans: "We worked hard to get the right Russian word," burbled Hillary, smiling her most plastic smile. Her grin vanished as he answered, "You got it wrong." Instead of "reset," the word meant "overcharge." As Politico reports, she came back with

"'In a way, the word that was on the button turns out also to be true,' she argued. Though Lavrov had said that word on the button meant overcharge, Clinton suggested that that peregruzka could also be translated as overload."

I'll tell you what's on overload: my BS detector.

Keep Reading....

punditman says...

This is well worth reading through as a good primer on where things stand in the "speak out of both sides of its mouth" Obama administration. The War Party still very much has the upper hand, but various forces are at play.

Welcome To Obama’s War

by Eric Margolis

As Santayana observed, those who forget history are doomed to relive it. However overused, his maxim is as true today as when he made it.

On 15 February, 1989, the 40th Soviet Army pulled out of Afghanistan, marking the end of Moscow’s bloody and disastrous occupation. Its able commander, Gen. Boris Gromov, was the last Soviet solider to leave Afghanistan, leading his men over a bridge spanning the Amu Darya River (Oxus, in Greek) – which Alexander the Great had crossed on his ill-fated invasion of Afghanistan (327–325 BC).

In a decade of savage fighting, the Red Army and its Afghan Communist allies killed at least 1.5 million Afghans and drove 2.5 million into exile in Pakistan and Iran.

The new Soviet chairman, Mikhail Gorbachev, determined the Afghan war, that was begun by his dimwitted predecessor, Leonid Brezhnev, and a cabal of party and KGB hardliners, could not be won.

Fortunately for the world, Gorbachev, proved a leader of profound humanity, decency, and intellect. Gorbachev courageously accepted defeat and brought his soldiers home. Soon after, the Soviet Union, a bankrupt empire held together by fear and repression, began to crumble. To his eternal credit, Gorbachev refused to employ force to hold the Soviet Empire together.

Many Russians detest Gorbachev to this day, blaming him for the end of the Soviet Union. But using the Red Army to crush rebellion in the Baltic republics and East Germany could easily have ignited World War III. The world owes Gorbachev an enormous debt for averting this horror. He put humanism ahead of nationalism and imperialism.

The new president of the bankrupt American imperium should heed Gorbachev’s wisdom. Barack Obama’s inauguration offered a perfect opportunity to pause the US-led Afghan War, and open talks with Afghan groups resisting foreign occupation (both the Soviets and US branded them "terrorists"). Instead, Obama vowed to intensify the eight-year war which has so far cost the US $ 62 billion.

Keep Reading...

punditman says...

President Obama is a smart guy, or so we thought. Surely he knows that the Taliban did not attack the US on 9-11; surely he knows the plot was hatched in Germany and Spain, allegedly by Saudis and Pakistanis.
How long before Obama learns that all his own assumptions were wrong and that the Afghanistan catastrophe has no military solution? Even Stephen Harper apparently now knows this. Unfortunately, many stand to die while the President gets up to speed.

PS: maybe he should call up Gorbachev for some tutoring?

Obama Administration Accuses Iran of Pursuing Nuclear Weapons

Accusations Show New Administration's Clean Break From Intelligence Estimate

www.antiwar.com

It has been 15 months since the release of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran which determined that the Iranian government had halted all efforts to create a nuclear weapon, and the outgoing chairman of the National Intelligence Council reaffirmed those findings only two months ago. The Obama Administration didn’t seem to read those reports, however.

President Obama accused Iran of “development of a nuclear weapon” during a press conference. Incoming CIA director Leon Panetta declared during his testimony that “I think there is no question that they are seeking that capability.”

While the Iranian government continues to express its desire to improve relations, Obama and associates just keep hurling accusations at Iran’s civilian nuclear program. There’s one thing the administration is missing though, and that’s evidence. Officials concede there is no evidence that undercuts the 2007 findings, but like the Bush Administration, the newcomers don’t seem to want fact to get in the way of good rhetoric.

punditman says...This does not surprise Punditman in the least; unlike a common assumption out there amongst the sheeple, there is no structural change in US foreign policy just because Obama is in charge.

So long as there is no fundamental change at the institutional level, it appears impossible for a US President to not huff and puff and threaten Iran. It's been going on since the CIA organized the overthrow of the democratically-elected government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq and installed the Shaw in 1953.

Current tensions between the US and Iran are far from resolved and have the potential to become a very hot crisis. Or, the Obama administration can stop misleading the public and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton can save the day by taking Iranian overtures seriously and open a serious dialogue that could lead to detente.

What scenario is more likely, the former or the latter? Punditman is unsure but the former will make financial armageddon look like a picnic.

Obama the imperialist

Change? In foreign policy, hardly. The new president is in the classic liberal interventionist mould

The first Democratic president in the modern era to be elected on an anti-war ticket is also, to the relief of neocons and the liberal belligerati, a hawk. Committed to escalation in Afghanistan, his foreign policy selections also indicate bellicosity towards Sudan and Iran. During his first week in office he sanctioned two missile attacks in Pakistan, killing 22 people, including women and children. And his stance on Gaza is remarkably close to that of the outgoing administration. The question now is how Obama will convince his supporters to back that stance. Bush could rely on a core constituency whose commitment to peace and human rights is, at the very least, questionable. Obama has no such luxury. In making his case, he will need the support of those "liberal hawks" who gave Bush such vocal support.

It is tempting to dismiss the "pro-war left" as a congeries of discredited left-wing apostates and Nato liberals. Their artless euphemisms for bloody conquest seem especially redundant in light of over a million Iraqi deaths. Yet their arguments, ranging from a paternalistic defence of "humanitarian intervention" to the championing of "western values", have their origins in a tradition of liberal imperialism whose durability advises against hasty dismissal. In every country whose rulers have opted for empire, there has developed among the intellectual classes a powerful pro-imperial consensus, with liberals and leftwingers its most vociferous defenders.

Liberal imperialists have resisted explicitly racist arguments for domination, instead justifying empire as a humane venture delivering progress. Even so, implicit in such a stance was the belief that other peoples were inferior. Just as John Stuart Mill contended that despotism was a "legitimate mode of government in dealing with the barbarians" provided "the end be their improvement", so the Fabians contended that self-government for "native races" was "as useless to them as a dynamo to a Caribbean". Intellectuals of the Second International such as Eduard Bernstein regarded the colonised as incapable of self-government. For many liberals and socialists of this era, the only disagreement was over whether the natives could attain the disciplined state necessary to run their own affairs. Indigenous resistance, moreover, was interpreted as "native fanaticism", to be overcome with European tuition.

Keep Reading...

punditman says...
It is true that Bush was profoundly unpopular, but thanks to the propaganda system, even at the height of US aggression most people didn't pay much attention to all his "collateral damage" in Iraq and Afghanistan. To no surprise, early indications are that they are paying even less attention to the deaths of innocents abroad under the overly popular Obama regime. This will change only if people stop seeing Obama as the peace president.

Punditman thinks you can kiss goodbye to any hope of the Obama administration taking Bush to task for breaking international law by willfully leading the US into war in Iraq under false premises (lies). By continuing such a policy "responsibly," is he not complicit? And this says nothing of his fetish for attacking Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Obama's Vietnam: Hey, hey, BHO, how many years until we go?

by Justin Raimondo
www.antiwar.com

A "team of rivals" is how the Obama administration is being portrayed by the head-over-heels media, which started out by likening the new president to Lincoln and may end up comparing him – favorably – to God. A more appropriate phrase would be "team of retreads": Hillary at State, Gates still at Defense, and all the usual suspects lording it over their regional fiefdoms.

The appointment of George Mitchell, whose success at helping settle the Irish imbroglio suggests some skill at managing impossible situations, has evoked hope in those who pine for a more open-mined – and evenhanded – approach to the problem of Palestine. It is a hope I share.

Yet I'm not optimistic, for two very good reasons: Dennis Ross, whose appointment as plenipotentiary for Middle Eastern affairs seems to undercut what is likely to be the Mitchell approach, and Richard Holbrooke, whose dual domain of Afghanistan and Pakistan will be the focus of U.S. military action in the coming years. Specifically, more than 14 years – at least, that's what Holbrooke told us in a pre-election piece in Foreign Affairs magazine:

"The situation in Afghanistan is far from hopeless. But as the war enters its eighth year, Americans should be told the truth: it will last a long time – longer than the United States' longest war to date, the 14-year conflict (1961-75) in Vietnam."

Keep Reading...

punditman says...
Thus far, I am wholly unimpressed by what is shaping up to be Obama's foreign policy. He now has the first blood of innocents on his hands, with his initial kill in Pakistan. Then there is the appointment of Richard Holbrooke. To learn of the blood on Holbrook'es hands, click here. Plus ca change, anyone?