Obama's Afghanistan Policy
The president’s proposed Afghanistan policy is not a product of intelligent rethinking so much as it is a predictable Obama preference for an imaginary centrism.
On the one hand, he is sending 30,000 more American troops, who have been dying at a current rate of more than 500 per year.
On the other hand, he is attempting to placate growing anti-war sentiment by pledging to limit the duration of the war.
As with all compromises, this one will satisfy only the few. It is what President Bill Clinton called kicking the can down the street.
The antiwar movement will continue to support Rep. Barbara Lee’s bill cutting off funds for the troop escalation and Rep. Jim McGovern’s resolution calling for the administration to offer an exit strategy.
Sending 30,000 or more American soldiers to die for the Karzai government is a waste of valuable American lives, which at the present rate will exceed 1,000 in two years of bloody battles under President Obama. Spending one million dollars per American soldier will mean a waste of one trillion dollars on this war by the end of the President’s term of eight years.
These costs in human lives and tax dollars are simply unsustainable.
The president is tragically jeopardizing his domestic agenda by this expenditure of tax dollars without any tax increases. Like President Johnson before him, President Obama is squandering any hope for his progressive domestic agenda by this tragic escalation of the war.
As I committed myself during Vietnam, I am committing myself to do everything possible to turn our nation’s priorities around and make President Obama’s domestic agenda a possibility. Just as President Johnson could not pay for guns and butter, President Obama cannot possibly pay for Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Pentagon’s projection of a “long war” of fifty years duration.
I am afraid to say that President Obama is even risking his presidency by this decision. From this point forward, he will lack the support of the rank and file Democratic majority and become dependent on the very Republicans whose highest priority is to defeat him in 2012.
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Getting the Job Done
By Barkdull, John at Nov 29, 2009 13:17 PM
Obama pledges to get the job done, but most of us are in the dark as to what 'the job' is. The short answer is the Bush Doctrine is alive and well. MacChrystal has proposed a COIN strategy modeled on Petraeus' approach to Iraq. Of course, the most well remembered element of the strategy was the 'surge,' but that increase in troop strength was adopted only to support the political and economic parts. If Obama does indeed announce an increase of 30,000 or more, the administration will have signaled, even with a likely commitment of less than MacChrystal has requested, that it intends to pursue the same goals in Afghanistan. Thus, more military efforts will be directed against active fighters. More money will flow for various 'development' projects. Efforts to buy off tribal leaders and Taliban fighters will increase. The hoped-for outcome is that Afghanistan will be a stable, more or less modernized country that is friendly to US interests. Some semblance of democracy would be a bonus, not required. A plausible case for improved human rights would help as well, again not necessary, but more important than democracy. 'Free markets' - essential.
This may seem obvious. But it means that the notion that the US presence in Afghanistan is about destroying Al Qaeda is hardly even used as a pretext any longer. It also indicates why the Taliban, who had no part in 9-11 and are not global jihadists bent on establishing a new Caliphate, are the enemy. They are the enemy of outside, western domination of their country. They are the enemy of plans to incorporate Afghanistan seamlessly into the US-led global order. Thus, they must go.
The wider implication is that Afghanistan is not the last chapter. Just as 'withdrawal' from Iraq was simply redeployment to Afghanistan, so 'withdrawal' from Afghanistan will be redeployment to some other theater in the greater Middle East. Any remaining nationalist, independent regimes will have to go. The idea that Islam can constitute an alternative to the neoliberal order has to be smashed. Clearly, this implies that the ultimate target is the theocratic regime in Teheran. Toppling the Iranian regime was likely the main objective all along.
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Tom Haydon and Afghan war
By Khan, Nasir at Nov 28, 2009 17:24 PM
Tom Haydon says: 'Sending 30,000 or more American soldiers to die for the Karzai government is a waste of valuable American lives, which at the present rate will exceed 1,000 in two years of bloody battles under President Obama. Spending one million dollars per American soldier will mean a waste of one trillion dollars on this war by the end of the President's term of eight years.'
Such a formulation seems to contradict what the real aims of the U.S. imperiaism in Afghanistan have been all along. Those objectives are being purused by the Obama adminstration even more vigorously than those under Bush the Junior. The' valuable American lives' sent to Afghanistqn are there for imperial objectives, killing and destroying all those who oppose the American occupation of Afghanistna being the prime objective,
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ALL WE HAVE TO DO...
By Shepherd, Lester at Nov 26, 2009 07:24 AM
ALL WE HAVE TO DO IS SEND MEDICINE AND FOOD. NO MONEY. NO BOMBS. NO DRONES. NO MORE MURDER. NO MORE NO MORE. NO MORE...
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