Don't put away the picket signs and marching shoes just yet. Obama has double-crossed us; having promised peace he's now engaged in escalating a couple wars, in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
He's not the first Democrat to pull this bait-and-switch. Remember Uncle Lyndon?
He turns out to be not so smart after all, this young and ambitious Chicago pol who's working that old threadbare formula, wearing the "moderate" label and "ruling from the center." And we may have to "save him from himself," as Norman Solomon remarks, if we can generate the wattage to do it. "Good luck with that," as they say, but we're obligated to make ourselves heard and register objections whether it makes any difference or not.
See Solomon's week-ago Truthout.org column, which says in part A report from the Carnegie Endowment began this year with the stark conclusion that "the only meaningful way to halt the insurgency's momentum is to start withdrawing troops. The presence of foreign troops is the most important element driving the resurgence of the Taliban." (Ex-California State Senator Tom) Hayden made the same point when he wrote that "military occupation, particularly a surge of US troops into the Pashtun region in southern Afghanistan and Pakistan, is the surest way to inflame nationalist resistance and greater support for the Taliban."
In Afghanistan, Obama is increasing troop strength from 38,000 to 68,000, and in Pakistan our drone attacks have killed 14 al-Qaida, while simultaneously killing 687 civilian bystanders. With recruiting tools like these, how can "the terrorists" lose?
Photo schnorred from Agence France Presse News Service
2 comments:
All this attacking and counter attacking just keeps going on and on, with escalation. The rulers of the US seem stuck in empire mode. Instead of quiet withdrawal from world rulership, Jr. Bush magnified a war mentality, leaving us wide open to an abominable crime of destruction in New York city.
We should have been extricating ourselves from empire policies gradually and with attempted finesse in preparation for the economic decline that was coming. So Bush lit the economic candle at both ends and precipitated a crash.
We need to oppose his policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But he hasn't doubled-crossed us. He's always said he would do this, unfortunately, from the git go.
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