Obamas speach

[ivan]

it not going up in flames is no reliable gauge of how the situation changed. Neither Iraq was going up in flames under Saddam nor was Afghanistan under the Taliban. It will not appear to be (in our media) the total shithole that it appeared to be 2 years ago as long as we pay off the former guerrillas.

 

Greenwald's take: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/12/02/obama/index.html

 

good article - glad i read it - he used it negatively, but i agree that the obama-lama's course is "pragmatic" - it might be morally bereft, as he says, but it will ultimately at least get us the hell out of there - i would have been happier w/ a complete exit, but i doubt his west point audience would have been so polite about it also, politics being what they are, obama can't appear to be a total pussy, and that's what you get called when you back down w/o any fight. i hope this works - if it doens't, i hope as few people die as possible, and that in fact no more afghan chickens come home to roost.

[j_b]

There was a full on civil war raging when the Taliban were in power. However, as they had no freedom of the press, you didn't hear of it, but it did not mean that it was not happening.

 

The Taliban had unfortunately largely won against the Northern Alliance and there were as little conflicts as at any time during the previous 30 years since the soviet educated elites started to send women to school.

 

The greenwald Salon article shows him to be a clown with poor and selective hearing and not worth even bothering with. The fact that he does say some correct things notwithstanding.

 

unfortunately since you are not saying anything specific, we won't be able to check your argument (that is, if you have one)

[tvashtarkatena]

it not going up in flames is no reliable gauge of how the situation changed. Neither Iraq was going up in flames under Saddam nor was Afghanistan under the Taliban. It will not appear to be (in our media) the total shithole that it appeared to be 2 years ago as long as we pay off the former guerrillas.

 

Greenwald's take: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/12/02/obama/index.html

 

good article - glad i read it - he used it negatively, but i agree that the obama-lama's course is "pragmatic" - it might be morally bereft, as he says, but it will ultimately at least get us the hell out of there - i would have been happier w/ a complete exit, but i doubt his west point audience would have been so polite about it also, politics being what they are, obama can't appear to be a total pussy, and that's what you get called when you back down w/o any fight. i hope this works - if it doens't, i hope as few people die as possible, and that in fact no more afghan chickens come home to roost.

 

Nixon did the same thing in Vietnam. A whole lot of folks died on both sides during the 'symbolic gesture' period, which lasted nearly as long as WWII in its entirety. Once your adversaries sense you're a short timer, they tend to turn the heat up.

Edited December 3, 2009 by tvashtarkatena

[tvashtarkatena]

Interesting recent article in the New Yorker concerning Obama's huge increase in the use of execution by drone, BTW. He's authorized more drone air strikes in his first 9 months than Bush did in his last 3 years in office. We're now letting Pakistan select targets for OUR drone strikes. Scary. The author concluded that this is probably the only tactic (although we're using as a strategy) that's producing any results in Afghanistan. A whole lot of innocent folks pay the price, of course.

[ivan]

Interesting recent article in the New Yorker concerning Obama's huge increase in the use of execution by drone, BTW. He's authorized more drone air strikes in his first 9 months than Bush did in his last 3 years in office. We're now letting Pakistan select targets for OUR drone strikes. Scary. The author concluded that this is probably the only tactic (although we're using as a strategy) that's producing any results in Afghanistan. A whole lot of innocent folks pay the price, of course.

it the alternative's between sending in a dickload of grunts to get the suspected badguy n' sending a droid, how is that much of a choice? of course killing civilians is wicked fucked up, but for christ's sake our nation grew to international stature by saturation bombing european and asian populations to the brink of annihilation - this sounds like an improvement to me

 

i'm w/ you tvash though, in that i don't want this war and want it over asap - should we really not zap guys we know our out to get us though, even if doing so kills their kids n' grandmas n' neighbors?

[JosephH]

I value your well thought out positions JH, but that's apples and oranges don't you think?

Bill, I'm not making any supposition, just noting the irony of the 100k level. Yermakov is the one claiming the similarities.

 

Things that are different aren't necessarily in our favor, though. For one, pushing the Taliban (radical Pashtuns) and other hostile Afghan Pashtuns into Pakistan has served to cement a lot of Pashtun tribal relationships which heretofore were pretty fractious. Coordinating their strategy and movements on both sides of the border makes the Taliban more powerful in Afghanistan and strengthens the hand of their brethren in Pakistan's NW Tribal Areas. This is not unlike the situation with the VC operating out of Laos - but with the difference that Pakistan has endless support resouces compared to 1970's Laos.

 

The new troops are deploying south which likely means McCrystal has an ugly Pashtun sandwich in mind, with our new troops sealing the border as best they can while Special Forces, the Pakistan Army, and our Predator teams start beating the bushes on all sides. Expect things to really heat up this spring as we should have enough troops and GATORs in place to at least nominally control the border by then. I'm guessing the plan is to then stir the pot enough in those Tribal Areas to keep the Pashtun and Taliban leadership on the move in the hope of picking them off with the Predators; kill enough of them to make those Pakistaninis left standing decide it just ain't worth it. A somewhat fair chance of that working I suppose.

 

The real problem, though, is the Warlords who once again control Afghanistan. The Taliban were grudgingly 'welcomed' to power as the lesser of two evils after years of abuse by the Warlords in the post-Soviet era. Our biggest mistake was returning them to power - but who else was going to run things with no government and an appalling low U.S. forces level? We had no one to turn to but the same miserable bastards who caused the hell to begin with. And that's part of the problem in Afghanistan; that their only choice once again is either being ruthlessly ruled by the Warlords or the equally miserable Taliban. For all our blood and dollars we still haven't given the people of Afghanistan even a glimpse of a future worth giving a damn about, and the sad reality is our current [exit] strategy won't give them one either. And that's not to say that any amount of men, money, and blood would ever be enough to help the Afghans help themselves. Tribalism still defines Afghan life and will likely always rule out a government capable of exerting it's will across the whole of the country.

[billcoe]

I agree with that: the recent election there which was by all accounts full of fraud and which re-elected Karsai, will drive many right to the Taliban. At least they are honest.

[Bug]

Nobody wanted to go into WWII either.

My main concern with Bush and now with Obama's strategy is, "we can do it alone".

We should set a time table for when other nations get into the fray and pull our troops out accordingly.

As long as the Taliban can call this a US aggression, macho idiots with guns will be coming out of the woodwork.

 

But one thing is very clear. The Taliban are not going to quietly go away. And as long as they are around, our problems aren't over.

 

War sucks. If you have to participate, it should be all in for the quickest results.

[Pete_H]

We're now letting Pakistan select targets for OUR drone strikes. Scary.

 

Apparantly, the biggest complaint Pakistani leaders had about the drone strikes was that the drones weren't painted with Pakistani Army insignias.

[j_b]

Progressive Leaders Pan Obama's Decision for More War in Afghanistan -- 10 Reactions

 

1. Tom Hayden writes for The Nation:

 

"It's time to strip the Obama sticker off my car. Obama's escalation in Afghanistan is the last in a string of disappointments. His flip-flopping acceptance of the military coup in Honduras has squandered the trust of Latin America. His Wall Street bailout leaves the poor, the unemployed, minorities and college students on their own. And now comes the Afghanistan-Pakistan decision to escalate the stalemate, which risks his domestic agenda, his Democratic base, and possibly even his presidency."

 

2. Laura Flanders writes on GritTV,

 

"...for those who’d thought they’d voted for the death of the Bush Doctrine. Sorry. Bush/Cheney live on in the new president’s embrace of the idea that the U.S. has a right, not only to respond to attacks, but also to deploy men and women in anticipation of them."

 

3. Jim Hightower used his most recent column to warn:

 

"Obama has been taken over by the military industrial hawks and national security theorists who play war games with other people's lives and money. I had hoped Obama might be a more forceful leader who would reject the same old interventionist mindset of those who profit from permanent war. But his newly announced Afghan policy shows he is not that leader."

 

Hightower says that just because we've lost Obama on this issue, it's not over; that we as citizens...

 

"...have both a moral and patriotic duty to reach out to others to inform, organize and mobilize our grassroots objections, taking common sense to high places. Also, look to leaders in Congress who are standing up against Obama's war and finally beginning to reassert the legislative branch's constitutional responsibility to oversee and direct military policy. For example, Rep. Jim McGovern is pushing for a specific, congressionally mandated exit strategy; Rep. Barbara Lee wants to use Congress' control of the public purse strings to stop Obama's escalation; and Rep. David Obey is calling for a war tax on the richest Americans to put any escalation on-budget, rather than on a credit card for China to finance and future generations to pay."

 

4. Black Agenda Report editor Glen Ford compares Obama's delivery to how George Bush might have given the speech:

 

"Barack Obama's oratorical skills have turned on him, revealing, as George Bush’s low-grade delivery never could, the perfect incoherence of the current American imperial project in South Asia. Bush’s verbal eccentricities served to muddy his entire message, leaving the observer wondering what was more ridiculous, the speechmaker or the speech. There is no such confusion when Obama is on the mic. His flawless delivery of superbly structured sentences provides no distractions, requiring the brain to examine the content – the policy in question – on its actual merits. The conclusion comes quickly: the U.S. imperial enterprise in Afghanistan and Pakistan is doomed, as well as evil.

"The president’s speech to West Point cadets was a stream of non sequiturs so devoid of logic as to cast doubt on the sanity of the authors. '[T]hese additional American and international troops,' said the president, 'will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.'

"Obama claims that the faster an additional 30,000 Americans pour into Afghanistan, the quicker will come the time when they will leave. More occupation means less occupation, you see? This breakneck intensification of the U.S. occupation is necessary, Obama explains, because 'We have no interest in occupying your country.'"

 

5. Foreign Policy in Focus's Phyllis Bennis demolished Obama's attempt to discourage comparisons to Vietnam:

 

"Near the end of his speech, Obama tried to speak to his antiwar one-time supporters, speaking to the legacy of Vietnam. It was here that the speech’s internal weakness was perhaps most clear. Obama refused to respond to the actual analogy between the quagmire of Vietnam, which led to the collapse of Johnson’s Great Society programs, and the threat to Obama’s ambitious domestic agenda collapsing under the pressure of funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, he created straw analogies, ignoring the massive challenge of waging an illegitimate, unpopular war at a moment of dire economic crisis."

 

6. New America Media's Andrew Lam also addressed the Afghanistan-Vietnam parallel:

 

"On the eve of the second wave of a U.S. invasion in Afghanistan, I wish to tell the American media, as well as President Obama, that the Vietnam syndrome cannot be kicked through acts of war. That only through a view that’s rooted in people, rooted in human kindness, and not historical vehemence, would a country open itself up and stop being a haunting metaphor. That not until human basic needs are addressed and human dignity upheld can we truly pacify our enemies and bring about human liberty. And that more soldiers and bombs and droids in the sky will never appease the haunting ghosts of the past. Quite the opposite. We are in the process of creating more ghosts to haunt future generations."

 

7. Glenn Greenwald, writing on Salon, addresses Obama's supporters who are going along with his decision to escalate the troops:

 

"The most bizarre defense of Obama's escalation is also one of the most common: since he promised during the campaign to escalate in Afghanistan, it's unfair to criticize him for it now -- as though policies which are advocated during a campaign are subsequently immunized from criticism. For those invoking this defense: in 2004, Bush ran for re-election by vowing to prosecute the war in Iraq, keep Guantanamo open, and "reform" privatize Social Security. When he won and then did those things (or tried to), did you refrain from criticizing those policies on the grounds that he promised to do them during the campaign? I highly doubt it."

 

more: 10 reactions to Obama's speech

[ivan]

Progressive Leaders Pan Obama's Decision for More War in Afghanistan -- 10 Reactions

 

1. Tom Hayden writes for The Nation:

 

"It's time to strip the Obama sticker off my car. Obama's escalation in Afghanistan is the last in a string of disappointments. His flip-flopping acceptance of the military coup in Honduras has squandered the trust of Latin America. His Wall Street bailout leaves the poor, the unemployed, minorities and college students on their own. And now comes the Afghanistan-Pakistan decision to escalate the stalemate, which risks his domestic agenda, his Democratic base, and possibly even his presidency."

 

2. Laura Flanders writes on GritTV,

 

"...for those whod thought theyd voted for the death of the Bush Doctrine. Sorry. Bush/Cheney live on in the new presidents embrace of the idea that the U.S. has a right, not only to respond to attacks, but also to deploy men and women in anticipation of them."

 

3. Jim Hightower used his most recent column to warn:

 

"Obama has been taken over by the military industrial hawks and national security theorists who play war games with other people's lives and money. I had hoped Obama might be a more forceful leader who would reject the same old interventionist mindset of those who profit from permanent war. But his newly announced Afghan policy shows he is not that leader."

 

Hightower says that just because we've lost Obama on this issue, it's not over; that we as citizens...

 

"...have both a moral and patriotic duty to reach out to others to inform, organize and mobilize our grassroots objections, taking common sense to high places. Also, look to leaders in Congress who are standing up against Obama's war and finally beginning to reassert the legislative branch's constitutional responsibility to oversee and direct military policy. For example, Rep. Jim McGovern is pushing for a specific, congressionally mandated exit strategy; Rep. Barbara Lee wants to use Congress' control of the public purse strings to stop Obama's escalation; and Rep. David Obey is calling for a war tax on the richest Americans to put any escalation on-budget, rather than on a credit card for China to finance and future generations to pay."

 

4. Black Agenda Report editor Glen Ford compares Obama's delivery to how George Bush might have given the speech:

 

"Barack Obama's oratorical skills have turned on him, revealing, as George Bushs low-grade delivery never could, the perfect incoherence of the current American imperial project in South Asia. Bushs verbal eccentricities served to muddy his entire message, leaving the observer wondering what was more ridiculous, the speechmaker or the speech. There is no such confusion when Obama is on the mic. His flawless delivery of superbly structured sentences provides no distractions, requiring the brain to examine the content the policy in question on its actual merits. The conclusion comes quickly: the U.S. imperial enterprise in Afghanistan and Pakistan is doomed, as well as evil.

"The presidents speech to West Point cadets was a stream of non sequiturs so devoid of logic as to cast doubt on the sanity of the authors. '[T]hese additional American and international troops,' said the president, 'will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.'

"Obama claims that the faster an additional 30,000 Americans pour into Afghanistan, the quicker will come the time when they will leave. More occupation means less occupation, you see? This breakneck intensification of the U.S. occupation is necessary, Obama explains, because 'We have no interest in occupying your country.'"

 

5. Foreign Policy in Focus's Phyllis Bennis demolished Obama's attempt to discourage comparisons to Vietnam:

 

"Near the end of his speech, Obama tried to speak to his antiwar one-time supporters, speaking to the legacy of Vietnam. It was here that the speechs internal weakness was perhaps most clear. Obama refused to respond to the actual analogy between the quagmire of Vietnam, which led to the collapse of Johnsons Great Society programs, and the threat to Obamas ambitious domestic agenda collapsing under the pressure of funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, he created straw analogies, ignoring the massive challenge of waging an illegitimate, unpopular war at a moment of dire economic crisis."

 

6. New America Media's Andrew Lam also addressed the Afghanistan-Vietnam parallel:

 

"On the eve of the second wave of a U.S. invasion in Afghanistan, I wish to tell the American media, as well as President Obama, that the Vietnam syndrome cannot be kicked through acts of war. That only through a view thats rooted in people, rooted in human kindness, and not historical vehemence, would a country open itself up and stop being a haunting metaphor. That not until human basic needs are addressed and human dignity upheld can we truly pacify our enemies and bring about human liberty. And that more soldiers and bombs and droids in the sky will never appease the haunting ghosts of the past. Quite the opposite. We are in the process of creating more ghosts to haunt future generations."

 

7. Glenn Greenwald, writing on Salon, addresses Obama's supporters who are going along with his decision to escalate the troops:

 

"The most bizarre defense of Obama's escalation is also one of the most common: since he promised during the campaign to escalate in Afghanistan, it's unfair to criticize him for it now -- as though policies which are advocated during a campaign are subsequently immunized from criticism. For those invoking this defense: in 2004, Bush ran for re-election by vowing to prosecute the war in Iraq, keep Guantanamo open, and "reform" privatize Social Security. When he won and then did those things (or tried to), did you refrain from criticizing those policies on the grounds that he promised to do them during the campaign? I highly doubt it."

 

more: 10 reactions to Obama's speech

my question is: how many of these guys voted for him? he was plenty clear about his thoughts on afghanistan when he was candidate-obama.

 

i'm glad i set my expectations low from the get-go

[j_b]

I doubt very much that any of these people didn't vote for Obama.

[tvashtarkatena]

We're now letting Pakistan select targets for OUR drone strikes. Scary.

 

Apparantly, the biggest complaint Pakistani leaders had about the drone strikes was that the drones weren't painted with Pakistani Army insignias.

 

OH, the Pakistanis love our drones. The question is: who are OUR robots summarily executing under THEIR command now? We no longer really know.

[Choada_Boy]

Should we really care? Their enemy is my enemy. Except for India. Hands off India.

[j_b]

Yes, we should care. The means determine the end, remember?