President Obama's war in Afghanistan is, from a historical perspective, unique.
That's because what he's telling us, the American taxpayer, about this conflict is a notable departure from how the White House has traditionally "explained" most past US overseas military engagements to audiences here at home.
If you accept the arguments of Professor Susan A. Brewer in her recently published Why America Fights: Patriotism and War Propaganda from the Philippines to Iraq, our 44th Commander in Chief's public handling of our military commitment to the Central Asian "graveyard of empires" is an exception to a recurrent pattern of the past: that US leaders since President McKinley have in fact sold foreign wars to Americans through propaganda -- "the deliberate manipulation of facts, ideas, and lies," as she defines it.
Instead of the crude, obscenely packaged fabrications used by his predecessor in the Oval Office to mislead us into the war in Iraq, Obama's tortuous deliberations on a military escalation in Afghanistan have been marked by officially announced doubts about why we should engage more soldiers in that part of the world in the first place; by leaks about opinions from the principals involved, so many of whom disagree with one another; and, from a narrow PR perspective, by an unwillingness (some would call it a failure) to craft a clear, simple, "saleable" message of "why we must fight" in a little-known land, thousands of miles from our shores.
Moreover, the USG "public diplomacy" to persuade allies to join the Pentagon's planned additional troop deployment in Afghanistan has, thus far, been minimal.
It will be interesting to see how, after all his months of "dithering" (as former Vice President Richard Cheney labels it) about his "war of necessity," Mr. Obama will justify his war (and yes, it is his war now) in the address he'll reportedly make on Tuesday next week at West Point.
My guess is that he'll continue, intellectual that he is, to avoid superficial slogans and simplifications (e.g., Bush-like "us against them" mindless cheerleading) but that, cautious lawyer that he also is, he'll try to persuade us "logically" and "logistically" that the only way for our troops eventually to leave Afghanistan is for more of them to become involved in that country's "rebuilding" (i.e., get killed for Allah/God/Jehovah knows why).
In other words, the "we-are-getting-in-to-get-out" argument. Let's see how Mr. Obama's Harvard Law School degree will help him justify that sophistic argumentation.
True, there are many precedents for presidential oxymorons -- take Woodrow Wilson's "the war to end all wars," for example.
Still, the "we-do-it-to-avoid-it" oxymoronic assertion is a hard one to back up, even to us, the "moronic" American public that bought Mr. Bush's Iraq misadventure, after it was marketed as a "product," like a "no-sugar" can of Diet Coke, a marketing oxymoron if there ever was one.
But, if you like Mr. Obama's war or not -- and most Americans don't, according to the latest polls -- what is historically unusual about it is how little it has been hyped by lies from America's Chief Executive.
But how I wish, as one of many millions of American voters, that such Obama "honesty" meant that what our hopeful (supposedly not "hypeful") president is doing -- and has been saying up to now -- made any sense at all to us!
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We gave him a pass on Guantanimo, on the federal deficit, on the buildup in Afganistan and they now expect more of the same. I always knew Obama would disappoint after all the campaign hype but even I didn't expect it this badly. He's just a used car salesman with a bait and switch. He promised to get us out of Iraq only to just give us more of the same. He's now giving the country back to the Republicans and letting them reclaim the moral high ground. And what's worse, he's making "liberal" a dirty word again.
Iraq War Made Americans Less Safe
The National Intelligence Estimate titled "The Terrorist Threat to the Homeland" amounts to a devastating critique of the Bush administration's policies on Iraq, Iran, and the terrorist threat itself. July 7, 2007
http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/20070717_release.pdf
WHAT?
From what Dick Cheney has been saying, he and Bush made america more not less safe... which is it? the Bush/Cheney Intelligence Agency report or Cheney?
It's unlikely that he wanted Pearl Harbor, though. The failures that led to our ships and planes being so vulnerable there don't seem very top-down, from what little I know.
Now we are going to continue a war with the same approach as George Bush only in Afghanistan.
I know we'll differ on the definition of "liberal",
(Hint-----Democrat doesn't always fit).
Pakistan has the bomb.
Al Quaeda getting bomb is not a good thing.
Pakistan and Afganistan are linked.
There is no cause and effect here -- other than our occupation of a Muslim country will inflame hatred of the U.S.
This was an incredibly irresponsible campaign promise...and Obama knew it. But as we have come to see, candidate Obama made a lot of promises that were mere campaign rhetoric. Think Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
President Obama's "tortuous deliberations" referenced by Mr. Brown in his blog were nothing more than political kabuki. Let's remember, this is not the first time he has increased troop levels in Afghanistan.
It's time for Americans to lift the veil of stupidity from their faces. We need to judge the president on his actions and not on his soaring rhetoric.
Obama may be a good man but he has been an awful president.
The fact that Bush was a fool doesn't give Obama the right to be a fool as well.
The fact that Republicans were craven, doesn't give Democrats the same right.
He seems to believe in America to a degree that's hard for a lot of us to fathom. He thinks America can be a force for good in the world. He also thinks it's in our national interest for us to be seen that way, and in the interest of people worldwide for us to be committed to being seen that way. That doesn't fit very well with just killing a bunch of people, destabilizing a country, and going home without even trying to head off the internal war that would inevitably follow to overthrow the weak and deeply corrupt regime we installed.
Whether it be Obama or Bush calling the shots, the result will be the same.
Wanna bet?
Kill terrorists by all means. And get Pakistan to get rid of the ones who actually attacked us. But simply putting in more troops is not going to instill motivation for self-policing or progress that isn't there, nevermind the history of corruption.
http://emiliawahoo76.blogspot.com
http://myspace.com/virginiadem
It's not a nation, though, and never has been. It has always had ethnic tensions, with one ethnic group in power and the rest subjugated at any particular time, but with no ethnic group so dominant in numbers and cultural influence as to give the country a national identity.
First, the "war of necessity" lie is as big a lie to justify escalation in Afghanistan as WMDs was when Bush was selling invading Iraq. As we all know, no Afghans attacked us at 9/11 and the Taliban offered to hand over bin Laden to a neutral third country. Afghanistan is geometrically weaker than we are economically and militarily and the Taliban are no threat to us. The Europeans know this and have less than half of the number of troops we have there and no contractors even though the European Union has a population 100,000,000+ greater than ours and a larger economy and is supposedly as committed to this as we are. Canada is already withdrawing.
The second lie Obama is telling is that somehow when the Taliban drives out the corrupt drug pusherocracy we have left there after 8 years of depression-sustaining expenditures, al Qaeda will get Pakistan's nukes. That's a more BS domino theory than the Vietnam one (all Asia will fall one-by-one like "dominos" to communism if South Vietnam fell, including Japan turning red.) That was always BS and untrue, but Obama's "al Qaeda will get Pakistan's nukes if the Taliban wins is even dumber and more dishonest.
The only sane policy is immediate, safe withdrawal of all US troops and contractors from Iraq and Afganistan.
The Europeans don't contribute more than token support because they know Obama's strategy, and Bush's before him, is wholly BS and the Taliban pose no threat to anyone but people who want to continue war to benefit their own personal corruption, either with the drug pusherocracy, the military-industrial complex, the criminal private merc armies wholly paid for by US taxpayers or some combination of all 3.
Your scenario is wholly at odds with the facts and is designed to justify Obama's escalation. I remember those like you making the same arguments for remaining in Vietnam and/or Iraq. It's false, paranoid fearmongering.
Immedate, safe withdrawal of all US troops and contractos for Iraq and Afghanistan. It is that simple.
I wish we'd never invaded Afganistan. But I think leaving will not make the Taliban go back to Afganistan and leave Pakistan alone. The Pakistani government ceded the Swad valley and the Taliban tried to take the capital. I don't know if the strategy in Afganistan will work or if any strategy would. But I do not believe that Obama is escalating this war to fund the military-industrial complex; to get cheap oil; nor to spread "Democracy." I think he is trying to prevent an easily foreseeable catastrophe (a catastophe that is well underway) from befalling one of our nuclear-armed allies.
There is no obviously right answer in Afganistan. Whatever we do will result in horrible bloodshed. You may be right that withdrawing is the least wrong answer but it's simplistic to say that it's the only sane policy and that any other approach is based on lies.
Fanned!
So, if it was more powerful than Eisenhower, who was dealing with a much smaller MIC and who had the most impressive military credentials of his own, it is much more powerful than President Obama. Whoever sits in that oval office has all the trappings of power, but is really constrained.
Remember the fictional scene in the movie "Nixon" where President Nixon was confronted by some youthful war protesters at the Lincoln Memorial. The young woman in that scene could see right through him and told President Nixon that he couldn't stop the war if he wanted to. She could see that he was trapped by constraints beyond his power.
That's where Obama is right now. It will take more than just electing Obama to stop the military-industrial complex.
Wars - the military industrial complex
Health - the health insurance and pharmaceutical corporations
Economy - the banking and Wall Street lobbiests
Too bad , we no longer have a gov't of the people, by the people and for the people.