Tuesday, July 7, 2009

#124 Obama's War

As I said in last post: The only good way to "withdraw" from a Vietnam or an Iraq is to have already done it. Don't shovel me more piles of "timetables," "strategic deadlines," etc.--no, no, no ... I've heard all of that before. Everybody agrees now that we shoudn't be there in the first place. And President Obama could have invoked something called the "American System of Government" the moment he took his hands off Lincoln's bible. "World ... we made a colossal mistake; I'm the new Commander in Chief; we're bringing the troops home. The American people who voted me in and gave me a majority Congress cannot be held accountable for the insanity of the past administration. This is how our representative democracy works. Clean slate. Suck it up." Of course, he didn't do that ... and to be fair he promised no such (not so) radical notion in his campaign.

Obama got my vote in '08, as Robert Kennedy would have in '68, because he promised to make the War his top priority after the election. Understandably, the Economy got in the way, and goodnessgracious I'm cheering him on in his fight to get Heath Care in order. (He's smart enough to know he CAN do it all.) But "Sovereignty Day" in Iraq was a total scam, and now the Death Toll in Afghanistan rises daily. Those politicians who've denied the the exact parallels between the Middle East Wars and Vietnam are just self-servingly crazy. We've never won an "insurgency war," and cannot now. (I'll give Bush the Elder credit here: he fought a defensive war against an aggressor nation; won it; and withdrew.)

More of that later, but the important point is that The War now belongs irretrievably to Obama. He owns it, and all its hellish spawn, because ...
  • He didn't bring the troops home the day after his inauguration;
  • Setting that aside, he keeps putting total withdrawal further and further into the future;
  • He's pushing for more and more funding--the US House just approved $106 billion (strange bedfellows Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich voted against);
  • He's attacking Afghanistan/Pakistan.

Hate to say it, but Obama's war is spreading, and getting ever more deadly by the hour.
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