Tag: Afghanistan

At West Point last week, Obama said, “We’ll support Afghan ministries, governors, and local leaders that combat corruption and deliver for the people.  We expect those who are ineffective or corrupt to be held accountable.”  

David Broder must be freaking out.  It sounds like Obama is advising Afghans to exact retribution, engage in partisan witch hunts, have show trials, and turn their country into a banana republic.    

Why Is Obama Worried By Corruption in Afghanistan? . . .

Obama’s weakest position, in our view, has been his determination to “look forward, not backward” regarding the apparent crimes of the Bush administration. That stance has never made sense, and it makes even less sense now that Obama has announced plans to send 30,000 more U.S. troops into Afghanistan.

At the heart of the Obama plan is a push to root out corruption in Afghanistan. And that’s ironic because Obama has shown no interest in rooting out corruption here at home.   Why the surge in Afghanistan?  Obama hopes to stabilize the country and turn it over to the government of President Hamid Karzai. Unfortunately, the Karzai government is flagrantly corrupt, marked by cronyism and electoral fraud.

Sounds a lot like the Bush administration, doesn’t it?  But Obama wants Americans to forget all the pain that was inflicted upon our democracy over the past eight years.

If Obama actually gave a flying fuck about accountability, he’d bring the Predator drones home and fly them over Wall Street.  As soon as a corrupt CEO, banker, hedge fund manager or credit default swapper showed up in the street he’d get his ass blown to Hell.  Obama could call it winning the hearts and minds of the American people.  He could call it liberation. Francis Scott Key VII would see it from that Brooklyn homeless shelter he lives in and could write a song about it.  Here in the twilight’s last gleaming, we could finally get some useful results from our $900,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 defense budget.

Maybe I’m missing something here . . .  Did the Taliban destroy our economy?  Is the Taliban looting our Treasury?  Did the Taliban take control of Congress?  Is the Taliban using it as a weapon against us? Who’s doing all that?  

We all know who’s doing that.  So does Obama.  But there won’t be any Predator drones over Wall Street.  He won’t have a Predator or two following Dick Cheney around either. He’d rather let Dick strut around like the greatest warrior of all time and call him a traitor every day of the week and twice on Fox News Sunday.    

I don’t remember Mr. Five Deferments being red, white, and blue to the bone when the Vietnam War was raging.  I don’t remember him joining the Army because he had no place to go, I don’t remember him landing in Kandahar with an eagle and a flag tattooed on his arm. But he sure likes to give those warmongering speeches.   A fat man in a blue Mercedes drives him to the door, he pumps himself up like he’s Patton crossing the Rhine, scowls his message of endless war, and basks in the applause of every other psychopath in the room.    

Something about being a lying asshole all your life makes you hard that way.

A day for intense, personal irony.

The Nobel Prize winner explains how some wars are good and necessary.  He’s not old enough to have ever been faced with being drafted.  And he hasn’t served. He’s apparently not worried about things like quagmires.  He wins an award for peace.  The award it turns out was endowed by a maker of explosives who felt guilty about blowing things up.  The prize winner explains to people interested in peace how war is sometimes necessary.  He is not embarrassed to do so.  And the sometimes when war is necessary, he informs us, is now.  That does not embarrass him either.  Or at least not very much.  Has peace ever been so devalued?

Closer to home, well, to my home anyway, number 2 son is in Hanoi traveling and taking photographs.  He’s a photographer.  Forty years ago, I spent a lot of time and energy on trying not to get to Viet Nam.  I could look at that big plane that flew weekly to Pleiku and plan on how I was not going to be on it.  No matter what.  Now he’s there.  Because he wants to be.  In of all places, Hanoi.

He sends me a photo of a fish dinner he ate for lunch in Hanoi yesterday.  The fish was delicious but, he reports, very bony.  What can I say?  I tell him the best part of a whole fish cooked like this is the cheeks.  You can use a spoon to get to them.  How do I know that?

The Hanoi Fish

On docuDharma, a refuge from the craziness of a larger, group blog that is its “blogfather,” there are several essays on the recommended list at this very moment about that particular larger, group blog.  And a bazillion comments, including some from me, on what its apparently self inflicted, fatal wounds might mean.  And what is happening in that crazy corner of the Internet.  A corner from which I am absent and hope to remain so.  Except that I keep looking over my shoulder, rubbernecking at the crash.  And wondering about the plane to Pleiku.

What can I say?  Why is it that I think know I’ve seen these movies before?

Paul Jay of The Real News interviews F. William Engdahl, economist and author of the best selling book “A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order” who explains US Geopolitical objectives in Afghanistan, in terms clear and simple enough even for US mainstream network television audiences – which is probably why you never see him on television.

Based in Germany, Engdahl has written on issues of energy, politics and economics for more than 30 years, beginning with the first oil shock in the early 1970s, and is a regular contributor to a number of publications including Asia Times Online, Asia, Inc, Japan’s Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Foresight magazine, and Freitag and ZeitFragen newspapers in Germany and Switzerland.

These soldiers are coming from pretty high unemployment number counties in South Carolina. Why they’re training in Wisconsin only the military can give that answer, what with all the bases in North Carolina and South Carolina you’d think they’s have had regional training spots closer to home. This is also probably hitting other units in other parts of the country as well.

Christmas homecoming in jeopardy for Fort Mill soldiers

More than $35,000 must be raised to get guardsmen home before leaving for Afghanistan

copyright © 2009 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

It is said, as individuals, we can achieve all we conceive, if only we truly believe.  President Barack Obama once knew this.  He lived this veracity.  Indeed, candidate Obama’s audacity and accomplishments gave Americans hope.  When Barack Obama reached for the sky he realized what no one thought he could. The electorate was energized.  People came to expect the country was in for a change.   Now, it seems Mister Obama is bogged down by what Eisenhower understood, concerns of the Military Industrial Complex.  

The intricacy of the Armed Forces mission does not confine itself to forceful martial escalation.  Nothing escapes the wide reach of combative nation building.  Lives are lost.  Limbs crushed.  With bullets ablaze, brains are battered or blown to smithereens.  Hope suffers.  Hearts are hurt.

The dissembling has already begun. HuffPo reports this morning on Clinton and Gates talking with David Gregory on Meet The Press this morning:

Clinton, Gates Walk Back On Obama’s “Locked In” Afghan Withdrawal

Don’t be confused by President Obama’s speech on Afghanistan. Despite the president’s word on Tuesday that a surge of US and international troops in Afghanistan would “allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011,” that date is not a “drop dead deadline”–at least according to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates recorded an interview this week with NBC’s David Gregory on Meet The Press. Set to air Sunday morning, both Obama advisers will walk back on Obama’s withdrawal language. While the president did say during his speech that conditions on the ground would be considered before a transition, Clinton and Gates seem to go a step further:

HILLARY CLINTON: We’re not talking about an exit strategy or a drop dead deadline. What we’re talking about is an assessment that in January 2011, we can begin a transition. A transition to hand off — responsibility to the Afghan forces.

ROBERT GATES: We’re not talking about an abrupt withdrawal. We’re talking about something that will take place over a period of time. Our commanders think that these additional forces, and one of the reasons for the President’s decision to try and accelerate their deployment is– is the view that this extended surge has the opportunity to make significant gains in terms of reversing the momentum of the Taliban, denying them control of Afghan territory, and degrading their capabilities.

WATCH:

Friday, 12.04.09, was the eighth day of the British Iraq War Inquiry which has been bringing forth some very interesting, and adding to the possibility of incriminating, pieces of information pertaining to what had been going on within the administration of President Bush prior to what happened on Sept 11 2001, on the day of the destructive deadly attacks of Sept 11 2001 and in the immediate days following and leading up to the invasion and lack of concern about after the destruction and then occupation of Iraq.