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New York, 10:28 AM
Sun Nov 29
12 posts in the last 24 hours
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03/28/09
Which is to say that their stupid arguments are not worth responding to, other than to say...Uh, no.
03/28/09
Whatever made them think Obama wouldn't put more troops in Afghanistan? He constantly acted/said that he was a MODERATE and that the war in Afghanistan was one worth fighting. In every way. Yet dumbasses like Maddow and Moore made him some left-wing hero when he purported to be nothing of the sort.
Rachel Maddow is not very bright (and an awful broadcaster at that) if she thinks the world works in the way she thinks it does...and Michael Moore? I started being embarrassed by him long ago. Irrelevance.
And what of it? Got news for you kids, the US has been involved in "wars" all over for all time. One HOPE poster and a fatty from Michigan aren't going to change that.
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And HA!! you're kidding? politics are rough, eh? Tell me more!
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03/29/09
*Also, did you even watch the Maddow segment? She's nowhere near as critical of Obama's Afghanistan policy as everyone here seems to think.
03/29/09
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But the thing I don't understand is that Obama's argument about the need for increased effort in Afghanistan was a Democratic talking point throughout Georgie's administration. Now that the Democratic Party is in charge, Obama is making the change we've been talking about for the past 6+ years.
I say, let the man do it. He's really not too concerned about building bases or having a long-term presence in the country. His goal - which was clearly defined - was to root out Al-Queda cells/activity in the country.
03/28/09
03/28/09
Plus:
[www.alternet.org]
03/28/09
Obama also made a campaign promise to unilaterally send troops into Pakistan. I'd like to see him do that.
03/28/09
03/28/09
Occupying Afghanistan, graveyard of empires, replete with billions in bases (we have the cash for that, right?), is no more morally or strategtically the right thing to do than when the Russians went for it.
Same movie, new marketing.
Yes, listen to them at the time and the Russians were also there to stamp out "terrorism" and build up the Afghan economy/government. The only real difference is that at least the Russians lived next door. (Us, not so much--making our "marketing plan" that much more of a laughable stretch.)
And why was Brzezinski (now an Obama mentor) so proud (he's openly written about it) of essentially creating, arming, training, and supporting the radical Islamic resistance that got the Russians out and weakened their military/economy into a subsequent collapse?
Because getting the Russians out of the most energy resource-rich region on the planet while demoting them as a rival superpower meant we were then free to move in, naturally.
[www.videosift.com]
Yes, the pieces move slowly, but the moves are planned out long in advance, folks. Might as well understand and follow that reality as opposed to the daily puppet show theater performed to strategically distort our perception of it.
Of course, there's only so much Obama can do--he may be the CEO, but he don't own the company. Upset the chessboard and, well... bad things can happen.
Then again, bad things happen tend to happen when the pieces are moves as planned too:
By the mid-1980s, the Afghan resistance movement, assisted by the United States, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, PRC and others, contributed to Moscow's high military costs and strained international relations. The US viewed the conflict in Afghanistan as an integral Cold War struggle, and the CIA provided assistance to anti-Soviet forces through the Pakistani intelligence services, in a program called Operation Cyclone.[38][39]
A similar movement occurred in other Muslim countries, bringing contingents of so-called Afghan Arabs, foreign fighters who wished to wage jihad against the atheist communists. Notable among them was a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden, whose Arab group eventually evolved into al-Qaeda.[40][41]
Boy, that al-Qaeda we funded and trained into existence... so problematic and yet... so convenient on the chessboard. With Pakistan helping out...
Funny how that works.
03/28/09
Despite my criticism, a good post.
03/28/09
"The world's energy consumption is bound to vastly increase over the next two or three decades. Estimates by the U.S. Department of Energy anticipate that world demand will rise by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2015, with the most significant increase in consumption occurring in the Far East. The momentum of Asia's economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy, and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea.
Access to that resource and sharing in its potential wealth represent objectives that stir national ambitions, motivate corporate interests, rekindle historical claims, revive imperial aspirations, and fuel international rivalries. The situation is made all the more volatile by the fact that the region is not only a power vacuum but is also internally unstable."
So, he advocates, we need move in and own the store to dominate globally. It's just that simple. Everything else is window dressing for that strategic objective. Including, ahem, terrorism. And if Obama is telling you they're hearing more is on the way, I think we'll see that gun in act three. (Call it guerilla marketing--false flag terrorism being the most effective form.) It's not suprising his words sound like Bush's suddenly--on this matter they're provided by the same source, the Pentagon. Did Obama pick a new secretary of defense? He did not.
And who does Maddow bring on first to discuss all this? Who is the "brightest bulb"?
Brzezinksi.
Well, hello.
Hey, if you're all about America (broke at home) using military force and borrowed billions to control the planet, occupying lands across the world, and by necessity deceiving its "democratic" populace about those plans and policies in order, at the end of the day, to enrich private corporations and their Wall Street patrons who, clearly, don't give a fuck about you, well, then good times ahead!
Too bad so many people are going to have to die.
03/28/09
Er, okaaaay.
03/28/09
No, she's the purist who jeopardizes the practical. Remionds me of those old Masters & Johnson reports, clinical electrodes in the lab.
This is theory, not practice, because who would consider a psycho like Stalin as practical? Still, it shows the conflict, I think. If you don't have the responsibility, then theory is Absolut.
That said, would I suffer so much as a minor headache iif it meant that the corrupt regime in kabul should remain in power? Nope.
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Convention tactics in an unconventional struggle=another rathole, where American money and lives will disappear.
This is sounding more like Vietnam than Iraq.
03/28/09
We were most successful in Afghanistan early in the war when our footprint was minimal, and we were operating unconventionally. Keep low profile special operators embedded in the culture, win/buy allies and intel by showing that we mean business and have cash to spread around where necessary, and top it off with air support via Predator drones or anything larger whenever needed.
We do NOT need to put 50,000 more conventional troops there. Its just going to paint a big-ass target on our back. Afghanistan is NOT Iraq.
03/28/09
03/28/09
We've been pouring billions into the strongest economy with the strongest army in the middle east for years in hopes they take up that roadmap or something at some future date. Meanwhile, Pakistan, a nuclear failed state, is coming apart at the seams.
Rachel and her faux-Uncle Buchanan will form a duet to hymm for the return of all soldiers from Over There. Only Uncle Pat wants to send them immediately to our southern border. He wakes up sweating every night with the same nightmare: one, two, thousands of Jessica Albas!
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