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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LLCF who wrote (78727)	6/23/2010 5:08:33 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

Three Things You Missed in Rolling Stone's McChrystal Profile by Tom Andrews Published on Wednesday, June 23, 2010 by CommonDreams.org Unfortunately, President Obama missed an opportunity today to not only replace an out-of-control general but an out-of-control and failing strategy in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, mainstream media continue to miss the most serious story contained in the now famous Rolling Stone profile. Michael Hastings' piece is about more than an adolescent general and his buddies' school-yard shenanigans in Kabul and Paris. It was about a failing strategy in Afghanistan and the disconnect between how the administration portrays the war in public and the reality of how the war is actually being waged. Here are three points in the Rolling Stone article that contradict what the White House has presented to Congress and the American people about the war in Afghanistan: "Instead of beginning to withdraw troops next year, as Obama promised, the military hopes to ramp up its counterinsurgency campaign even further." A senior military official stationed in Afghanistan told Hastings: "There's a possibility we could ask for another surge of US forces next summer if we see success here." General McChrystal's Chief of Operations Major General Bill Mayville, described the war in Afghanistan as unwinnable: "It's not going to look like a win, smell like a win or taste like a win. This is going to end in an argument." "If Americans pulled back and started paying attention to this war, it would become even less popular." This was how a Senior Advisor to General Stanley McChrystal characterizes the war in Afghanistan. While President Obama has been assuring Congress and the American public that US troops will begin leaving Afghanistan next July, his senior military leaders believe that if they are successful, next summer could see a surge of troops, not a withdrawal. And the military should be careful not to reveal what is really going on in Afghanistan because the more Americans know about the war, the more they will be against it. Who is holding these guys accountable? Congress needs to step up now and start demanding answers. Until it gets them, it should refuse to appropriate the $33 billion in new war funding that the Administration has asked them for. This is about more than an out-of-control general in Afghanistan. It's about the strategy, stupid, and the young men and women who are giving their lives to implement it. Congress needs to send a clear and strong message to the White House using the power that the Constitution provides it -- the buck stops here! No answers to these disturbing questions, no more funding for the war in Afghanistan. Period. And, it can send that message now. The House is scheduled to vote on the administration's Afghanistan war supplemental funding request before it leaves next week for the Fourth of July recess. It should refuse to do so. And, when it comes back to work after the fireworks at home, it should do its job and start demanding answers to all of the other disturbing issues and questions raised in the Rolling Stone article. Now that the McChrystal side-show is over, it's time for Congress and mainstream media to focus on the main event: the deteriorating war in Afghanistan. *Tom Andrews, a former Member of Congress from the first Congressional District of Maine, is the National Director of Win Without War. He is also co-founder of New Security Action.

To: LLCF who wrote (78727)	6/24/2010 1:30:41 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 149317

Afghanistan: The oil keeps flowing. dailykos.com. by don mikulecky Wed Jun 23, 2010 at 07:14:02 PM PDT Am I confused? Mixing up Afghanistan with the oil spill (actually gush)? Well, in fact, in a way I am confused. Too much of what I read in the news today sounds very discouraging especially because it makes me remember so many parallels with the past. Actually, all kinds of folks are comparing the conflict between our President and his General with Truman and MacArthur. I am a great believer in the principle that the meaning of events is context dependent. That's a hard concept for many, especially our "friends" on the right because they have a very simplistic world model. They like absolutes. The context for evaluating today's civilian vs military encounter is the same context for evaluating the meaning of what is going on with the gusher in the Gulf. They both are part of today's' administration and build on the events of the past one. They both have a lot to do with how Obama will be seen years down the road. They both have to do with our situation as a Nation in a world that has deep pressing problems and needs desperately to deal with them. Read on below and I'll explain what I mean. History has revealed itself to us in the past few decades in a way that deals with certain things we questioned, exposing their answers all too plainly. Anyone who can assign a cyclic theory to this is missing what we are all about. Global warming is real. The growing number of foods and water sources that are being poisoned as we try to feed still more people is another thing that is evolving. It is not part of some mysterious cycle. Even the "war" in Afghanistan has a clearer and clearer context as part of an evolving circumstance not to be dismissed as just another war. When we went into Korea we were a different nation in a different world. We were newly arrogant about our nuclear weapons and MacArthur thought we should use them. Thankfully, President Truman disagreed. We all know that story. The real question is what did we learn from that? We watched the French fail in Indochina and then went right in after them and we failed. Now we have the luxury of repeating what the late USSR learned in Afghanistan. But this time it is different. We were attacked on 9/11. The culprits are there. Somehow that makes things different. Real or not there are those differences. Meanwhile the oil keeps gushing and there is setback after setback in the attempts to stop it. Why compare these two situations? They have some things in common. Some of us believe that there are ways of "winning" in Afghanistan. Some of us believe that technology is able to do that for us. Some of us believe that we can stop the flow of oil. Some of us believe that technology can do that for us. I believe something very different. There is no way of "winning" this war because there is nothing to win. We are fighting because we are driven to do that by some collective mentality that we can not really control. There may be a way of stopping the oil flow but I believe that if there were we would have done it by now. Again we are victim of some collective mentality that denies the inevitable running out of oil and the suicidal nature of our consumption of the stuff. Addicts understand what I am analogizing here. They know that they can look at all the facts, see the futility of their actions and then go right on doing them. they might even sit down and write about the mess they are in. The problem is that they can not break out of the pattern. I have asked us here to look at ourselves as a Nation. We are worse than addicted to war. We refuse to put even a tiny fraction of our resources into finding peaceful alternatives to solving our problems with others. We consume at a rate that is gluttony at its worst. We do this day by day while doing this "political" stuff as if it were the cure. No it is not. Politics is only going to drag us in deeper. We need to change, not have a leader who brings us change. That failure to change is happening because we want it forced on us - not to do the hard work it requires for it to really happen. We need to change. During the Vietnam War a lesson was learned by some. The only power you really have is to say loud and clear "no!". Why is it so hard? Have we really evolved into what we appear to be at this moment? People who have lost the ability to say "no!". Then we are truly no longer free people. We are slaves to a thing we have created.