Reply #16: Obama is either tragically misguided or lying. Honestly, I believe the former in this case. [View All]

[Political Heretic]

I don't yet think he's just consciously lying about this stuff. Right now I think he's just tragically misguided in the entire frame of the "war on terror" that he's basically bought into (even though he's more or less retired the specific phrase.

He assumes, probably based on lots of advice and pressure from the Pentagon and hawkish people in Washington, that the solution to the potential threat posted by the "Taliban insurgency" will be lessened or eliminated by escalated military action.

This is incredibly short-sighted. All we've done in Iraq after all these years is kill hundreds of thousands of people and gain the smallest measure of short term calm. Within a decade, there will be more terrorists than ever, fueled in large part by the memory of an aggressive America illegally invading the middle east and calling it a "crusade." We've already seen NIEs and government reports on global terrorism showing the world being a much less safe place now than it was before we ever invaded - with recruitment way up, terrorist acts way up, etc.

Attempting to transform Afghanistan and eliminate the "taliban" (I keep putting that in quotes, because the media narrative is of this single, organized group called the taliban, when in reality is a loosely bound web of various insurgents) will go the same way. After so many years and so much death, we'll acheive a short term measure of greater stability - which will only reset the cycle and pave the way for the breeding of the next generation of America loathing terrorists.

Sooner or later, humanity is going to have to come to grips with the reality that violence begets violence. Even if there are times where violence is the only way (namely, in times of defense) it still a reality that violence begets more violence and continues the cycle...

People who oppose our ridiculous wars in the middle east are not suggesting that we ignore the middle east. We all agree that there are serious issues in the middle east and even serious threats to global security. But we are handling them wrong. Wrong. We're making things worse for the next generation.