Avoiding The NeoCon's 50 Year War Plan

[kpete]

Sunday, November 22, 2009
Polk: Let America be America, and Depart Afghanistan

William R. Polk writes in a guest editorial for IC, which he wishes someone would pass on to President Obama, quickly

..............................

We are indeed at a cross-roads in our history. The step the President takes on Afghanistan is a step on a road that could lead either to catastrophe or to a new period of our prosperity, freedom and security.

In one direction, we will move in the direction signposted by the Australian armchair warrior David Kilcullen, the key adviser and ghost writer for Generals Petraeus and McChrystal, and enthusiastically approved by the neoconservatives. They and Petraeus’s and McChrystal’s new acolytes among junior officers – saw Iraq and see Afghanistan as the first steps in America’s crusade, what they have named the “Long War.”

The Long war would truly be a march out into the wild blue yonder. The neoconservatives and the new military leaders believe it will last generations. Fifty years is already under plan at the Pentagon. The cost, even in economic terms, cannot be predicted – numbers lose meaning beyond 15 or 20 trillion dollars. But the ultimate cost will be the end of America’s position as the world’s leading power. Our standard of living will fall; our sources of borrowing will dry up; and we will stand in danger of the kind of economic implosion that destroyed what in the 1920s was arguably Europe’s leading democracy, the Weimar Republic.

While the monetary and general economic costs are the most obvious, my real worry is about the fundamental beliefs and institutions of our country. I confess that I am very emotional about this: I have inherited through my family both a military and a civic tradition that I see being undermined in the name of patriotism. Patriotism is a blunt instrument and can be wielded by dictators – as Herman Göring observed during his trial at Nurenburg -- as often as by democrats. I don’t want to lose the America in which I was born, have served and believe in. So I determined to do what I can to protect and preserve our heritage of freedom, decency and mutual respect. These are the key elements in the social contract you and I share and which we share with our government. To lose that social contact is to descend into chaos. Of course, “it can’t happen here,” but let us not forget the fate of the Weimar Republic.

To the contrary, getting out of Afghanistan, could lead us toward a reassertion of the principles and purposes that have made our country not just respected for its wealth and power but beloved throughout the world. If we make a sincere effort to live up to the message in President Obama’s address in Cairo – that we are willing to live in a multicultural world – much of the fear and danger we perceive today will become a bad memory. Then we can truly turn toward the serious business of educating our children, providing our citizens with adequate health care and again becoming for the world’s peoples “a city on the hill.”

William R. Polk

November 10, 2009
http://www.juancole.com/2009/11/polk-let-america-be-america-and-depart.html

[lonestarnot]

1. Welp if it continues, we'll have single payer. Everyone will get healthcare from the VA.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

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[CanSocDem]

3. The 'free-market'....

...does so well in a war economy.

.

[jwirr]

4. I suspect these wars will not end until the oil is gone since control of

the oil is the goal. That and stealing it for our oil cartels.

[chill_wind]

5. They would end in a day

if we installed a draft and every politician's son and daughter had to serve with everyone else, no exception.

And a thousand times no, I'm not a proponent, but we would get to work to find some handy peace-time options for dealing with our energy problems in a red-hot minute.

[bleever]

6. An excellent, in-depth analysis.

Not understanding or being willing to deal with the concept of a loya jirga, we have sought to legitimate the men we chose to rule Afghanistan by an election. Doing so has produced a great embarrassment to our government. It isn’t only that the recent presidential election was blatantly fraudulent although that is what the press has focused on. Nor was the trumped up competition between Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah important. As a Tajik, there was no way that Abdullah Abdullah could have been a credible candidate. He was just a straw man, put up to make it look like the election was a choice. But even that was not the fundamental flaw: it was simply that elections – the American way of choosing and legitimating a government – is not the Afghan way.

The Afghan way is a loya jirga.

[Octafish]

7. We (War Inc.) need the oil.

ENRON needed the gas.

[Demeter]

8. It's EMPIRE, Not Patriotism; Corporate Empire, Even Worse

It's not Liebensraum the NeoCons seek, it's market share, resources and cheap labor.

They don't demand war for the sake of our nation, but for Coca Cola and IBM and Ford and GM and Citigroup.

We have to kill the multinationals, eject them from the land. Then we can have peace, prosperity, and economic recovery. And the corporate whores and slaves must be stripped of their ill-gotten gains, and that capital put to work here, where it was stolen.

[notesdev]

9. If you need 50 years

http://ww2.verycarr.com:8888/files/u1/GunDoingItWrong.jpg