On Afghanistan 'war' from Seattle PI reader's blog.

[laststeamtrain]

Obama's War

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What is the necessity that justifies another trillion dollars, the further exhaustion of our forces and more death and suffering? As an old Marine, a national security analyst and author, as an historian, as an American, I cannot see it. I've tried. I cannot.

I supported Mr. Bush's initial invasion of Afghanistan and hoped that our occupation would succor that tormented country. It didn't, and the stories my wife tells me about her time in Afghanistan, what she saw there, will break your heart. I publicly opposed Mr. Bush's invasion of Iraq, starting a year before it happened, on the grounds that it was wrong in so many practical ways it would constitute a moral failure, and wrong in so many moral ways it would constitute a practical failure. It did fail, and let's not pretend that, long-term, Iraq will be anything other than it currently is. At best.

I oppose the continuation of the Afghanistan war as a counter-insurgency effort (which is very different from a counter-terrorism campaign) because it is utterly immoral, decadent and without conscience to squander our country on an effort that, even if it succeeds, can never justify the cost. But it can't succeed. As in Lebanon, as in Somalia, as in Iraq, we're injecting ourselves into complex civil strife where we'll be at best one more faction supporting one more faction (Karazi) and all the other factions can agree on one thing. It's their turf. Not ours. But we won't be supporting just Karzai. We'll be supporting -- read here, arming and paying off -- endless other tribes, warlords and criminals, thereby exacerbating the very backwardness and corruption we claim to oppose.

We don't belong there.

The best thing America can do for ourselves and the world is to get our own house in order. Morally as well as practically.

Mr. Obama has caved in to Wall Street and the "financial industry," putting their rapine above the needs of the people who elected him. Is he about to cave in to the same cynical political calculations that led Lyndon Johnson into Vietnam -- all that matters is the next election, just buy time with blood and treasure and worry about the future later?

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http://blog.seattlepi.com/progressiveformercons/archives/186153.asp?from=blog_last3

[FiveGoodMen]

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