President Obama and other G20 leaders met in Toronto last week to draw up more plans for a coordinated approach to combating the ongoing global financial crisis.
Never mind that each leader duly ignored the plans for such an approach that were delineated in the communiqué following last year’s G20 summit. And there’s every indication that each will do the same again, implementing either economic stimulus or austerity measures pursuant only to perceived national interests.
No doubt this is why Obama’s post summit press conference this year was dominated by questions not about the financial crisis but about Afghanistan. In particular, the press grilled him on signs that he’s been waffling lately on his self-declared July 2011 date to begin withdrawing troops.
Obama was indignant:
There has been a lot of obsession around this whole issue of when do we leave… By next year we will begin a process of transition. That doesn’t mean that we turn out the lights and slam the door behind us.
(Associated Press, June 28, 2010)
In fact, Obama can be forgiven his indignation because he always said, in Clintonian fashion, that the July 2011 was not a deadline, but the beginning of a deadline. Got that?! Indeed, while most members of the press took that date to mean turning out the lights and slamming the door, here’s how I reacted when Obama first announced it:
[I]t seems more than a little disingenuous for him to declare that he will begin withdrawing troops in July 2011. After all, even if he does, it could still take years after that date to reduce the number of troops deployed there back to today’s level.
(“Obama escalates Afghan war…”, The iPINIONS Journal, December 2, 2009)
Having said that, no less a person than Obama himself gave the public every reason to become obsessed with that date. Not least because his mantra has always been that unless you set deadlines nothing will ever get done.
Ironically, though, by making it clear now that his July 2011 deadline is not a deadline at all, he has given Afghan President Hamid Karzai every reason to believe that U.S. troops will be there for years, if not decades, to prop up his corrupt government and protect him from the Taliban.
But, with all due respect to the president, my obsession is over the fact that he seems cleverly unconcerned that American casualties are escalating at an alarming rate in a war that he now admits is without end, and for which there seems to be no compelling national purpose (or interest).
The US legacy there will be distinguished either by a terminally wounded national pride as American forces beat a hasty retreat in defeat (following the Russian precedent in Afghanistan), or by tens of thousands of American soldiers being lost in Afghanistan’s “graveyard of empires” as they continue fighting this unwinnable war (following America’s own precedent in Vietnam) … more troops only mean more sitting ducks for Taliban fighters.
(‘Without (or even with) more forces, failure in Afghanistan is likely’, The iPINIONS Journal, September 23, 2009)
Meantime, June 2010 has now become the deadliest month for coalition troops (with 80 killed) and this war, which was launched in October 2001, has now become the longest in U.S. history. Which begs the question: How much longer and how many more dead before the American people launch Vietnam-like protests to force Obama to end it?
Every eligible American should serve; not just the poor, dumb suckers who join the Army when they grow tired of flipping burgers. And with today’s technology and access to information, people like VP Dick Cheney (who has been quoted as saying that he did not serve in Vietnam because “I had other priorities in the 60s than military service”) and former President Bill Clinton (who did the same by feigning conscientious objection) won’t be able to dodge the Draft quite so blithely.
So, forget the pissing contest in Congress over withdrawal plans and tell your Congressman to support the Draft to end these stupid wars in Iraq and Afghanistan!
(Support the Draft to prevent stupid wars, The iPINIONS Journal, March 14, 2007)
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