Tom Hayden said its time to peel the Obama sticker off his car. And I know why. Barack Obama distorts the truth.
In response to those of us who oppose his Afghani military build up Obama said:
“They argue that [Afghanistan] cannot be stabilized, and we are better off cutting our losses and rapidly withdrawing. Yet this argument depends upon a false reading of history. Unlike Vietnam, we are joined by a broad coalition of 43 nations that recognizes the legitimacy of our action. Unlike Vietnam, we are not facing a broad-based popular insurgency.
“And most importantly, unlike Vietnam, the American people were viciously attacked from Afghanistan, and remain a target for those same extremists who are plotting along its border. To abandon this area now – and to rely only on efforts against al Qaeda from a distance – would significantly hamper our ability to keep the pressure on al Qaeda, and create an unacceptable risk of additional attacks on our homeland and our allies.”
So…Obama arrogantly puts us down by claiming we rely on, “A false reading of history”? What a stupid, off-the-wall statement. No one who lived through Vietnam has any kind of false idea what happened historically during the Vietnam War. The entire nation was lied to by the generals until Walter Cronkite came back with a true assessment of the situation. Which was, that we could not win that war.
So what would our “history” be false about? Current conditions on the ground in Afghanistan? That’s not history. That’s a dispute over facts. Do you believe the generals’ facts? Believe the guys who make war for a living? The guys who don’t get promoted unless there’s a war? Or do you believe the CIA guys and diplomats who have lived the politics of the situation?
No, this is not about history. This is about facts. And one major fact is that Al Qaeda does not need Afghanistan to plan attacks on the USA. 9/11 was planned in Hamburg Germany. Indeed, most 9/11 training took place in flight schools in the USA itself. If Osama bin Laden, our great friend and warrior against the Soviets, had asked for asylum in America, WE WOULD HAVE GIVEN IT TO HIM. He could have planned the whole thing from Lubbock Texas for fuck sakes.
We can outmaneuver Al Qaeda with human spies and intelligence. Not military force, except in extremely specific circumstances. If spies tell us the bad guys set up new training camps in Afghanistan, or anywhere else, we can send in cruise missiles to take them out. That’s all the military we need.
So fuck you Obama, trying to marginalize guys like me who suffered for Vietnam over an entire lifetime because of what the generals said back then. Fuck you for saying we have a false reading of history. History is something we have lived through and you have only read about – and books just never seem to get the story straight. Never.
It’s really stupid for you to think that the money and training behind 9/11 came from some guys living in caves in Afghanistan. And that these cave dwellers still pose a threat to us. Just as stupid as it was for us to believe during Vietnam that the North Vietnamese posed a threat to us.
And it’s really ignorant of you not to realize that back in 1968 we were confronted with a nuclear powered Red Menace that made it easy for the media to convince most of the country that if Vietnam fell, California would fall next. As silly as that seems now, it’s just how silly your charming rationalization for surging in Afghanistan will look in 20 years. Needless suffering and tragic deaths.
Generals need wars and banks need wars and that’s the only reason we have them.
But there’s more:
Sez Obama, “…we are joined by a broad coalition of 43 nations”? Is Obama on acid? These nations tip their hats to us and send in token numbers of troops to make us happy so we’ll supply them with various kinds of aid and include them in military alliances. This is a broad coalition of straw soldiers. Exactly like the kind of support we had in Vietnam. Obama is either a military fool, or just a plain jive-ass con man. After a year of constant disappointments I am tending toward the latter opinion.
And yet more:
Unlike Vietnam we are “Not facing a broad based popular insurgency”? Is he kidding? Taliban operatives are like an invisible spider’s web knitted throughout the entire country. Just like the Vietcong. Far and away most Afghanis prefer the Taliban to us, militarily and governmentally. Indeed, the Taliban still have a shadow government that reappears the instant our troops withdraw.
And finally, says Obama, “And most importantly, unlike Vietnam, the American people were viciously attacked from Afghanistan, and remain a target for those same extremists who are plotting along its border.”
The 9/11 bombers were Al Qaeda, which has cells in 50 countries. Ethnically they were Saudi Arabians, not Afghanis. Not Taliban. The Taliban had nothing to do with attacking the United States. Worse, we have driven the Afghani Taliban across the border into Pakistan and destabilized that nuclear-armed country making us spectacularly more unsafe.
Maddeningly, exactly what Obama claimed Iraq was doing to the War on Terror is what his policy in Afghanistan is doing to the War on Terror. We are diverting ourselves from the real war and fighting the wrong war. We are trying to fight an international terrorist organization that travels under fifty different names in fifty different countries – including our own – by stationing 100,000 soldiers in Afghanistan. Completely demented. The President is supposed to be commander in chief of the generals. Not chief political lobbyist for the generals.
It makes me weep historical tears that we are going to follow the Bush doctrine that anything which might be a threat to us must be eliminated, rather than the Eisenhower doctrine that we cannot achieve perfect security without destroying our very own society? I already learned this once. Why the fuck am I expected to learn it again because some guy who was 6 years old during Vietnam wants to be president.
Despite selectively quoting Eisenhower in his speech, in seeking perfect security, Obama has begun destroying our entire society. He is pursuing nation building abroad rather than at home. He’s not “balancing” anything. He’s caving to the generals. The generals who lie. What President Eisenhower also said was, “God help this country when someone sits at this desk, who doesn’t know as much about the military as I do.” Today that man is Barack Obama.
All his justifications for this war are false. He is a weak and awful president, a knee-jerk conservative, who should not have gotten the job. I was proud of America for electing a person of color to the presidency. Now I am aghast.
And worse, two weeks later he stood before the Nobel Prize committee and told the world how he was seeking peace through war. This is right out of George Orwell. Peace is War.
Dump Obama. Before it’s too late. John Kerry would have been a mountain of a president compared to Barack Obama. After eight years of George W. Bush we deserve a real leftist president. That’s where the pendulum of history is trying to swing. That’s the REAL history that’s being falsely read. This nation wants to move left. Far far left. And yeah, peel the Obama sticker off your car too.
Rich Zubaty is an author/artist who has been an anti-war activist since he refused to be drafted during Vietnam. See and hear his stuff at therudeguy.com and happyfool.org
Contact:
richzubaty@hotmail.com