Obama Speech Open Thread December 1, 2009 Jill What are your thoughts? I’m still parsing through mine.
I’m feeling grief. I’m not a pacifist, but I don’t see how 30,000 soldiers can subdue a country, and I don’t see any power in Afghanistan that can keep the peace. Terrorism is a tactic, the Taliban is as much religious as political, and fundamentalist religions are only strengthened by war.
not a fan of militarism and this is just another effort to secure US hegemony. plus — as long as our strategy in Afghan consists of fueling anti-taliban militia w/ resources — we are going to get ourselves in the same boat we did in the past: funding the regimes that we end up going to war with later on.
i basically agree with what has already been said, and would add some thoughts of my own… i really, really still want to believe that President Obama really is different, that he really is committed to real progressive change including ending United States military aggression and hegemony. unfortunately, his speech last night and the proposals contained therein just seem way too much like more of the same. i keep hoping that he, and Democrats in general, will stop being so afraid of the Republicans and the farther-right-than-Republicans, but it seems the Dems still can’t manage to grow much of a spine. At least that is how it looks to me, like Obama and Dems in general are afraid to take bold action for real peace, because then the right wing will label them as “soft on terrorism,” just like in the past it was “soft on communism,” and in other settings it is “soft on drugs,” or “soft on crime,” etc etc ad nauseam. This has been, IMO, a long running theme that appears to go back at least to the Carter Administration, when a basically well meaning and decent person (President Carter) was unfairly smeared as a “wimp” and replaced by the belligerent warmonger Ronald Reagan. And it is not like Carter REALLY was all that less hawkish in terms of actual policy! And ever since then, it seems like Democrats have almost always bent over backwards to prove that they are just as kick ass and gung ho as the Republicans, instead of offering a real alternative of REAL peace and justice for all. Which really kinda makes me wish i had voted for the Green Party ticket of McKinney and Clemente after all. And yes, Nancy, i agree that the more the USA resorts to military action, the more that “they hate us” in Afghanistan, Iraq, wherever else the US decides to send military. And that just ends up strengthening the hand of the likes of the Taliban, Ahmadinejad, and other fundamentalist extremists.
I don’t think that the Democrats are afraid of standing up to the Republicans, I think it’s that most of them don’t want to. The vast majority of Democrats aren’t “progressive” when it comes to war, they don’t want to take “real action” on peace. They believe in American military hegemony and gladly accept the millions they get from defense contractors. It’s not that they are deep down progressive and are just waiting to show it, and we need to stop lying to ourselves about that and support candidates who actually are progressive. I mean Obama is fulfilling a campaign promise right now but ramping up the war, why do we think he is a dove at heart when he is doing what he has promised to do for years in being a hawk?
I don’t believe a surge is productive or that he will be able to pull them by 2011. What I don’t like is generalisations that the people of these countries hate us. I don’t have tons to base it one but I do work w/a woman who emigrated here from Iraq just a few years ago(after the war was well underway). She just paints a different picture entirely. That they appreciate being not under Saddam anymore, but would like us to leave as well. I imagine the average person in these countries is better off without people like Saddam and the Taliban in power. Or maybe they are just better off in certain ways and worse off in others. I don’t know. I only know what I hear first hand.
With a basic understanding of international relations, I was very happy with Obama’s speech last night for several reasons. America’s goals: “Peace, Prosperity, and Human Dignity.” America will advocate for international human rights. It was disheartening to hear him announce the War on Terror as a project with no end in sight, basically stating this era of militarism will go on for who knows how long. “It will test our endurence” I think he said. Finally focusing on Al Qaeda is something we should have been doing all along, and he specifically called out Yemen and Somalia as the next places we will go in pursuit of them if we have to. Most importantly, we are not doing this alone. All of Obama’s foreign relation policies are pursued in agreement with other nations, and I think he is doing a great job in reversing America’s reputation as an arrogant hegemony. He stated last night that we have a lot to do within America to ensure our prosperity in the future, acknowledged differenct impacts of globalization, We need our troops home for this reason. I LOVED that he said that we don’t want to be at war; we’re not interested in taking your resources. I loved that he spoke directly to the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan and positively acknowledged the Islamic faith. He took the time to plan an exit strategy before adding troops. I also love his policy on Iran. Let’s give his foreign policy a chance. I think he has his sh*t together. So, yes. I was impressed. I heard a Republican senator say this morning that he supports the plan b/c although he may not agree with every single aspect of it, Obama is the president. This is the choice he’s made. It’s nice that this sentiment still exists among some people and politicians. Also, he stated that Congress should easily pass the funding bill with bipartisan support. We’ll see..
I’m calling him “President Johnson” from now on. Practically all of the major players in Afghanistan are warlords and crooks of some kind. Several are known rapists. The non-Taliban forces share Taliban ideology, and anyone who speaks truth to power – Karzai, Taliban, Hekmatyar, Karzai the druglord, etc. – either live surrounded by bodyguards or turn up dead. The only groups and individuals who received any kind of political support and protection over the past thirty years were those willing to kill for an outside force. It is little wonder that the Afghan government is full of guys on the take and violent thugs, as those were the people who had already received gobs of money and power, and were perfectly positioned to carry on as usual when NATO decided to get involved. It pains me that my generation is one draft away from reliving Vietnam. I might get a personal dose of harsh modern history anyway – a relative ships out to that mess in January. Alphonse Karr was right.
To be clear, that list of people in the middle of my last post was intended as a woefully incomplete list of people and groups in power to varying degrees, of whom it is dangerous to speak the truth about. Malalai Joya spoke in my little burg a couple of weeks ago, and her words are still reverberating in my head.
“It was disheartening to hear him announce the War on Terror as a project with no end in sight, basically stating this era of militarism will go on for who knows how long.” There is no end in sight, whether we stay in Afghanistan or not. We will be fighting somewhere in the Islamic world for the next fifty years. And really, that’s not so extraordinary. There’s scarcely a year in U.S. history where we haven’t had men in contact somewhere on the planet. The best you can hope for is that the wars will be smaller police actions as opposed to huge counter-insurgencies.