And the Legions March on, Americas Farcical Democracy in Action
Well, the blush is off the rose, Obama has made it clear that he is going to continue to send American troops to faraway foreign lands in the name of protecting America:
“And with our friends and allies, we will forge a new and comprehensive strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan to defeat al Qaeda and combat extremism. Because I will not allow terrorists to plot against the American people from safe havens half a world away.” — President Barack Obama
It must be nice to have God-like powers. And this isn’t just idle liberal (snort) rhetoric, President Obama just asked Congress for an additional $200 billion dollars to fund the Pentagon’s adventures in Asia. And it turns out that his “pullout” from Iraq involves leaving behind 50,000 troops … who will be engaging in combat. That’s a pullout?
It gets worse, let’s sum this up:
- 17,000+ additional troops to Afghanistan.
- 50,000 troops to remain in combat in Iraq indefinitely.
- Continuing missile attacks on Pakistan.
- Yet another increase in military spending.
- An additional $205 billion military spending in Iraq/Afghanistan.
- Continuation of the “War on Terror” rhetoric.
Did I leave anything out? I’m pretty sure this is the exact same policy Bush followed the past seven years, endless US crusades abroad, ever increasing US war spending, sophomoric good guy vs bad guy propaganda. Didn’t we just have an election where we were promised change? Changing focus from one stupid quagmire to an even stupider quagmire isn’t change. It’s like the old army joke where after a ten day hike the Captain announces one morning that he has good news and bad new for the tired dirty troops. First the good news, today the troops get a change of underwear for the first time in weeks! Huzzas all around. Then the Captain announces the bad news: “Smith, you trade underwear with Jones, Wilson, you trade with Jenkins, … “
At least during the USA Civil War we got to vote on the war, one can hope that if McClellan got elected he would have negotiated a peace with the South. Who knows though, since then almost every Democrat who promised peace has instead brought war. Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson are the big three, and now Obama has joined their august ranks. It’s pretty depressing really. Partly because endless military interventions overseas are not making us safer, the opposite in fact. Mostly because we don’t even have a say in the matter. We can elect Republicans who promise us endless war, or we can elect Democrats who promise peace but bring us endless war. Not to mention endless war spending. I’ve decided Eisenhower is the last President I respect, I’ll write about him soon.
The point here being … anyone who still thinks Obama is a liberal is, well, fooling themselves. See how diplomatically I put that? There is nothing liberal about ordering 17,000 troops to Afghanistan, launching missiles into Pakistan, or increasing the already mind-numbingly bloated war budget. All because a tiny handful of extremists plotted against us? There’s a lot more extremists plotting against us now than before 9/11, adding more fat to the fire isn’t going to help. Sigh. It’s been a depressing week. I was pretty underwhelmed by the rest of Obama’s speech to Congress as well. He said a lot of nice stuff, but didn’t exactly say how we are going to pay for it all. I dunno, I no longer think we are re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Now we’re redistributing oars in the lifeboats. I am not reassured.
Moving right along, not much else in the news but the usual litany of economic bad news. No worries though, it’s all gonna turn around in a year or two, you betcha. There is at least some good news. Yes, The Simpsons is set to break the record and become the longest running prime-time drama in US television history. It will over take Gunsmoke in a little while. That Gunsmoke and The Simpsons are the two longest running dramas in US TV history says something about our society, I’m not sure what it is, but I don’t think it’s going to make a positive impression on the aliens who may be watching.
In any event all promised posts are on the way, psychopathic CEOs, God and pebbles, and the rest. I was just so disgusted by Obama’s complete sell-out or whatever one wants to call it I had to rant about it today. All America did is elect a silver-tongued George Bush. Not that I was ever terribly impressed with Obama, but this is just pathetic.
Have a great weekend everyone.
(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It is not being used for profit and is central to illustrating the post. I was unable to determine who the credit and copyright belongs to. It’s an image of a Soviet helicopter downed by Mujahadeen in Afghanistan sometime in the eighties. Deja Vu all over again. I thought it was a striking picture too.)
Doug's Darkworld 
We could stop paying taxes as a start..
but hey, they print all the money THEY want.
Obama is intent on flying the USA into the ground.
ET
February 27, 2009 at 11:48 am
Never did think Obama was a liberal. Dennis Kucinich is a liberal. Big diff, and if people would stop listening to the right wingnuts who call every moderate a liberal, they wouldn’t be so disappointed when the Democrats they elect turn out to be moderates. What’s more, long before Obama was elected, he said he would focus on Afghanistan, so I don’t know why anyone is surprised about that, either. I also appreciate that there will be an end to no-bid contracts. Nice to close Guantanamo Bay, too.
And not for nothing, but Obama IS different than Bush, Doug. As a woman who lived in fear for her reproductive rights for eight years, I can promise you that.
Pandionna
February 27, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Obama is doing exactly what he said he would do during the campaign. Why this seems to convince some people that he is betraying their false notions of what he would do in office, I don’t know. He has clearly changed the direction of this country from the last eight years, but that doesn’t mean that in one month we’ve traveled very far in any new direction yet.
Mahakal / מהכאל
February 27, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Or, as I saw in a comment elsewhere today:
I was given to understand there would be magical golden unicorns that pooped peppermint-flavored ice cream for everyone.
It has been OVER A MONTH since the inauguration and I have yet to receive my unicorn!
Clearly, Obama is worse than ten Hitlers!
Mahakal / מהכאל
February 27, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Doug what did you expect? It was amusing listening to people talk about what a war monger John McCain was during the last few months of the election. In mainstream politics there really aren’t that many options for a President, no matter their party. It likely that McCain’s policy, had he been elected would have been nearly identical to Obama’s up until now. Obama actually did the right thing here, he listened to the Generals according to a recent article. He has no experience with the military, much like our last President and he was smart to listen to the people who have nothing to gain or lose by proposing a certain course of action.
BlasphemousBill
February 28, 2009 at 6:51 am
Why let Generals dictate foreign policy?
Generals fight wars, period.
It is Obama’s policy to stay in Iraq AND expand a war that can never be won in Afghanistan.
Wake up and smell the coffee folks. You got dud president..
You could have had Ron Paul.. and gotten REAL change.
ET
February 28, 2009 at 7:55 am
Well, I’m certainly happy about some of his social policies and his sane approach to reproductive rights. It is nice to have a president who knows that education and birth control is the best way to reduce the number of abortions, not Bronze Age moralizing repackaged as social policy. However, when I’m on bus hurtling toward a chasm, no matter how true it may be, “The new bus driver sure seems like a decent fellow” is scant comfort. Or in military jargon, no amount of tactical perfection is going to win a war if the strategy is fatally flawed.
I’m not terribly surprised by Obama so far, but I did have hopes that he was saying some of what he was saying to get elected, and that once in office the true Obama might be a bit more liberal. We’ll see though, the nation (and world) is in uncharted waters, anything can happen.
I’m mostly just appalled at how little real democracy we have in this country, we have a one party dictatorship. Because the party has two factions doesn’t make it any less of a dictatorship.
unitedcats
February 28, 2009 at 9:08 am
I don’t know, Doug. I’m happy that Barack Obama didn’t lie to get himself elected. That’s all too common behavior for politicians, and it just means you cannot rely on anything they say.
As for Ron Paul, ET, he wasn’t the nominee of any party for president. He did not run in the general election as an independent. So no, we could not have voted for Ron Paul. Not that we’d have wanted to.
Mahakal / מהכאל
February 28, 2009 at 6:36 pm
A duopoly is not choice.
And you can write in any one you want.
ET
March 1, 2009 at 4:23 pm
I’m disappointed, but not too shocked. I suspected that Obama has had little experience with military issues. Senators don’t need to know much about strategy, do they?
“We could stop paying taxes as a start..”
And what good would that do, if all citizens stopped paying taxes? That wouldn’t help the economy. It would only hurt us even more. I live in New England and taxes pay the plowing crews. And we get plenty of snow over here, so we need the crews to work.
Light
March 1, 2009 at 7:38 pm
ET, why don’t you just stay home then?
Yes, you can write in anyone you want, but if the candidate you like wasn’t running a write-in campaign, he could not likely be elected that way.
Anyhow, you’re right that we should have more choices, and there were third party options. Ron Paul wasn’t one of them, however.
Mahakal / מהכאל
March 1, 2009 at 8:53 pm
He was a choice in my state. So he was a choice.
Your stuck on a choice of two.. both of which are leading you into the biggest depression in history.
A suggestion to all is prepare while you can. This economy, and the world, is going down in spectacular fashion.
I bought a plow.
ET
March 2, 2009 at 6:31 am
ET, we’re in a bad economic situation, no doubt about it, thanks to the collapse of the bubble asset values created by deregulated banking. Blaming Obama for this is counterintuitive, to say the least. Whether the stimulus passed so far is enough may be in question, to be sure. We’ll probably need to come back for more eventually, and we’re nowhere near the bottom yet.
Enjoy your plow, I guess.
Mahakal / מהכאל
March 2, 2009 at 6:55 am
YEs, no doubt Obama will keep shoveling money upstairs..
Its called trickle down economics. The bankers will keep having their parties at your expense.
Good luck everyone… trickle trickle…
ET
March 2, 2009 at 8:14 am
ET, no doubt there will be more investment in some large financial houses, which I’d rather not see, but against the alternative economic collapse it’s hard to disagree with the short term necessity of propping things up. That said, the new administration is quite a bit more willing to dilute shareholder values and replace management, with the prospect of receivership on the horizon as a realistic possibility. In other words, unlike the previous administration, this is not just a give-away to wealthy connected friends.
As for the stimulus and other spending, this is going to the working men and women, putting money in people’s pockets to spend when they need it most. It is investing in long term infrastructure repair and improvements. It is providing millions of jobs to people who may well otherwise be unemployed due to the financial collapse. It is, in other words, a lifeline.
It’s far from an ideal situation, but your notion seems to be that doing nothing would be better. I disagree.
Mahakal / מהכאל
March 2, 2009 at 8:30 am
Worth reading James Baker’s take on the bank situation.
Mahakal / מהכאל
March 2, 2009 at 9:54 am
Dream on !
Hey everyone, it’s raining… trickle trickle
Is rain supposed to be yellow ?
ET
March 2, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Don’t drink that yellow snow.
Mahakal / מהכאל
March 2, 2009 at 7:32 pm
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Joe the Plumber goes down in flames, psychopathic CEOs, more Obama ramblings, and the end of life as we know it. « Doug’s Darkworld
March 3, 2009 at 12:03 am
From what I understand it’s not just a million bad mortgages that’s dragging the world down, it’s the debt to GDP ratio. It’s not just a few greedy bankers, it’s also a nation of greedy credit card users. From what I understand America’s debt to GDP ration hovered between 30 to 40% all through the 40s 50s 60s and 70s. In the 80s we hit 50%. In the year 2000 we hit… 100%. That’s right, for EVERY dollar of GDP there was a corresponding dollar of debt (btw that’s about 3.1 trillion dollars). We’ve been living well beyond our means for over 20 years, and now the whole world gets to pay the price.
Andrew
March 4, 2009 at 9:20 am
I think that Obama is perhaps still also trying to get or be in the good graces of the Right & appeal to all, also he doesn’t want to be looked as making the same mistakes that the Right feel that Clinton made in response to terrorism & fighting it. I like your blog a lot hopefully you can check out my site & blog, its just starting, but will hopefully be full of more interesting things soon. :-)
blog.blackirispublishing.net
gothceltgirl
March 13, 2009 at 3:21 pm