Obama: "This Is a War of Necessity"

Compared to Obama, Bush was either more focused in his support for special interests, or he was better at hiding the full nexus of it.

Obama seems to be running after a thing if it only has the appearance of being a strong, entrenched special interest, from the pharmaceutical to the military-industrial complex.

Substantive issues are of no concern to him. What counts for Obama is a promising feedback between special interest clout and his own power.

I find it ironic that the greatest threats to America did not emanate from Saddam Hussein or Osama; instead they are being spearheaded by a certain B. Hussein Obama.

The Dems could have stopped the Iraq and Afghanistan wars a long time ago, but they are well represented by the president's attitude.

Chrstopher Dowd at Anti-War.com has this to say:

Right now the American mainstream media is printing mountains of news stories and editorials and opinion pieces about the Afghanistan "elections." All of it is blather. All of it. This is an election where no political parties are allowed. This is an election for a government that does next to nothing but serve as a propaganda tool for an occupying army, an election where no one truly opposed to the U.S./NATO occupation is allowed to run. All the stories and opinion pieces on this election miss the plain, simple fact that this is an "election" being conducted under occupation and is seen by probably next to no one in Afghanistan, regardless of their politics or ideology, as legitimate.

In fact, this whole election production in Afghanistan is being staged more for Americans than Afghans. The election is meant to soothe a skeptical and impatient American public. Having lived with war and occupation propaganda of all types for 30 plus years, Afghans know better.

And it’s barely worth mentioning, as it is the sort of hypocrisy out of Washington that barely merits notice at this point, that the U.S., at one time, espoused the principle that elections held under foreign occupation were automatically illegitimate. But of course, elections held under American occupation are never illegitimate, because we are America and America is inherently good and selfless. The rules don’t apply to us, the exceptional and indispensable nation.

And Monday we got more of the same out of the president. Obama went before the VFW in Phoenix and did some rote, costless, and meaningless denunciation of Pentagon waste a month after approving a $636 billion "defense" budget. And then he told us why the Afghan war has to be fought:

"This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. This is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people.”

Other than possibly Ron Paul, there isn’t one person of renown in this country who would challenge that false justification for this meaningless war for war’s sake.

The entire article.

And Mick Hume ponders the British mood/thoughtlessness:

Why has there been so little opposition to the war in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion was launched in 2001? Why has it seemingly taken eight years for these people to realise that something is wrong? And what has changed to make them suddenly so concerned about a destructive military intervention they were happy to support for so long?

These questions are important, not simply as a matter of historical record, or so that those of us who have always opposed the war can indulge in we-told-you-so crowing. They matter because they reveal the weakness of what passes for an anti-war mood in the UK and the West today. [...]

There was little more evidence linking Afghanistan to the terror attacks of 9/11 than there was proof of Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. Those who suddenly protest that Britain has no clear achievable war aims in Afghanistan might like to remind us what exactly they thought those were eight years ago. The New Labour government’s favoured excuse for its Afghan war has changed more times than the minister of defence over that period, from terrorism to human rights, drugs, or women’s education. [...]

It is more important than ever to go back to first principles and assert the anti-interventionist case that some of us have been making since long before 2001: that these politically motivated interventions are as inherently undemocratic as they are unlikely to succeed, and are a disaster for all concerned. And it is important to learn to make that principled case against intervention more powerfully at the start of a crisis – not wait until messy and lengthy wars in political wastelands have made matters far worse and a solution all the harder to achieve.