Thursday, September 24, 2009
Conservatives look at retreat from Afghanistan
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Why any sane rational American would choose to run for President in 2008, inheriting the mass of problems left behind by the inept ideologue warriors of the Bush regime, is hard to fathom, and one can only admire the patriotism and willingness to submit to the loss of personal life and reputation on part of the candidates of both parties who ran. The main quality distinguishing the admirable from the purely fame-seeking was willingness to sacrifice ideology in favor of really saving the world, by compromise and rational thinking. President Obama has been the best example, and Senator McCane, always organizing nonpartisan reconciliations, was not far behind.
Despite their efforts, we are now a partisan country, with the Limbaugh types of “save the party, let the country take care of itself” bludgeoning the more reconciliation-minded Republicans in line. Osama’s Wednesday 9/9 speech and its reception highlighted the split. For those who worry, please do not, the health reform will go on, despite the ugly stuff. Foreign affairs are more pressing, Americans are dying.
To help prioritize the President’s problems in order of urgency, Afghanistan is on top of the list, with its heavy burn rate of young American manhood. What to do now is the problem, we are losing in Afghanistan, and Vietnam-like withdrawal is an option. It is therefore that a recent article by Patrick Buchanan, the most rational of right-wing ideologues, needs parsing. Writing in Human Events, the old Cold-War anti-Communist organ, which also sports Ann Coulter’s diatribes, Buchanan notes the Taliban’s growth in strength, and General Stanley McChrystal’s request for more troops, just leaked to the press, is proof. Buchanan notes that both in Korea and Vietnam the presidents who persisted in a losing fight, Harry Truman and LBJ, lost their second term bids, Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon came in, cut our losses and got reelected. But Obama has to more to worry about: the debacle that the Talibans would wreak, our rescue costs and the patriotic voters crying treason and cowardice. His response to Gen. McChrystal’s request for 20 to 40,000 troops will be the Rubicon to cross that will determine the future of his governance.
Buchanan’s article of September 9 elicited 250-plus responses in his right--wing conservative journal, definitely worthy of reviewing, even in part. Essentially they are thoughtful, evoking substantial back-and-forth debates (quite witty) among writers. Significantly, much less than 5% advocate continuing the war, regretfully, e.g., if the inexperienced Obama leaves, undoubtedly we will have come back to clean up, also quoting Obama as calling this a good and necessary war, so…Some suggest that the 110,000 Americans left in Iraq could clean it up in six months. Use drone bombers, fight Taliban with forays from safe places.
The withdrawal advocates are an overwhelming plurality. Some suggest arming our friends and leaving CIA and Strategic Forces detachments behind, but the majority favors outright retreat, speaking explicitly or by implication. Donald Rumsfeld and cohorts who did not go full tilt after bin Laden at Tora Bora are blamed. Several literate commentators quote savants, Winston Churchill (1899) about the intractable demands of Muslim religion, Julius Caesar about crossing the Rubicon, Lucanius of “the die is cast,” unnamed savants on Afghanistan as the graveyard of empires, and insert articles by historians, Andrew Bacevich (about Americans not learning from USSR failure) and Frederick Kagan. The inept Bush, his people, and the neocons are blamed. President Obama is seen mostly as rational relief from Bush, although some claims over his legitimacy emerge, and Jewish bankers and Israeli lobbyists are tied to the wars. The conspiracy theorists blame the internationalists and big banks/oil/traders, for Council of Foreign Relations-based destructive policies. All American presidents and candidates of both parties since Eisenhower have been CFR members, perhaps excepting Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinic. The Trilateral Commission and Bilderberg group also rise up from the past, as continued tools of the evil internationalists. [The nebulous Bilderberg group, sometimes dubbed the secret club for global elite, organized in 1954 as a committee government, business, academic and world trade officials, to work out American and West European policy and trade relationships, has long been blamed by the type of people who believe in the Dan Brown/Da Vinci Code and other mystics for bedeviling the world. It was sponsored by the Dutch royalty, and may have provided the structure for organizing the European Union. Its May 2009 annual meeting in Greece was attended by such Americans as Robert Zoelick, President of World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle of American Enterprise Institute,, banker James Wolfenson, presidents of Alcoa and Coca Cola and representatives of State Department, National Security Council, and Microsoft, It somehow manages to fly below the radar of the global anarchist groups, who haunt the G20, G8, IMF and World Bank conferences.]
One has to go to unusual sources to see whether this is such a split country as the media portray, and whether all rockbound Republicans are determined to sink the Obama government. Well, we are more together than apart, and the good of the country outweighs that of the party. Return to sanity is not far away.
Why any sane rational American would choose to run for President in 2008, inheriting the mass of problems left behind by the inept ideologue warriors of the Bush regime, is hard to fathom, and one can only admire the patriotism and willingness to submit to the loss of personal life and reputation on part of the candidates of both parties who ran. The main quality distinguishing the admirable from the purely fame-seeking was willingness to sacrifice ideology in favor of really saving the world, by compromise and rational thinking. President Obama has been the best example, and Senator McCane, always organizing nonpartisan reconciliations, was not far behind.
Despite their efforts, we are now a partisan country, with the Limbaugh types of “save the party, let the country take care of itself” bludgeoning the more reconciliation-minded Republicans in line. Osama’s Wednesday 9/9 speech and its reception highlighted the split. For those who worry, please do not, the health reform will go on, despite the ugly stuff. Foreign affairs are more pressing, Americans are dying.
To help prioritize the President’s problems in order of urgency, Afghanistan is on top of the list, with its heavy burn rate of young American manhood. What to do now is the problem, we are losing in Afghanistan, and Vietnam-like withdrawal is an option. It is therefore that a recent article by Patrick Buchanan, the most rational of right-wing ideologues, needs parsing. Writing in Human Events, the old Cold-War anti-Communist organ, which also sports Ann Coulter’s diatribes, Buchanan notes the Taliban’s growth in strength, and General Stanley McChrystal’s request for more troops, just leaked to the press, is proof. Buchanan notes that both in Korea and Vietnam the presidents who persisted in a losing fight, Harry Truman and LBJ, lost their second term bids, Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon came in, cut our losses and got reelected. But Obama has to more to worry about: the debacle that the Talibans would wreak, our rescue costs and the patriotic voters crying treason and cowardice. His response to Gen. McChrystal’s request for 20 to 40,000 troops will be the Rubicon to cross that will determine the future of his governance.
Buchanan’s article of September 9 elicited 250-plus responses in his right--wing conservative journal, definitely worthy of reviewing, even in part. Essentially they are thoughtful, evoking substantial back-and-forth debates (quite witty) among writers. Significantly, much less than 5% advocate continuing the war, regretfully, e.g., if the inexperienced Obama leaves, undoubtedly we will have come back to clean up, also quoting Obama as calling this a good and necessary war, so…Some suggest that the 110,000 Americans left in Iraq could clean it up in six months. Use drone bombers, fight Taliban with forays from safe places.
The withdrawal advocates are an overwhelming plurality. Some suggest arming our friends and leaving CIA and Strategic Forces detachments behind, but the majority favors outright retreat, speaking explicitly or by implication. Donald Rumsfeld and cohorts who did not go full tilt after bin Laden at Tora Bora are blamed. Several literate commentators quote savants, Winston Churchill (1899) about the intractable demands of Muslim religion, Julius Caesar about crossing the Rubicon, Lucanius of “the die is cast,” unnamed savants on Afghanistan as the graveyard of empires, and insert articles by historians, Andrew Bacevich (about Americans not learning from USSR failure) and Frederick Kagan. The inept Bush, his people, and the neocons are blamed. President Obama is seen mostly as rational relief from Bush, although some claims over his legitimacy emerge, and Jewish bankers and Israeli lobbyists are tied to the wars. The conspiracy theorists blame the internationalists and big banks/oil/traders, for Council of Foreign Relations-based destructive policies. All American presidents and candidates of both parties since Eisenhower have been CFR members, perhaps excepting Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinic. The Trilateral Commission and Bilderberg group also rise up from the past, as continued tools of the evil internationalists. [The nebulous Bilderberg group, sometimes dubbed the secret club for global elite, organized in 1954 as a committee government, business, academic and world trade officials, to work out American and West European policy and trade relationships, has long been blamed by the type of people who believe in the Dan Brown/Da Vinci Code and other mystics for bedeviling the world. It was sponsored by the Dutch royalty, and may have provided the structure for organizing the European Union. Its May 2009 annual meeting in Greece was attended by such Americans as Robert Zoelick, President of World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle of American Enterprise Institute,, banker James Wolfenson, presidents of Alcoa and Coca Cola and representatives of State Department, National Security Council, and Microsoft, It somehow manages to fly below the radar of the global anarchist groups, who haunt the G20, G8, IMF and World Bank conferences.]
One has to go to unusual sources to see whether this is such a split country as the media portray, and whether all rockbound Republicans are determined to sink the Obama government. Well, we are more together than apart, and the good of the country outweighs that of the party. Return to sanity is not far away.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 5:33 AM 
