Early in President Obama’s Campaign he stated, “This country is ready for a transformative politics of the sort that John F Kennedy, Ronald Regan, and Franklin Roosevelt represented.” Tuesday night Obama will unveil his Afghan strategy and the rest of the country and I expect “business as usual.”
From my perspective, and the general consensus of the American people is that the Afghan War is a no win situation. Obama’s escalation of troops is an extremely expensive initiative in the worst economic recession since the depression. Secretary Gates and General Mc Chrystal requested 40,000 additional troops, and it has been leaked that the president will authorize 30,000 to 34,000 troops on Tuesday night.
When this escalation was initially proposed, there was very little discussion on the cost of the additional troops. Based on the media’s preliminary numbers, the additional troops will cost the country on an annual basis $35- $40 billion. These are the expenses that the military is willing to acknowledge, because there are always expenses that are hidden and attached to another budget.
As Obama unveils his new Afghan strategy, he will have to explain and educate the American people on how we are going to pay for this new deployment of troops. On January 10, 2007 President Bush proposed the “Iraq Surge” and based on who you talk to it was a success. Nevertheless, we are still in Iraq and the war is costing our country over a trillion dollars and we are still deciding on the exit strategy.
Obama has stated, “that he will get the job done in Afghanistan” but no one has a definitive reason and purpose for our presence in the country. Our troops occupy different regions in a corrupt and poor country, where there is a dysfunctional infrastructure and government. The current President Karzai won the election through fraud and manipulation and now our government is going to invest money into the country and become a partner.
The ideals and the goals of the new Obama administration have not been transformative, but instead appear to be no different from his predecessor George W. Bush. Many of the same Bush’s advisors sit on the war council and it appears that our country is getting ready to thrown billions of dollars into the war machine. War is big business and millions of people have a job because of war.
The majority of Americans are against the war in Afghanistan but our leaders will continue to support a war with a no win situation. Obama’s decision will be no surprise to the country because the war machine needs to expand and grow to survive. The war machine is fundamental to our global strategy and there will always be a contradiction between our rhetoric and actions.
The vision will always be that we are fighting for peace, and the reality is that we are fighting to occupy another country. The companies that build weapons to protect our country need larger and more expansive contracts to remain in business. Their lobbyists spend millions of dollars with the government representatives and these military contracts are in the billions.
Nevertheless, it took Obama 94 days to determine the direction our country will take with Afghanistan. It is obvious that Obama challenged some of the fundamental policy decisions that are taken for granted by the war council. He was deliberate and took his time with the decision and hopefully he will have a comprehensive strategy that makes sense.
It is essential that the citizens show their displeasure with the war. As we listen to Obama’s new policy, we can begin to express our feelings about the Afghan War with letters to our congressional representative.
Even though we did not know what was discussed during the war council meetings, it appears that some thought went into the decision. Obama is aware that Americans cannot win this war and the question is “how will we get out.”
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Actually, I can’t get past the first paragraph. Roosevelt and Reagan were transformational presidents, but the only transformation Kennedy made was the move toward photogenic politicians (and we’ve suffered for it ever since). The ONLY reason he would throw JFK’s name in that list was an attempt to associate himself with the country’s belief that someone Kennedy was a good president (he was not). The fact that Obama wants to associate himself with a hollow president speaks loads about his low opinion of voters and his own self-view. Camelot fell, remember?