Afghanistan: Are You Ready For Your Close-Up?

GATES: 17K TROOPS NEEDED IN AFGHANISTAN

The drumbeat of war emanating from Washington is not the deafening booms of a thousand timpani which led President Bush to invade Iraq, but the likelihood of expanding the war in Afghanistan sounds a bit like a smooth jazz rhythm--cool and barely nuanced--a bit like the new president.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates testified to the Senate Armed Service Committee today the need for 17,000 more troops in Afghanistan within the next few months. On Friday, reports surfaced that President Obama ordered military drones to bomb Taliban extremists in the Northwestern Pakistan which killed 22. Also, Gates reiterated the Status of Force Agreement signed by the U.S. and Iraq in June, will leave Iraq bare of American troops by 2011.

The Obama administration's call for an expansion of involvement in Afghanistan comes as no surprise, despite calling the war in Iraq the wrong war. Throughout Obama's presidential campaign he was the only candidate who focused on Pakistan--Afghanistan's neighbor to the South and enabler of the Taliban in the Waziristan region. Americans may have inadvertently bundled both conflicts into one and find the decision to send more troops to the regions a bit contradictory. But, isn't this what liberals have always said about Bush's follies in the Middle East: the war in Afghanistan was justified, the war in Iraq was not. But, the situation today is vastly different than 2002.

Noted Middle East expert Juan Cole says a returning focus to Afghanistan could make it "Obama's Vietnam," meaning "Obama may be falling into the Lyndon Johnson Vietnam trap, of escalating a predecessor's halfhearted war into a major quagmire." Cole sees the recent attack on Pakistan without prior interaction with the government as a "bad sign."

It is not clear if Obama really believes that the fractious tribes of the Pakistani northwest can be subdued with some airstrikes and if he really believes that U.S. security depends on what happens in Waziristan. If he thinks the drone attacks on FATA are a painless way to signal to the world that he is no wimp, he may find, as Lyndon Johnson did, that such military operations take on a momentum of their own, and produce popular discontents that can prove deadly to the military mission.

Matthew Yglesias writing in The American Prospect agrees with this assumption and says we also need to retire the term "war on terror" lest it continues to hamper the fight in Afghanistan and the entire region. Much of the conflict in Afghanistan is intertwined with Pakistan. As William Dalrymple writes in a New York Review of Books article on author Ahmed Rashid's new book, Descent into Chaos, the Pakistani intelligence apparatus has a history of encouraging the Taliban in Afghanistan as a friendly bulwark against India and no longer encourages its own self-interests.

It is for this reason that many in the army still believe that the jihadis make up a more practical defense against Indian dominance than even nuclear weapons. For them, supporting a range of jihadi groups in Afghanistan and Kashmir is not an ideological or religious whim so much as a practical and patriotic imperative—a vital survival strategy for a Pakistani state that they perceive to be threatened by India's ever-growing power and its alliance with the hostile Karzai regime in Kabul.

The Obama administration seems bent on resolving Afghanistan through Pakistan. This could take years, though. With the swift change in course comes apprehension for Americans weary of seven years of conflict comes questions. Will Afghanistan threaten to gobble up the next four years like Iraq destroyed the Bush presidency? Iran also cannot be forgotten in this equation. With Afghani elections later this summer, Iran may be need to barter a positive post-Karzai era.

Bush: Arrogant To The End

Our enemies are patient and determined to strike again. America did nothing to seek or deserve this conflict. But we have been given solemn responsibilities, and we must meet them. We must resist complacency. We must keep our resolve. And we must never let down our guard.

--President Bush speaking at his farewell speech to the nation.

President Bush looked tired. His hair gray. His neck visibly thin, barely filling his starched white collar. His farewell address tonight revealed that certain grace that initially created a brief bond with a certain swath of America. He thanked Uncle Dick, had loving words for his wife, daughters and even mom and dad. You almost felt sorry for him. Some tender part of you said you might miss him--not his disastrous policies--but, his goofiness, his sneer and even the universally accepted notion of him the Dolt-in-Chief.

Empathy with President Bush only goes so far. He can't hide from his cocky hubris. It is omnipresent and so much a part of his soul that he cannot stifle it. Many early news reports of tonight's address focused on one pull-quote, "we must never let down our guard." As if we were transported just for old time's sake back to 2003 when the mainstream media walked in line with everything we know was false about the invasion of Iraq. Bush is still fighting the terrorists while the rest of us of are fighting the debt collectors.

Bush's retro bravado is not the most intriguing part of the above mentioned paragraph, instead three sentence beforehand he says, "America did nothing to seek or deserve this conflict." How could such an inflammatory and purely arrogant line be glossed over? The United States did nothing to provoke the ire of the perpetrators of 9/11 and the entire Middle East?

If this was the oblivious and ignorant rationale for the crumbling of the next six years, was it all worth it?

There was not a singular event that caused al-Qaeda to attack seven years ago, but over 50 years of American intervention in the region. Arrogance which continually slapped the downtrodden adherents of Islam in the fact although in a usually covert, but rarely as upfront as the style Bush preferred. The U.S. has toppled (or attempted to) governments throughout the region with Iran, Syria, Egypt just to name a few. The U.S. played both side of the Iran-Iraq War, supported Saddam Hussein before turning on him and generally played the Middle East with hegemony deserving of a King. We were happy to spill their blood for their oil.

The U.S. did plenty to deserve 9/11. It did not deserve the loss of 3,000 innocent people, but then again, our government has not been very careful in differentiating insurgents from innocents, either.

Code Pink Awaits Pre-Dawn Protesters From Across Nation

POTENTIAL CLASH A PRELUDE TO CONTENTIOUS CITY COUNCIL MEETING

By Steven Tavares

BERKELEY, Calif - Members of the anti-war group, Code Pink, camped in front of the old Berkeley City Hall Monday night awaiting an early morning clash with pro-war groups angry over the city council’s stand against a Marines recruiting center.

The Berkeley City Council is slated to discuss the controversial decision to draft a letter declaring the Marines unwelcome in the city on Tuesday night.

In the meantime, both sides are girding themselves for a contentious display of protesting in front of the Maudelle Shirek City Hall beginning at 5 a.m.

Code Pink organized an emergency 24-hour demonstration starting at 7 p.m. Monday night that will lead into the city council meeting Tuesday night.

Organizer from the pro-war group Move America Forward countered with a pledge to arrive for their own demonstration at the crack of dawn.

“They believe they’re protecting our children. We’re not at odds with that. Some of us just have different ideas on how to do it,” says Berkeley resident, Patty Bailey.

Erik Freeman, who served time in the Vietnam War, drove his RV from Bakersfield as a member of Move America Forward and arrived early to witness the protesters beforehand.

“This whole thing is about picking on the Marines,” said Freeman, “Our thing is to make it clear to the city council that we’re unhappy with their resolution.”

Freeman was also unimpressed with the manner in which the protesters were behaving.

“For a war protest, they’re having a whole lot of fun,” said Freeman.

The scene on Martin Luther King, Jr. Way had elements of a carnival with protesters clad in pink shirts dancing on the sidewalk, singing protest songs and snacking on vegan meals donated by a local eatery.

“Code Pink showed up for a pajama party,” said Freeman.

Cynthia Papermaster, another member of Code Pink, expects the pro-war protesters, some of which are believed to be traveling from as far as Colorado, will be discourteous and aiming to provoke a physical confrontation.

“We’re planning on being peaceful and non-confrontational,” said Papermaster.

Others are surprised by the worldwide attention this topic has received and see it as a telling sign of how unpopular the war has become.

“This is an indication of how scared they are about losing the war,” said Zanne Joi, who has been affiliated with Code Pink since its inception.

“We live in a country of lies and spin and one of the most successful lies is that if you’re against the war, you’re against the soldiers. I’m proud that our city council did not buckle under the pressure,” said Joi.

Freeman believes these types of demonstrations against the war puts our troops at risk and shows our enemies our weakness.

“They’re just allowing our opponents across the ocean to say, ‘Look, America is against the war’,” said Freeman.

The organizer behind Code Pink has staged weekly demonstrations in front of the recruiting center located on Shattuck Avenue for months.

Using a bullhorn and motherly powers of persuasion they attempt to detour prospective men from enlisting.

According to Papermaster, they have been known to enter the center and dissuade the men on the spot.

Primarily made up of mothers against the war, they successfully closed down an Army recruitment center on Broadway Avenue in downtown Oakland last year after continual protests.

Obama Calls For Troop Withdrawal From Iraq

BEWARE: DEMS WILL BE BLAMED WHEN MIDDLE EAST CRUMBLES

Sen. Barack Obama is the first potential presidential candidate to call for a measured withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq.

Virtually culling his stance straight from the Iraq Study Group's report last December, Obama outlined his position on his website today.

The junior senator from Illinois is calling for a three-pronged withdrawal that includes a de-escalation of the war, a repudiation of the President's plan to increase troops in the region, in addition to adding benchmarks to measure the Iraqis improvement in the next year.

The senator's bold move hopes to differentiate himself from the frontrunner, Sen. Hillary Clinton's wishy-washy plan for Iraq and comes amidst a rising tide of opposition in Congress.

Sen. Arlen Specter today joined fellow respected Republicans, Sen. John Warner (R-VA) and Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) in harshly questioning President Bush's bullheaded position over a 21,000 troop escalation.

The president's stubbornness on this issue may seem like it was taken from the playbook of Julius Caesar, but it has it's reasoning and Democrats should be careful when initiating a straight withdrawal from Iraq.

In hindsight, Democrats should have stop this war when things didn't add up on 2003, but they didn't and that is where the biggest blow to our society occurred. By turning the tide in the complete opposite direction is far more harmful.

Saddam Hussein, despite being a despot, kept Iraq and its divergent factions together in a region perennially on a precarious slope towards chaos. Warnings that a shuffle of power would do more harm than good should have been listened to. Why they weren't lies within the ulterior motives Bush and Co. had in mind.

Any Democrat who dares calling for a immediate and measured withdrawal needs to also detail how the region will be stabilized when we're gone. The Shia and Sunnis will never coexist within a country, but the ruling party Shia within Iraq can easily coexist with the Shia-ruling Iranians to the west which would make the Saudis nervous in the north. An antsy Kingdom means a very nervous oil market which, in turn, makes driving a SUV in America a five dollar-a-mile endeavor.

Though, more than a monetary problem, the divide of these two Muslim sects will destabilize the middle east very quickly without the U.S. in the region. The health of the Iraqi democracy is of far little importance when the overall layout of the middle east is considered.

The Iranians are more than poised to jump into the fray in Iraq, not militarily, but in a calculated effort to use their former enemy as a pawn against the west and others like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and even Israel.

It comes down to this. The Bush administration is playing coy on the issue. Almost baiting the Democrats to bend to the will of the people. The Democrats are looking feeble to the dismay of many who believe with their newfound electoral power they should have nothing to worry about. The war is never going to get better, so why worry? They're apprehensive because a full withdrawal will turn this war far worse and they know it.

Bush, on the other hand, is actually in a win-win situation. If Democrats let him send more troops to Iraq he gets what he craves--more time to run the clock out on his presidency. If Democrats push for withdrawal and win, the whole house of cards will crash to the floor and it will be the next Democratic nominee who will be blamed.

Democrats like Obama need to be wary of the catch-22 Bush is perpetrating on the them before they get swift-boated into being the problem in the voter eyes come November 2008.

Hillary's Iraq War Dilemma

Darrell Hammond as Chris Matthews interviews Sen. Hillary Clinton on Saturday Night Live

It may be a silly send up of Sen. Hillary Clinton and MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Saturday Night Live last Saturday, but it's worth noting that by officially throwing her hat into the race for the White House the attitudes and perceptions of Hillary the Candidate versus Hillary the First Lady are beginning to form.

The writers at Saturday Night Live just may have crafted the prevailing thought of Democrats across America with this line:

"I think most Democrats know me. They understand that my support for the war was always insincere."

We're likely to witness a Sen. Clinton vaguely extroplating her shifting positions on the war in tones similarly to that line. There is a very high liklihood that the stormy atmosphere on Capitol Hill and the rest of America regarding this war will likely persist. Because no matter the amount of resolutions against the surge in Iraq the Bush administration is dead-set on making it happen; not because it's the best tonic for the military's problems or the most righteous, but because it will literally run the clock out on this President's watch. There's is no other reason for it.

With the scenario of today still percolating in 2008, it will be to the advantage of those who stood against the war (Barack Obama) and those who either reversed course earlier enough (John Edwards) and those without much of a public record either way (Bill Richardson and Chuck Hagel)

In Hillary's case, her vote authorizing the President to invade Iraq is no different than Sen. John Kerry's or any candidate on the Republican side, but it is likely that by lying low the past six months regarding her opposition to the war as its quickly bogged down in the theater of war and opinion polls, her strength on this singular issue has been severely sapped by her competition thereby giving away much of her virtual lead and possibly campaign dollars to people like Obama and Edwards.

This race is on. The question is: can the prohibitive front runner win the presidency wire to wire without the country hearing the same old song of that it's heard through one Clinton and two Bush's?