This is the link to the article by Cristian Parenti and the article is posted below in its entirety:
For Obama the Road to Reelection Runs Through Kabul - Or So He Thinks
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christian-parenti/for-obama-the-road-to-ree_b_380459.html
My post on the Huffington Post in response to an article by Christian Parenti which I am sure Barack Obama's hacks will read:
I disagree with you on the reasons for this war--- but this disagreement is neither here nor there; the killing has to stop.
Obama is carrying out the McCain/Palin agenda of endless wars creating untold death, destruction and misery for large sections of humanity while as a result of funding these dirty wars for whatever reasons: oil, gas, regional domination, political popularity--- the needs of the American people go unmet--- our right to real health care reform that includes a public health care system providing free, comprehensive, all-inclusive, pre-natal to grave health care, publicly funded, publicly administered and publicly delivered; decent housing; good schools providing quality education; and jobs at real living wages--- all remain ellusive as trillions of dollars are squandered on killing abroad so the Wall Street merchants of death and destruction can profit while maintaing the military-financial-industrial complex of which maximum corporate profits is the only goal.
The only way Barack Obama's killing spree in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq will be brought to an end is when the American people send this con-artist and flim-flam man turned health insurance salesman who hypocritically manipulated and hoodwinked the American people into electing him president with his lies of "change" and "hope"--- is when the American people deliver Obama a very clear message:
No peace; no votes!
End the killing now!
Agreed: Whatever the outcome, Obama has made it clear: he is willing to kill to get reelected.
Article:
For Obama the Road to Reelection Runs Through Kabul - Or So He Thinks
The real goals of the Afghanistan escalation are domestic and electoral. Like Lyndon Johnson who escalated in Vietnam, Obama lives in mortal fear of being called a wimp by Republicans.
To cover his flank and look tough in the next US elections, Obama is expanding the war in Afghanistan. To look strong in front of swing voters he will sacrifice the lives of hundreds of US soldiers; allow many more to be horribly maimed; waste a minimum of $30 billion in public money; and in the process kill many thousands of Afghan civilians.
It is political theater, nothing else. What are the other possible explanations for Obama's escalation? And why has he pledged to start drawling down the new deployment after only a year of fighting?
Is it to get the job done? To rebuild Afghanistan? To kill Osama Bin Laden and crush Al Qaeda? No, all those goals are nearly impossible. And Al Qaeda is too small and internationally defused to destroy.
Some say that Afghanistan is about a pipeline to export gas from Central Asia. Nonsense -- only a maniac would invest large sums of money in building a pipeline there. In the late 1990s the Argentine firm Bridas and the US firm Unocal jockeyed for the right to build such a pipeline. But that dream, always tentative, has evaporated. Afghanistan will never be stable enough for such a project.
Others say the Afghan war is about establishing US military bases to menace China, Russia and Iran. Indeed, the US now has bases on either side of Iran due to its occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. And small bases in Central Asia. But these do not require this new escalation.
The real purpose of these 300,000 soldiers is to make Obama look tough as he heads toward the next US presidential election.
As a landlocked, underdeveloped, fragmented buffer state with few resources, Afghanistan has long served as a means to get at other issues. Consider the history of how the US has used Afghanistan.
First, during the Cold War, Carter then Regan used it as the Soviet "bear trap." Then George W Bush used it to trampoline into Iraq. The Bush administration discussed régime change in Iraq at one of its first cabinet meetings. Among other things, they wanted direct economic control, and indirect geostrategic control, over Iraq's vast oil wealth. That has been partially accomplished, as witnessed by the recent Exxon and Shell deals there.
The only credible way into Iraq was via Afghanistan. On October 12, 2001 Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Paul Wolfowitz, actually suggested that the US skip an invasion of Afghanistan and go directly to Iraq. But that would have made coalition building impossible. After all, Al Qaeda was in the Taliban's Afghanistan.
So, the Afghan invasion was done - but on the cheap, fast and light. And then for eight years Afghanistan festered as the forgotten other war.
Then came the US presidential elections of 2008. Obama promised to end the Iraq war. But living in fear of being called a wimp, he too used Afghanistan. It became a rhetorical charm, a political mojo in his masculine war dance: He promised to lose Iraq (withdrawal or redeploy if you prefer), but do so while salvaging our national honor by winning the "necessary" war in Afghanistan. In short - he used Afghanistan to show that we was not the soft, meek, scared, pussified, little Democrat portrayed in GOP spin.
Wait, you say, most Americans want out of Afghanistan! So what.
US Presidential Elections are not decided by the majority of voters but rather by swing voters, in swing states. By "Reagan Democrats" and "Clinton Conservatives." By a sliver of older, whiter, middle and working-class men and (less so) women, in rural and suburban Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Tennessee, Michigan, etc.
This demographic has a strong sense of national honor, a fondness for the military, a traditional sense of masculinity and the role of violence in ordering the world, and perhaps a too simple view of international politics. Obama feels he must go to the polls able to tell them he was not afraid to fight, that he made a good effort in Afghanistan.
Never mind the reality of the war. What matter is what it will it look like. Nay, what it will feel like to swing voters. Will they believe the young Black President with the funny Muslim name cut and run?
There is nothing else to Obama's Afghan strategy. The war is a lost cause, but a useful story. Victory in Afghanistan is re-election in 2012.
But the ghost of LBJ's re-election surrender in 1968 stalks the young president. The irony is that if Obama cannot claim progress and begin drawing down in time, his Afghanistan gamble may backfire and cost him a second term in the White House.
Whatever the outcome, Obama has made it clear: he is willing to kill to get reelected.