Posted by Phil Giraldi on 11/30/09 1:20 PM   [Newer: Bush Lite Becomes Bush On Steroids] [Older: What does "Finish the Job" Mean?]

Sometimes America's policymakers seem blind to the absurdity of what is going on right in front of them.  In today's Washington Post there was a headline article "Newly deployed Marines to target Taliban Bastion" which noted that a major offensive against the Taliban in Helmand province earlier this year was "slowed" due to "political pressure from the Afghan government."  Confirmation that Afghanistan's so-called government has only limited authority over a war being fought on its own territory rather suggests that Americans are little more than an army of occupation dying to support a latter day Potemkin village-north-of-the Khyber Pass for which they have little or no respect.  Does any American really think that such an objective justifies sending our children into battle at enormous cost both economically and morally?

And worse is coming.  Like many other Americans I am dreading the Obama speech Tuesday night which will undoubtedly prove that even smart presidents can deliberate for a very long time and still get everything wrong.  The problem is that Obama never bothered to talk to Ron Paul or any other principled critic of the entire AfPak and Iraq venture.  When you only listen to one side of the argument you will get what you deserve.  The problem is that we will all have to pay for the bad decision...

I read on a blog site a comment this weekend suggesting that we Americans should begin to make preparations for an AfPak War Memorial in Washington.  The blogger proposed a nice, currently vacant plot of land on the Mall next to the Vietnam Memorial so we can keep all our dismal failures in one place.  As the Vietnam memorial is already down in a hole, the AfPak moument could be a hole that keeps getting larger and deeper.  To enter it you have to pass under a Dantesque gateway that has "Quagmire" written across it.  There might even be enough room for a Global War on Terror monument, possibly a rendition of a stylized Washington bureaucrat shown spending large sums of public money on nothing. 

Posted 11/29/09 10:29 PM mikegavin12 east meadow, NY

There will be protest on Obama sending more troops in Afghanista.

Posted 11/30/09 7:58 PM jeremy esposito Bellflower, CA

I like the ideas about the "new" monuments. Maybe our children will learn the TRUTH instead of government propaganda.

Posted 12/01/09 09:57 AM Wildkats1 St Louis, MO

Over eight years in Iraq and now we have to listen to another president promote the increase of US troops in Afghanistan. More hopeless wars and never-ending US occupation and killing of our soldiers in the Middle east. I pray there's protest. I pray that there is just as many peace-partiers as there is tea-partiers. Jesse Ventura was on Larry King Live last nite. How are we going to pay for this? Sarcastically but true he said, let's have a war tax, let's bring back the draft, let's have one family member of every congressman/woman be sent to Afghan who votes to increase troop occupation there. I am so disgusted with this administration just the same old same .... I can't stand to watch him tonite. My heart just wrenches every time I see a young man or woman enter the Military Entrance Processing Center. There's no opportunities for them in the rural areas, all the manufacturing jobs have gone overseas and now so do they ... to die!