London, GB | Formerly of New York, Buenos Aires, Fife, and the Western Cape. | Saoránach d’Éirinn.

30,000 More into the Mouth of Moloch

Earlier this month, as part of his policy to appear ever more like his predecessor, President Obama announced his new Afghanistan strategy. The President exhibited his environmentalist credentials by craftily recycling the lamentable Bush plans for an Iraq “surge” and rehashing them for use in Afghanistan. The happy result is that Obama’s approval ratings have nose-dived — again, the similarities to former president G.W. Bush are striking.

“Barack Obama has found his Vietnam moment,” reports the redoubtable Gerald Warner. “His West Point speech was a travesty of dishonesty, indecision, half-measures and vicious partisanship.”

“To say he was economical with the truth would be putting it mildly. The porkie count was astronomic. In his rampantly partisan style he claimed of the Bush administration: ‘Commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the re-emergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive.’ Not true. The Bush administration never hesitated to commit troops to Middle Eastern killing grounds: that was one of its worst defects.“

“As for Obama, he claims to be meeting the requirements of General McChrystal. How does he work that out? McChrystal asked for 40,000 to 80,000 extra troops: he is being given 30,000. He asked for the Afghan army to be brought up to a strength of 240,000; Obama proposes only to bring it up to 134,000 before departing. But the supreme hypocrisy is the spectacle of Obama, the man who condemned the ‘surge’ in Iraq, trying to sell a phoney surge in Afghanistan.”

“Plan Obama is, for America, an ingenious combination of the worst of all possible worlds. A further 30,000 young Americans will be sent into the killing ground to act as targets in a Taliban shooting gallery. The math is simple: the more Americans there are on Afghan soil, the more targets there are for the Taliban to kill. But they are only scheduled to stay for 18 months. That obligingly gives the Taliban and al-Qaeda a timetable around which to build a strategy.”

“Kill as many infidels as possible in 18 months (their own “martyr” casualties are totally expendable, as each falls he will be replaced by three others) is an obvious option. Meantime, their high command will be planning the overthrow of the Karzai government in the wake of American withdrawal: which areas to infiltrate and terrorise, which warlords to make into allies, which to buy and which to eliminate. The puppet regime left behind after Soviet withdrawal lasted three years. How long would it be before Karzai and his accomplices jetted out to enjoy their Swiss bank accounts in safe exile?”

“Then comes stage 3: the Cambodian-style mass murder of all Taliban opponents and former collaborators with America. The poor bloody infantry in the Afghan army and police will be all too aware of that prospect and will shape their allegiances accordingly. President Pantywaist intends to send 30,000 Americans into Afghanistan and, after 18 futile months, march them out again. Obama is the Grand Old Duke of New York. What American family can truly believe that any soldier killed, however gallantly, in the course of that charade died for a purpose?”

“A commentator in Der Spiegel, in Germany, observed: ‘Never before has a speech by President Barack Obama felt as false as his Tuesday address announcing America’s new strategy for Afghanistan.’ He concluded: ‘The American president doesn’t need any opponents at the moment. He’s already got himself.’ A far cry that, from the messiah’s triumphant rally in Germany, pre-election. The deal is: American boys are pointlessly put in danger of death and maiming, then ignominiously pulled out just in time to create a supposed feelgood effect on the eve of Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. It is all deception, hypocrisy and lies.”

And on that note, the White House wishes all of America’s soldiers and their families a Merry Christmas — er, I mean, a “Happy Holidays”.

Published at 3:20 pm on Wednesday 16 December 2009. Categories: Politics.
Comments

Well said, Sir Andrew. By the by, old chap, great illustration from Metropolis. I can’t think of a finer graphic for our Last Self-Help Administration.

— Jeffry Hendrix 16 Dec 2009 4:07 pm

To be fair, the credit for what is said must go to Mr. Warner.

— Andrew Cusack 16 Dec 2009 4:38 pm

Who was it that said “Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires”?

— kd 17 Dec 2009 11:11 am

Out-Bushing Bush? The Dubyabama? It’ll be quite impressive if he takes the one genuinely successful policy of Bush’s second term (the so-called “Surge”) and even manages to screw that up.

— Oliver McCarthy 21 Dec 2009 5:28 pm
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