printBarack Obama needed a war he could call his own. In Afghanistan, OB has found such a war. A meaty presence in Afghanistan has morphed into an all-out onslaught, with the attendant slaughter of innocence.
It wasn’t a daisy cutter of the Bush era, but a Himars rocket, an acronym for High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, that killed at least 10 people, including 5 children, in Marja, a Taliban stronghold in Helmand Province, to where Obama has taken his war.
The place is dotted with rural villages and villagers, so some are bound to be incinerated by American bombs. So far nothing about BO’s shame in the op-ed pages of the LA Times or the NYT.
Most Americans may approve of BO’s pet war, but murder by majority approval is still murder. Those Afghans who died today are involuntary conscripts—they get to partake of the wonders of American democracy only indirectly: a mob (of Americans) in a far-away land decided their fate. And by golly what a splendid job this mob has done.
Update I: THE MIGHTY TALIBAN.
“I don’t think you can really describe them militarily. It seems like a few guys taking potshots … and not terribly effectively, with some exceptions.”
That’s NYTs correspondent ROD NORDLAND describing the Taliban on the PBS News Hour today.
His Boy Obama and his General get top marks for mercy killings. When Bush finished off civilians it wasn’t nearly as kindly as when McChrystal does it under the divine inspiration of BO:
Remember “the — the wedding, one of several, actually, that was bombed a year or two ago,”? … “the Bush administration, you know, they just — it took them months to ever admit they had even done anything wrong.”
Barack, by contrast, is positively killing these kids with kindness:
“They were so quick to announce that, in fact, that it turns out they exaggerated, apparently, the number of civilians they killed. It turned out it was actually only nine, and there were also three Taliban in the house who were shooting from the house, and thereby, at least arguably, making it a legitimate target.”
To listen to NORDLAND, you’d think that BO brought back from the dead three civilians thought dead.
In fairness to this correspondent, the NYT was all for the previous warbot’s war as well.
During Bush’s war, “Fox News was able to create the perception of a parallel universe in Iraq replete with big (nuclear) bangs and miraculously materializing al-Qaida terrorists because its Hollywood-inspired vision resonated with viewers. The ratings provided proof. By popular demand, MSNBC, CNN, and the New York Times (This means you, Judith Miller) adopted a similar faux patriotism devoid of skepticism and serenely accepting of every silly White House claim.”
Everything is as it is in the USA.
Update II (Feb. 16): Thanks you Van Wijk for reminding the errant folks that, as I put it, “Our adventurous foreign policy might be a necessary condition for Muslim aggression but it is far from a sufficient one.”
Update III: I loathe rehashing arguments I’ve already won on this space many times over. Alas, this is the human condition.
Myron: Polls show a respectable percentage of Muslims condone Jihadi pursuits (search for some fresh data; I like those). If equaled by as many Jews and Christians, liberals and libertarians and elements on the American Right always helping to make the “Islamikazes'” case would protest as loud as you lot squealed over placing a bug in Abu Zubaydah’s cage. Hence the issue of fifth-column immigrants.
Back in 2005, “a leaked Whitehall dossier revealed that affluent, middle-class, British-born Muslims were signing up to Al-Qaida in droves. Translated into official speak by Timesonline, only ‘3,000 British-born or British-based people have passed through Osama Bin Laden’s training camps.’
And if that doesn’t allay unwarranted fears, ‘Intelligence indicates that the number of British Muslims actively engaged in terrorist activity, whether at home or abroad or supporting such activity, is extremely small and estimated at less than 1%.'”
In other words, 16,000 homicidal sleepers are loose in England!
These figures, of course, are statistically significant—stupendously so—given the barbarism they portend. Over this sort of astoundingly consequential number, our Myron is jumping for joy.
Such is the liberal mindset.
Well, yes. It would be far better just to let the Taleban regain total control of Afghanistan. It’s not like that policy ever had any unfortunate repercussions for America…
Taleban is a religious term for ‘one who seeks understanding’ or something similar. It isn’t a centralized government but groups of ‘warlords’. They have returned to the Feudal system, with all of its barbarianism, violence, suppression of the citizenry and glory seeking. The Taleban didn’t destroy the twin towers; that was a terrorist organization with a training camp in Afghanistan. The terrorists had and have training camps scattered all over the Middle East and Europe. We attacked Afghanistan because the US thought the leadership was there and the Taleban refused to turn him over to us. The Taleban are some of the worst examples of religious and human oppression working together; but, we can’t and the Afghanistan Central Government won’t take the steps to return it to any semblance of the twentieth century. All we can do is kill more of our soldiers and their citizens, creating more hate on both sides.
1. For a variety of reasons mostly derived from our meddling overseas, Al Queda attacks us.
2. The USA, therefore, wants to retaliate against Al Queda (so far makes sense).
3. The Taliban, a backwards Pushtun-dominated government, refuses to turn over Al Queda.
4. So the USA attacks Al Queda AND the Taliban (making less sense). We then install Karzai and a corrupt centralized government instead of old King Zahir Shah and a decentralized government (ERROR!). Then we get distracted and “liberate” Iraq.
5. Soon America starts attacking drug warlords “friendly” with the Taliban (Why?).
6. Then we attack Pushtun tribal leaders who “cooperate” with the warlords or object to the shakedowns of Karzai’s corrupt mob.
7. Then America attacks civilians associated with the tribal leaders. Next are the relatives of the civilians who seek revenge. Mind you, Al Queda has long ago abandoned Afghanistan but we have this war that is spinning out of control, was never declared by Congress, and has no strategy for termination.
8. But it is just a volunteer military and contractors – so even though 99 % of Americans have no ties to Afghanistan, we just simply don’t give a hoot.
It’s probably an academic point, but where precisely is the declaration of war that gives Obama the power to wage this insane war against a backward country on the other side of the globe? The last time I checked, Article I, Section 8 has yet to be amended permitting the executive to commit troops absent such an authority.
1. For a variety of reasons mostly derived from our meddling overseas, Al Queda attacks us.
Correction: For a variety of reasons mostly derived from the commandments of the Koran and the example of Mohammed, Al Qaeda attacked us.
Apparently the CIA/Pakistanis just captured some capo of the Taliban. If we had some brains, we might try to “negoatiate” with him and his buddies – e.g. you stop messing with us or sheltering those who do and we will leave you alone in Talibanistan. Instead, we will just have another jackass to sit around some jail while we go around blowing up more weddings.
About Al Queda’s motiviations – since .999999 Moselms do not attack the US, it is an outlying phenomena and the exact workings of someone’s demented mind is difficult to pin down. But the Taliban were just LOCAL thugs and America widened the war to manufacture more enemies.
Ilana – I would guess that several hundred million Moslems were not upset by 9/11 and probably 100 million were downright elated. But “condoning attacks” is not the same as becoming a hide-in-the-caves active Jihadist. It takes some extra oomph to cross that line.
There was plenty of anti-Semitic literature in Germany pre-Hitler but it took Adolph and a dedicated few to rouse 70 million into doing a Holocaust. Back in the bottle, the Jew-killing disease is now dormant among most Germans.
However, if the number of ACTIVE Jihadists (not sympathizers) is near 1%, we have got a big, big, big problem. Sort of like the difference between a BENIGN tumor and a MALIGNANT tumor! However, like malignancies, murderous lunatics are difficult to model and predict (hence my comment on the behavior of outliers).
Since we are not going to destroy 1 billion Moslems, we might as well defeat the malignant ones, isolate the benign ones, and not try to spread the disease by unnecessary “liberations” and “occupations”. I don’t think we are that far in disagreement on this.