Allen L Roland

President Obama's announced 30,000 troop surge is a hollow echo of Bush's Iraq surge and it's being met with indifference and skepticism by the majority of Afghans who have fought and successfully defeated other ambitious foreign occupying powers such as the United States:

William Pitt nailed it when he wrote " On Tuesday night, President Barack Obama delivered the best speech George W. Bush ever gave in his life. Mr. Bush, if he was watching, would have recognized virtually every facet of Obama's speech, for it was the Bush administration that hammered out the template used by Mr. Obama to deliver the news that he is doubling down on the war in Afghanistan."

The Bush illegal war against Afghanistan started out as an attack against Al-Qaida and now, after eight long years, has turned into a full scale Obama occupation ~ which has cost us 929 American lives (300 wounded in last three months ), countless Afghan lives and well over $100 billion dollars ~ counting the $40 billion needed for Obama's current surge. But what about the Al-qaida ?

As Robert Scheer writes ~ " President Barack Obama’s own top national security adviser has stated that there are fewer than 100 Al-Qaida members in Afghanistan and that they are not capable of launching attacks. What superheroes they must be, then, to require 100,000 U.S. troops to contain them."

Guess what ~ it's not about Al-Qaida. Craig Murray provides the answer; " Karzai comes directly from the Bush camp and was put in place because of his role with Unocal in developing the Trans Afghanistan Gas Pipeline project. That remains a chief strategic goal. The Asian Development Bank has agreed to finance and to start construction in Spring 2011. It is of course a total coincidence that 30,000 extra US troops will arrive six months before, and that the US (as opposed to other NATO forces) deployment area corresponds with the pipeline route." http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/12/obama_is_wrong.html

Melvin A Goodman, Truthout makes a salient point yesterday in his column about Obama's mantra that he will finish the job in Afghanistan ~ " Henry Kissinger remarked recently that President Obama reminded him of a "chess grandmaster who has played his opening in six simultaneous games. But he hasn’t completed a single game and I'd like to see him finish one." The president appointed foreign policy "czars" for the most intractable problems, but this has merely complicated the policy process. Richard Holbrooke soon wore out his welcome in Kabul; George Mitchell was never really welcome in Jerusalem; and Dennis Ross never got through the front door in Tehran. Only ten months into the presidency, Obama has no adviser with strategic vision; he is already relying more heavily on his domestic political advisers than on his foreign policy specialists. And now the president has committed himself to "finishing the job" in Afghanistan of all places. No outside power has ever finished the job in Afghanistan; the forces of history are not on his side." http://www.truthout.org/1202096

Very little has changed in Afghanistan in the century since Britain was forced to police what was then India's northwest frontier. Rudyard Kipling bitterly wrote about the fate of the soldiers sent to do that work ~ for the Afghans are fierce, determined and world renowned fighters;

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

Remember, that $40 billion must be approved by Congress and we can stop that appropriation in its tracks by petitioning Congress and literally taking to the streets to stop this folly and madness before we go bankrupt and lose more of our young soldiers.

Watch this four minute video then tell Congress we cannot afford a war that does not make us safer but instead bankrupts us both morally and economically: Robert Greenwald Video http://rethinkafghanistan.com/

The war is not meant to be won, but it is meant to be continuous: George Orwell

-###-

Allen L Roland http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2009/12/04.html

Freelance Online columnist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews and speaking engagements (allen@allenroland.com)

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

----------

Allen Roland’s weblog: http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/
Website: www.allenroland.com
ONLY THE TRUTH IS REVOLUTIONARY