Victory in Iraq! (Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, . . .)
By Thomas DiLorenzo
August 19, 2010 "Lew Rockwell" -- In a good example of D.C.-style math, King
Obama has announced that he is pulling all combat troops out of Iraq, but
50,000 will remain there. Of course, all troops are trained for combat;
calling them "non-combat support personnel" is simply B.S. King Obama wants
to campaign for Democrats in the fall by lying about ending combat in Iraq.
More absurdly, the Faux News Channel interviewed an army officer today
by first congratulating him and his fellow soldiers for "making Iraq a safe
and secure place." Before he said this, the network announced that they
could not reveal the location of the interviewer "for security reasons." The
interview took place at a location where they were completely surrounded by
ten foot high piles of sandbags. This is how D.C. spells "secure."
***
http://freedomsyndicate.com/fair0000/latimes0029D.html
Presidents flying blind
We've been conditioned to trust presidents, but as recent history shows,
they're often clueless too. Can Obama admit error and stop trying to tell
us, and Afghans, what's best for Afghanistan?
By Andrew J. Bacevich
LATimes.com: August 19, 2010
Fifty years ago this summer, with Americans riveted by a presidential
contest pitting John F. Kennedy against Richard M. Nixon, Dwight D.
Eisenhower contemplated his departure from the White House. As he prepared
to retire from public life, Ike sketched out the ideas that would inform his
celebrated farewell address, presciently warning against the dangers of a
military-industrial complex. Simultaneously, he was plotting ways to
overthrow the Cuban government.
Eisenhower did not remain in office long enough to implement the plan that
his minions hatched. Instead, he bequeathed it to JFK, who promptly and
naively allowed it to proceed. We remember the ensuing debacle by the place
where it occurred: the Bay of Pigs.
Although Kennedy took the fall for the bungled, CIA-engineered invasion by
Cuban exiles, his predecessor deserves a share of the blame. Without
Eisenhower, the Bay of Pigs would never have occurred. How could such a
careful and seasoned statesman have concocted such a crackpot scheme? The
apparent contradiction - wisdom and folly coexisting in a single figure -
forms a recurring theme in presidential politics, one that persists today.
What was true then, when the ostensible threat posed by Fidel Castro loomed
large, remains true now, when the issue has become Afghanistan: The
formulation of American statecraft rests on three widely accepted fictions.
Presidents, we are led to believe, know things the rest of us can't know, or
at least can't be allowed to know. Armed with secret knowledge and abetted
by sophisticated advisors, presidents are by extension uniquely positioned
to discern the dangers facing the nation. The surest way to address those
dangers, therefore, is for citizens to defer to the Oval Office. Call it the
Trust Daddy principle.
Yet there are at least two problems. First, presidential judgment has
repeatedly proved to be fallible; Ike's reckless campaign to unseat Castro
providing a case in point. Perhaps worse, presidential claims of being able
to connect the dots, thereby revealing the big picture, have turned out to
be bogus. Eisenhower (and Kennedy) viewed Castro's revolution as an
intolerable affront - tiny Cuba placing the entire Western Hemisphere in
jeopardy. The Cuban dictator had to go. Yet half a century later, Castro
survives and his revolution wheezes along. Who cares? It's difficult to
recall exactly what all the fuss was about.
Pretending to navigate by some sort of acutely accurate presidential GPS,
the man in the White House actually flies blind. Whether it's Lyndon B.
Johnson plunging into Vietnam, Jimmy Carter unleashing the CIA in
Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, Ronald Reagan dispatching U.S. "peacekeepers"
to Beirut, George H.W. Bush setting out to feed starving Somalis or Bush's
son, George W., invading Iraq, the man ostensibly in charge quite literally
doesn't know what's coming next. Hence, the frequency with which events
catch presidents (or their unwary successors) by surprise.
No one in Washington will acknowledge this, of course. After all,
maintaining an aura of omniscience is necessary to sustain illusions of
omnipotence, which in turn justify the vast prerogatives to which the White
House lays claim. Once it's admitted that presidents and their "wise men"
rely mostly on guesswork and are no smarter than the geezers meeting over
coffee down at the corner cafe, the mystique enveloping the nation's
capital - all those important people busily making important decisions -
will vanish in thin air. Plain folk might get restive.
This describes the predicament that President Obama will soon encounter in
Afghanistan. In time-honored presidential fashion, Obama has issued any
number of pronouncements regarding Afghans, their problems and aspirations.
He has invested Afghanistan's fate with historic importance: Americans dare
not flinch from their obligation to fix that distant land. Our president
knows what Afghans need. And he has articulated a strategy - winning Afghan
hearts and minds - that will assure our success, all between now and July
2011, when U.S. troops will begin coming home.
Yet that strategy is not working, even as the clock keeps ticking. Time is
running out. So for the president, a great opportunity is about to present
itself. He can admit the obvious: Afghanistan's fate is not his (or ours) to
decide. Or he can recycle the standard guff about persevering in the
promotion of freedom, with American soldiers (as usual) paying the price for
presidential unwillingness to acknowledge error.
Eisenhower has much to teach Obama. During his two terms in office, Ike did
some things right and more than a few things wrong. Where he most
disappointed his admirers, however, was in waiting until the eve of his
departure from office before speaking the truth. Here's hoping that Barack
Obama won't wait that long.
Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at
Boston University. His new book, "Washington Rules: America's Path to
Permanent War," has just been published.
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