Afghanistan

George W. Bush: His Worst Moment Was Failure To Privatize Social Security? :(

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Former President George W. Bush is about to publish his memoirs, and he claims that his worst moment and greatest failure was his inability to privatize Social Security in 2005!

Can one imagine that? This is Bush’s worst moment? Is Bush delusional? This, if it had happened, would have been a true disaster, particularly considering the stock market collapse in 2007-2008!

But somehow, Bush has conveniently forgotten his real moments of failure:

1. Choosing Dick Cheney to be Vice President for eight years.
2. Failing to be aware through intelligence that was available of the impending attack of September 11, 2001.
3. Choosing to avoid a full commitment to the war in Afghanistan, including the seizure of Osama Bin Laden.
4. Engaging in an unnecessary war in Iraq based on manufactured evidence, and in so doing, strengthening the influence of Iran.
5. Having a slow and inadequate reaction to Hurricane Katrina, leading to the flooding of New Orleans and large areas of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
6. Violating civil liberties at home, and engaging in war crimes in Iraq, and justifying all of it.
7. Causing through lack of regulation the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, and nearly causing the total melting down of the American economy, its effects to be on us for the next decade at the least, and burdening President Barack Obama with trying to resolve the mess that Bush left him!

This memoir is just further proof of the total disaster that George W. Bush was in office, and only adds to the feeling that this country was pushed into mediocrity by the corrupt vote count and the intervention of the Supreme Court in the 2000 Presidential election, which denied us Vice President Al Gore as our President!

Imagine This Scenario: The McCain-Palin Administration After 20 Months! :(

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Let’s just imagine that Senator John McCain had become the President and Governor Sarah Palin had become the Vice President in January 2009!

How would a McCain Presidency have been different than an Obama Presidency?

1. There would have been no bailout of the banking industry, and the financial collapse ensuing would have likely created unemployment and foreclosures twice the rate that they have been!
2. The domestic auto industry would have disappeared completely, and with it, hundreds of thousands of jobs in allied industries, as well as the auto workers!
3. There would have been no economic stimulus, and America would be in Great Depression Number Two, rather than a severe recession!
4. Health care reform would have not occurred, and health care rates would be much worse than they are, and millions more Americans would be denied health care, because of loss of jobs and homes!
5. The Great Depression Number Two would have created more instability in the world economy than this recession has caused!
6. Hundreds of thousands of teachers, police officers, fire fighters, librarians, and other local and state workers would have been dismissed, creating a breakdown of state and local governments on a scale unimaginable!
7. When the BP Oil Spill occurred, the McCain Administration would not have pushed BP to do anything to provide aid to the victims or pay for the cleanup!
8. There would have been no financial reform legislation, no credit card legislation, no student loan legislation, no action on the environment, no movement on gay rights in any form, a sharper crackdown on illegal immigration, and a continuation of tax cuts to the wealthy despite its tremendous burden on the national debt!
9. McCain would have chosen two strong conservatives to the Supreme Court!
10. A lot of Bush II appointees would have ended up working for McCain, and it is likely that former Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, one of the major architects of the home mortgage crisis, would have been Secretary of the Treasury!
11. It is likely that neoconservatives who brought us into Iraq would be in power, and the war in Iraq would be further escalated, at a cost of American lives and treasure!
12. The war in Afghanistan would be further escalated beyond what President Obama has promoted!
13. It is likely that McCain would have been building up toward a war against Iran, and possibly North Korea, at the same time, again part of the neoconservative influence!
14. America’s relationship with the world would be much more antagonistic, similar to Bush II, and tension with the Muslim world would be far worse! We would be less safe from the threat of terrorism!
15. Finally, Sarah Palin would be a heartbeat away from the Presidency, and no one could sleep at night without worrying about John McCain’s health! 🙁

It is certain, upon further reflection, that one could come up with other ideas as to how McCain would have influenced the history of the past 20 months, but the list above is more than enough to say to any reasonable person: Thank God Barack Obama is President of the United States!

Year Ten Of The Afghanistan War Begins! :(

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The tenth year of the Afghanistan War begins today, and marks this war as the longest in American history! 🙁

What has nine years of fighting in that nation, which has never been overtaken by foreigners–including Alexander The Great, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union–accomplished?

The answer is NOTHING, except the loss of more than a thousand men, many thousands wounded, hundreds of billion of dollars invested in a war, which is nowhere near being won! 🙁

The Afghan government is corrupt, and is now negotiating with the enemy, the Taliban, and the danger of terrorism in European nations and the United States is heightened by NATO’s military campaigns, which are killing civilians and turning the mass of the population against the West!

This is a war that Barack Obama should be ending, but instead he is allowing conservatives and Republicans who are only too willing to waste money on foreign war but ignore domestic needs, to manipulate him so that he does not look weak!

Obama needs to take a strong stand and withdraw US forces in 2011 and 2012, and the opposition to such a move be damned!

So much needs to be done at home, and we need to secure our own borders and stop trying to conquer a nation that is impossible to take over and control with ground troops!

President Obama, on this ninth anniversary of this terrible war, it is time to bring the troops home!

The End Of The Iraq War Has Come: Last Combat Troops Leave After Seven Years, Five Months!

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The end of the Iraq War has finally occurred, in the sense of combat operations! 🙂

After seven years, five months, the third longest war in US History, after Vietnam and the ongoing Afghanistan War, the American government is leaving that country at a time when political turmoil is worse than it is in this nation, and one wonders what has been gained! 🙁

We have spent $700 billion, lost 4, 415 men and women, and over 32,000 wounded, many severely in physical and mental ways! 🙁

The war was based on false intelligence, manipulation of the truth, bad motivations, and effects many of which are not yet known! 🙁

It seems to many that the winner has been the nation of Iran, which no longer has to worry about its neighbor being a counter balance to them, and Iran remains a much greater threat now than it has ever been! 🙁

The question arises as to whether Israel will decide that Iran is a threat with its development of nuclear capability, and will therefore, decide to intervene militarily as it did in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007!

And the question will arise as to how the United States will deal with such an eventuality, and whether we will decide we must intervene in any conflict that occurs, and how that will affect the whole Middle East!

So while celebrating the end of the combat mission in Iraq, we must remain sober as to the effects it has had, and will continue to have in the future! 🙁

The Continuing Insanity Of War In Iraq And Afghanistan! Enough Sacrifice Of Our Courageous Military!

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President Obama has proclaimed that our involvement in Iraq is ending, and that only 50,000 troops will remain in Iraq after the end of August. Also, the remaining troops will be out by the end of 2011, except for those to provide security for our embassy.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi government is in basic paralysis, and the idea that violence has ended and the country is stable seems a mirage!

Meanwhile, Obama has escalated our war in Afghanistan, and the number of casualties of our troops has reached an all time high, with no prospect of success anytime soon, if ever!

We have lost more than 5,000 men and women in the two nations, and close to 40,000 wounded, many severely! Many soldiers have served multiple tours, averaging at four to six, but one having TEN tours of duty over the past nine years!

Meanwhile, suicides have escalated, with 160 in the year ending September 30, 2009, and 32 suicides this past June, an all time record!

Physical and psychological wounds have been horrific, and the response to our veterans’ needs has been wanting, to say the least!

Afghanistan and Iraq have become the longest wars in US history, but neither war can be said to have been won or even being winnable in the future! This is not fighting Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Imperial Japan, or even the Soviet Union of old!

These two wars have been conducted in a horrific manner by both the Bush and Obama Administrations, and trillions of dollars have been squandered, with 99 percent of Americans not suffering at all from the wars, in the sense of being taxed for them. or even really paying attention and caring about the valor of our soldiers! The concept of shared sacrifice we had in World War II is lacking in this era!

Instead of wasting billions on war every month, we need to bring the troops home immediately and deal with the domestic crises in our nation, the worst since the 1930s! Rebuild our infrastructure, secure our borders, and spend necessary defense money on espionage and technology needed to fight terrorism!

We must not sacrifice our young men and women any longer! The time for withdrawal is NOW! 🙁

Joe Biden’s Growing Influence Evident In Obama Administration!

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The growing role and influence of Vice President Joe Biden is becoming evident.

The replacement of General Stanley McChrystal by General David Petraeus was due a lot to the disrespect that McChrystal demonstrated toward Biden in his published comments in Rolling Stone Magazine!

Biden is the skeptic on the inside of the Obama Administration who has the expertise and experience that Obama does not have, and Obama greatly respects him!

But Biden is also the loyal supporter of the President in public, and he goes behind the scenes on many undisclosed missions to help promote the foreign policy of the the administration!

An example of his influence is his surprise trip to Iraq , to celebrate the Fourth of July, and to work with the Iraqi government on moving ahead on setting up a stable government and constitution. He went with his wife, which was a first for a top government leader, and he informed the Iraqi government that compromise was necessary, just as with the Constitutional Convention and the Founding Fathers in 1787!

Biden is also the link between the administration and the US Senate, as Biden spent more years in that body than all but a small number historically! He may not be able to vote in the Senate anymore, but as its constitutional officer, Biden still wields influence over his former colleagues!

A Sad Milestone: 1,000 Military Killed In Afghanistan! :(

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A sad milestone has been reached in Afghanistan, with the announcement yesterday that the total of American soldiers killed in that forbidden nation has reached 1,000!

The war has seen a growing number of killed and wounded, since President Obama increased American involvement, and yet there are no clear cut signs that the war is being won! 🙁

It is indeed tragic that we are losing our young, dedicated men and women in a country that NO other nation has ever been able to succeed in militarily!

This includes the British Empire and the Soviet Union, and one would think that it would be clear that committing more troops to that horrific location is an exercise in futility! 🙁

One can only hope that our involvement will be cut down dramatically in the summer of 2011, the supposedly beginning date of withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was set by Obama when he announced the troop increase late last year!

But the loss of life up to now, and over the next year or more, is still a tremendous, wrong headed tragedy!

We mourn the death of these young people who are so patriotic, but are being sent to a battlefield that has no solution! 🙁

Time For Reconsideration Of Afghanistan Policy!

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United States involvement in Afghanistan has always been seen as a problem by many observers, since the Soviet Union suffered its downfall to a great extent due to their military engagement in that nation from 1979 to 1988.

It was also the graveyard of earlier attempts at military takeover, including the British Empire.

US and NATO involvement in Afghanistan has been based on the threat of the Taliban, who have associated with Al Qaeda, and since September 11 occurred due to Al Qaeda being in Afghanistan, it seemed essential that this nation invade and overcome those who did this dastardly deed!

But the Afghan War has not gone well for years, and the country is a disaster area as far as the levels of poverty and corruption that exist! Afghanistan has long been a “failed state”, and its leader, Hamid Karzai, has a horrible reputation as an evil, corrupt man, whose own brother is allegedly involved in the cocaine trade. What a despicable alliance that the Western powers are associated with, and to be connected with such a venal family and his followers! 🙁

And now, Karzai has attacked the West and suggested he might join the Taliban himself!

This makes one wonder why in good sense we continue to feel a need to fight and die in Afghanistan, when the Taliban are no threat to attack us, and Al Qaeda has gone elsewhere, including Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen as their havens.

With other nations rapidly leaving Afghanistan, President Obama needs to make a commitment to withdraw our forces over a measured period of time, and not allow any Republican or conservative opposition to stand in the way of a sane policy, of taking us out of the impossible Afghan morass, which has no winners and no hope for major improvement in the future!

President Obama, take what President Hamid Karzai has said as the justification for US withdrawal from a country not worth fighting for! We have spread ourselves thin and endangered our own economic and security future by allowing ourselves to be engaged in Afghanistan for the past nine years, and it is time to withdraw, and soon!

The Truth About Pork Projects And Foreign Aid: Not The Villains Creating Our Budget Deficits!

Ronald 1 Comment

We see over the years a constant attack on foreign aid and pork projects (earmarks) as the major problems preventing a balancing of the federal budget and causing our tremendous deficits.

This is as far from the truth as one can get, as President Obama indicated in a Town Hall meeting on Tuesday. An investigation proves that only one percent of the budget is foreign aid, and earmarks, despite all the complaints and publicity about them, only add up to three tenths of one percent of the federal budget!

Demagogues on the right love to complain about earmarks, and yet it is both parties and all politicians who come to Washington with the intention of accomplishing improvements for their districts and states. But even with that reality, it is less than one third of one percent of the budget, so neither that nor foreign aid to support stability in foreign nations come anywhere near solving or dealing with our national budgetary crisis.

However, fighting two wars at once, neither one of which really makes for national security and kills off so many young men and women, is the real villain in our budgetary crisis! Will we ever learn that what we are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq is not accomplishing anything, except to antagonize that part of the world and bleed us dry, both in manpower and in finances? 🙁

Obama’s Challenge As He Nears A Year In Office

Ronald 2 Comments

President Obama enters the month of December with two challenges that seem overwhelming: to prod the Senate to pass a health care bill after weeks of debate starting Monday; and convincing the nation that deeper involvement in Afghanistan is for the national interest, and will not be a disastrous cause that will bankrupt us over many years and cause thousands of lost American lives.

These challenges, along with the climate summit he will be attending; the jobs summit he is hosting this Thursday at the White House; and the new challenge of Iran developing more uranium enriching facilities and refusing to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency are enough to drive any normal human being bonkers.

How in the world is he to accomplish all of his goals, with united GOP opposition to his domestic initiatives and expected fury by his liberal supporters at his move to increase troop involvement in Afghanistan and face the challenge of Iran where diplomacy is not working?

All Americans need to step back and take a deep breath and wish that, somehow, Barack Obama has the wisdom and the courage to meet the challenges ahead because they will affect all of us for many years to come!