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Like Generations Before…

By mike flugennockWednesday - June 29th, 2011Categories: Afghanistan, Middle East, Obamarama, war and peace, War on Terror

Yeah, uh huh… like in Vietnam. And Nicaragua. And Iraq.

This was my other favorite quote from Obama’s Afghanistan speech, a crass naked appeal to American conceit. Matthew Rothschild writes in The Progressive:

Our war president promised more war. While he trumpeted his big Afghanistan speech as the first step in ending that war, Barack Obama essentially told the American people that tens of thousands of our soldiers would still be fighting there for at least three more years.

A year from now, Obama said all the additional “surge” troops will be back home. But the U.S. will still have close to 70,000 troops in Afghanistan, twice the number that were there when Obama took office.

Only “by 2014,” he said, will the Afghan people “be responsible for their own security.”

And even then, Obama appears to have left himself an out. “We’ll have to do the hard work of keeping the gains that we made,” he said. But what if those “gains” aren’t kept? Would he reverse course and keep more troops there…?

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The Tide of War

By mike flugennockSaturday - June 25th, 2011Categories: Afghanistan, Obamarama, war and peace, War on Terror

So, apparently, Obama gave a speech the other day about Afghanistan. Mind you, I haven’t watched a single Obama speech ever since the ’04 Democratic Convention keynote and the Inauguration. That was pretty much all I could stand; since then, about all I could handle was the occasional video clip on TV, or the transcripts posted on the Web. From all accounts, it was classic Obama, a rehash of the Iraq “withdrawal” announcement: out of all the clips and reports I saw, two “money quotes” really stuck in my craw, and one of them was that “the tide of war is receding” — and just in time for next year’s election. Who’da thunk it?

It’s reported that our Boy Emperor is bringing home the troops he sent when he first escalated the slaughter in Afghanistan, leaving 70,000 still there, plus leaving himself an out — of course! — allowing him to stick around if things aren’t working out for the Empire. All told, this “withdrawal” means a continuation of the war until at least 2014 — conveniently, a year into the incoming GOP administration, at which point the Liberals and Progressives will have miraculously rediscovered their anti-war voices and be cynically filling the streets again.

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Awright! Got Him!

By mike flugennockMonday - May 2nd, 2011Categories: Middle East, Obamarama, war and peace, War on Terror

Welcome, folks, to Day One of Obama’s second term.

Well, hot damn, America, you finally got Bin Laden. So… how many innocents did you have to slaughter, maim, torture and unjustly imprison; how many of your own citizens were stripped of their basic liberties, their privacy and their dignity; how many inconvenient truths did you have to suppress to accomplish the symbolic goal of nailing Osama Bin Laden?

Then again, what the hell; in the end, it was all OK for people like Bush, Cheney, Obama, Clinton, Yoo, Holder and Murdoch. Go ahead, America, throw yourselves a goddamn’ party. Enjoy it while you can, before you wake up and realize you’ve still got no job, your house is about to be foreclosed, and you’re about to lose your Medicare and Social Security.

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Are You In?

By mike flugennockTuesday - April 12th, 2011Categories: elections, Health Care, Iraq, liberty, Middle East, Obamarama, Party Animals, war and peace

You’ve got to hand it to Obummer, his timing’s impeccable. On the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King — and one day before capitulating to the Rightists and allowing military commission trials of Guantanamo detainees — Obummer rolls out his 2012 re-election campaign, complete with a smarmy, grassrootsy video, and asks, “Are You In?”

“Are You In?” Jeezus, what the hell kind of slogan is that? It sounds like the wrapup for a venture capital pitch, like a question asked by some newly-minted Stanford MBA trying to schmooze a few million for his crappy-assed Internet start-up.

The “official” unemployment rate is nailed at around 10%, the foreclosure rate is climbing, bankers are getting fatter than ever, Bush’s tax cuts for the rich are still in place, the healthcare system is still in the hands of corporations, we’re up to our asses in three wars, the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay is still open, our civil liberties are in worse shape than ever, Obummer’s just rolled over for John Boehner on the budget deal — and now Obummer’s got the sheer gall to ask me if I’m “in”.

Like hell I’m “in”. Take a goddamn’ hike, piker.

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