Down the Rat Hole

You can ask about it,
but nobody knows the way
No breadcrumb trail
to follow through your days
--All This Beauty, The Weepies
_____________

A few sundry thoughts as we pass the first week of Mr. Obama's presidency.

VP Joe Biden said we will continue to support and ramp up the war in Afghanistan ("Biden Sees Afghanistan 'Uptick'.") Mr. Biden is being as disingenuous as any politician by casting the situation as a case of "reclaiming" lost territory, the prefix "re-" presuming a prior situation.

The administration's stated goal is not only to deny terrorists safe haven, but to free the people from corruption, warlords and druglords. An ironic goal as it does not jibe with the other stated goal of bringing democracy, for the freely-elected government is run by and with the support of drug lords. Warlords are US, could well be their motto, and sharing kinship with the Central Intelligence Agency and Special Forces.

As Obama said, he won, but in continuing the futile war in Afghanistan, he is playing politician, which means following certain preordained rules in order to curry favor. He will not make the same mistake that Clinton made alienating the Department of Defense out of the gate.

Clinton's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy effectively destroyed his credibility as Commander in Chief, tacked on as it was to his early anti-war stance and his clumsy handling of Mogadishu. He sat squarely behind the eight ball with the military after that.

Obama will not allow this same strategic blunder, even if it means that Americans will continue to fund, fight and die in another phony war. Helen Cooper in the New York Times questions even what the mission is (Fearing Another Qaugmire in Afghanistan.) Andrew Bacevich said,

"'There's clearly a consensus that things are heading in the wrong direction. What's not clear to me is why sending 30,000 more troops is the essential step to changing that. My understanding of the larger objective of the allied enterprise in Afghanistan is to bring into existence something that looks like a modern cohesive Afghan state. Well, it could be that that's an unrealistic objective. It could be that sending 30,000 more troops is throwing money and lives down a rat hole.'"

How can the American people end this elective war? As WaPo's Dan Froomkin put it, "Congress -- that dysfunctional and widely despised institution that by all appearances still lives and breathes partisan politics" won't do it.

Meanwhile the U.S. government spends $100's of billions on foreign and domestic intelligence, yet we the people never see the data on the actual threat posed by al-Qaeda, including those elements in Afghanistan. U.S. policy continues to react to emotion and political considerations, versus hard intel.

The new president promised transparency and reckonings -- lay on, Obama. Why does no one in the National Command Authority give the American people a realistic appraisal of al-Qaeda's capabilities and intents?

This is not the change the people had hoped for.

--Jim and Lisa