Obama The New War President

President Obama addressed the American people this evening from the United States Military Academy at West Point. Obviously this was the appropriate audience before whom to speak as many of the cadets will wind up in Iraq, Afghanistan or possibly Pakistan, where some believe Osama Bin Laden is hiding out. Thankfully there were few civilians around so the Secret Service did not have to fear gate crashers.

The President began with a Cliff Notes like summary of our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan since the attack of September 11th. He reminded us that not only did our own House of Representatives and Senate overwhelmingly approve and support military action but the even the UN gave its blessing. Of course he omitted the fact that our response was based on the misinformation and lies of the Bush administration.

President Obama worked hard to convince us that we had moral, ethical, economic, military and security reasons to not only continue our presence in Afghanistan; but to increase the number of ground forces by 30,000. It was an excellent speech almost in the style of a pep rally talk before a big game. He told the American people that NATO is with us in this expanding ground war. One would think that there is a multi-national ground force in Afghanistan; but this is far from the truth. This is a United States War with only token NATO and UN support. The continuation of this big game is going to be very costly for this country. The former Soviet Union had its years in Afghanistan and got its ass kicked.

It is unfortunate to see President Obama become another U.S. President mired in a hopeless foreign war when his attention should be focused on the multitude of problems facing this country within our own borders. Consider the following article by columnist Bob Woodward from December 28, 2006:

"Former president Gerald R. Ford said in an embargoed interview in July 2004 that the Iraq war was not justified. "I don't think I would have gone to war," he said a little more than a year after President Bush launched the invasion advocated and carried out by prominent veterans of Ford's own administration.

In a four-hour conversation at his house in Beaver Creek, Colo., Ford "very strongly" disagreed with the current president's justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously. In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Cheney -- Ford's White House chief of staff -- and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford's chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief.

"Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction," Ford said. "And now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do."
In a conversation that veered between the current realities of a war in the Middle East and the old complexities of the war in Vietnam whose bitter end he presided over as president, Ford took issue with the notion of the United States entering a conflict in service of the idea of spreading democracy.

"Well, I can understand the theory of wanting to free people," Ford said, referring to Bush's assertion that the United States has a "duty to free people." But the former president said he was skeptical "whether you can detach that from the obligation number one, of what's in our national interest." He added: "And I just don't think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security."