White House officials announced today that President Barack Obama will address the nation on December 1 to unveil his new Afghanistan escalation strategy, putting an end to months of speculation and allowing NATO to approve its own escalation later that week.
Though the final decision took over three months for the administration to make the announcement does not appear to be far outside the expected range of options, and the 34,000-man escalation that was reportedly favored for the past month is said to be the plan of choice.
The exact details of the announcement will not be made public for another week, but is said to include a handful of largely artificial benchmarks designed to make the appearance that the war is moving forward. It does not however appear that it will include any concrete timeline for withdrawal.
Gen. McChrystal originally sought 20,000 troops, but eventually was requesting as many as 80,000. The Pentagon had maintained it only had a little over 30,000 troops in spare manpower however, so while President Obama’s escalation can be portrayed as a “compromise” the reality is it is about as large as the military could withstand. It will put America’s Afghan presence just over 100,000 troops, at a time when almost 120,000 troops remain in Iraq.
And he may very well "Finish the job" — for the Empire.
Obama's speech and his 'supposed' decision about Afghanistan will reveal far more than the war strategy in Afghanistan. For those who watch with careful eyes it will reveal EMPIRE.
The decision will be voiced through the mouth of Obama to be sure — but the decision was already made before he was president, in fact before he even ran, and the decision itself was made by the EMPIRE.
America, our country, is now part of an arrogant, unresponsive, un-democratic, but quite sophisticated 'Vichy' Empire —- which only pretends to allow the people to have any influence over any choices, directly, or through their supposed representative government.
This fact of sophisticated and guileful Empire manipulation and trickery of the people was well documented in 1994 by Thomas Frank in his "What's the Matter with Kansas" — showing how contrived social 'values' manipulation was used by the Empire-controlled 'Republican Party' to trick stereotypical anti-intellectual conservative Kansans into voting against their own interests.
But now the coin has been flipped, and we need Frank to write a new book, "What’s the Matter with Massachusetts" in which he would lay bare how the Empire-controlled 'Democratic Party' tricked stereotypical self-described liberal “wicked smart” Bostonians and supposedly highly educated intellectuals into voting for a second well educated (and now post-racial) president promising different 'values', but singing the same songs about "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow" and waving banners of 'hope' and 'change' — which have now been ignored with the same level of contempt and impunity as the last several Empire-controlled Republican and Democratic shills — who did exactly NOTHING they promised!.
When such obvious contradictions to a government structure of supposed democracy occur many times in a row, but with both supposedly different political parties, and with differing levels of sophistication employed to fool dull and bright voters, the issue is not 'values' but one of deep 'government structure'. And the only conclusion to be made is that we are dealing with a deep and deadly problem of ‘government structure’, which Ben Franklin would have immediately recognized as his fear of Empire supplanting a democratic Republic.
"The problem is not with our stars, Dear citizens, nor with this Obama, nor the previous Clinton nor Bush nor Reagan, nor even with ourselves, but with EMPIRE”
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
This article you have written is very vital to the freedom movement.
"The price of empire is America's soul and that price is too high" – William Fulbright. Very accurate in his prediction was Nikita Krushchev: "We do not have to worry about the United States. They will spend themselves out of existence." The author of 'The Art of War" – Sun Tsu – correctly observed that "there has never been an instance of a country having benefitted from prolonged warefare." And it was Sopholes who said over 2000 years ago: "It is the merit of a general to impart good news and to conceal the truth." Afghanistan has ALWAYS been "the graveyard of empires and of soldiers" and it will remain so NO matter how many troops we send to that forbidden country. It was British soldier who said it best a few generatiosn ago: "If any ask why we died, tell them because our fathers lied." The 'Neocons' want US to believe that this is "the new American century" and that "we are the new Rome, only more powerful." The pages of History are littered with the dust of past 'empires' – we are fast headed there – Afghanistan will just accelerate our demise!
After eight years of fighting we need another 34,000 troops. This is madness.
The addition of these troops is shear madness! And to think how we were again dupped by
a candidate who was sooo proud of his anti-war vote in the Iraq debacle. Its a disgrace.
I think this country needs to rise up and show Mr. Obama that we mean business. Lets organize
a huge candlelit vigil across this country for next Tuesday nite! The anti-war movement of the '60's
needs to be resurected to show Congress how stupid they really are!
I voted for this president on his promise to end the wars and bring our troops home. Now I will work against him to make sure his time in office is short. It's way past time for people to respond to these war mongers including Obama. Clog their computers and phone lines with emails and calls to their Washington offices and home states. The sheer madness of this tool of old men and big business, send them all to the front lines and their children with them, and see how quickly the wars end. It matters little to them our sons,daughters,husbands,wives, children and grandchildren are killed or destroyed in body and mind serving their madness in wars that can not be won. These countries pose no threat to us, their own leaders are corrupt, taking our money and filling their bank accounts instead of spending as it was meant. Our own business's inflate prices to pad their pockets and it is paid for with the blood of Americans. What happened on 9/11 should have been payed back years ago and without the blood shed we have had for the last eight years. But then again how would the American people been robbed of billions of dollars if not for the wars? Why the same way the banks and big business has always done it, with all the elected officials in their pockets, bought and payed for.
When Obama states AQ is a threat, he starts with the original jingoism that nothing we’ve done to them justifies 9/11, while ignoring that their population can equally assert that nothing they’ve done to us justifies what we’ve done to them. __Obama side-steps AlQaeda demands for our military to get out, and to cease supporting Mideast tyrants. Instead, he portrays them as fanatic Jihadists demanding to rule the world.__Actually, our own military/corporate planners are the zealots out to rule the world.__Their stated goal is full-spectrum dominance over all potential adversaries. Naturally, that also requires control of global markets/resources. __For them, what is threatened is their dominance, and all the military bases, contracts, and resource plunder that goes along with it.__For us, it means the systematic loss of liberty to an endless warfare state with expanding police powers
the war monger and liar must be gone, and this means, the whole lot of the entire CONgress and senate must also be GONE.
it’s time to either remove them all via ballot box, or resort to the FOURTH BOX.
O'bomb'em is also planning to send some 38.7 mikllion to Afghan provinces to….get this…..reduce poppy cultivation….. READ: Subsidize the heroin industry
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=112022&s…
and the American sheeple will pay for it.
It's one party, two faces and as long as Americans continue to vote 'inside the box' they'll continue to get the same things.