Shock & Obama

Finally, President Barack Obama and Karl Rove agree on something: the escalation of the U.S. war in Afghanistan is a must. Obama declared last Tuesday night that he would increase U.S. troop levels to 30,000 at $30 billion over the next year; plus, he added some mystery into the equation with a vague timetable for withdrawal.

President Keeps Campaign Plank To Escalate Afghan War

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Finally, President Barack Obama and Karl Rove agree on something: the escalation of the U.S. war in Afghanistan is a must.

Obama declared last Tuesday night that he would increase U.S. troop levels to 30,000 at $30 billion over the next year; plus, he added some mystery into the equation with a vague timetable for withdrawal.

And he did so all in the name of “our vital national interest.”

For Rove, even the speculation of Obama’s escalation was almost too good to be true.

“And if the president does do that, I’ll be among the first to stand up and applaud,” said the former advisor to President George W. Bush on the Today Show last Tuesday morning.

Truly, it was like Obama was reading from his predecessor’s script completely blind to the reality of why and how the U.S. troops became mixed up there in the first place.

Or as Jim Hightower, one of Rove’s first political hits while an Republican operative in Texas, said last Wednesday in his syndicated column, “Mission Accomplished!”

Added “America’s #1 Populist,” “Obama has been taken over by the military industrial hawks and national security theorists who play war games with other people’s lives and money. I had hoped Obama might be a more forceful leader who would reject the same old interventionist mindset of those who profit from permanent war. But his newly announced Afghan policy shows he is not that leader.”

Cut & Paste

That said, to cut and paste the Bush administration’s “Mission Accomplished” banner behind Obama would be dishonest because Obama’s war strategy is slightly different from that of Bush.

In fact, if Hightower was a little more honest, he would have admitted that President Obama is being consistent to his own campaign promises.

Obama was never an “anti-war candidate,” as peace activists claim. Upon closer inspection, he never promised to curb the American institutions that nurture global war. Obama just promised to reshuffle the troops from one front to the other battlefield. That’s all.

During the run-up to the presidential election last summer, The Boston Globe, for example, noted the differences between the strategies of then Sen. Obama and his Republican opponent Sen. John McCain, who towed the Bush administration’s line.

Noted the Globe last July: “If elected, Obama says, he would immediately withdraw thousands of ground troops from Iraq and send them to Afghanistan to help undermanned U.S. forces defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda.”

“It’s time to refocus our attention on the war we have to win in Afghanistan,” The Globe quoted Obama. “It is time to go after the Al Qaeda leadership where it actually exists.”

The Globe continued: “The Illinois senator, whose opposition to the Iraq war is a campaign centerpiece, has concluded that the U.S. presence there has fanned Islamic terrorism and diverted scarce military resources from taking on new terrorist camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Al Qaeda operatives trained for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.”

Now compare this report with Obama’s recent stance at West Point:

“I make this decision because I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by al-Qaida. It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak. This is no idle danger, no hypothetical threat. In the last few months alone, we have apprehended extremists within our borders who were sent here from the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan to commit new acts of terror. This danger will only grow if the region slides backwards and al-Qaida can operate with impunity. We must keep the pressure on al-Qaida, and to do that, we must increase the stability and capacity of our partners in the region.”

McCain, to be clear about the contrasts at the time, said that the central front in the so-called “War on Terror” was Iraq, and that for Afghanistan to stabilize itself from violent, extremist influences, Pakistan and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), not the

United States, should bear the responsibility militarily.

Too Little, Too Escalate

But apparently, keeping your word is not good enough for the likes of filmmaker Michael Moore, The Socialist Worker’s editorial board, and all the grassroots anti-war activists who gathered from West Point to Fort Hood on the eve of Obama’s speech.

Plus, to say that this escalation in Afghanistan is now “Obama’s war” is practice in hoisting your own petard.

Even though 38 percent of Americans polled by CBS News supposedly side with Obama’s approach to the widely unpopular war, there hasn’t been much protest from anti-war circles during the months Obama’s national security team has reviewed Afghanistan strategy.

It must be hard to protest judging by the tears from Moore choked back on CNN’s Larry King Live after Obama’s rally at West Point.

“I hate to be even saying these things,” Moore said, “because I honestly think Barack Obama is a good and decent man. He has a good heart. I believe he’s a man of peace.”

He added. “I don’t think there’s any evil or dark place in his heart that’s where this is coming from. I just think that he’s listened to the generals. He’s taken bad advice.”

The Socialist Worker also theorized that pro-Obama progressives sat this anti-war protest out because they just couldn’t believe Obama would hold to his promises.

“Perhaps some Obama supporters thought that the Democratic candidate’s call to escalate troop strength in Afghanistan was simply rhetoric to shield him from criticism on the right. But Obama’s West Point speech makes it perfectly clear that he’s a willing and aggressive proponent of the pursuit of U.S. imperial aims,” the Worker’s editorial board noted.

The Worker like Hightower acknowledged the obvious: anti-war protests must come quickly.

“The antiwar movement needs to give those anxieties concrete expression by organizing a visible opposition,” the Worker noted.

Concluded Hightower: “This is no time to be deferential to executive authority. Stand up. Speak out. It’s our country, not theirs. We are America — ultimately, we have the power and the responsibility.”

Dec. 12 is the day scheduled for a mass “emergency” anti-war rally outside the White House.

Of the rally, organizer Laurie Dobson told Talking Points Memo, “It’s about Obama. And refusing to support his presidency any longer.”