Huffy is doing it again.  Any good news that does not fit their narrative must be instantly spun to the negative.

Case in point a recent poll by ABC News, the BBC and ARD German TV that attitudes are improving towards the West in Afghanistan.  Rachel Maddow even touted this poll as good news on her show.  Huffy now has “experts” (their spin machine) refuting the results of the poll.  Polls have errors and I am not defending the results of the poll specifically because I do not have enough info but I do ask,

Why challenge this poll Huffy when there are hundreds of polls?

The answer is simple on any subject where Huffy is trying to create a narrative all contrary evidence must be refuted.  There is no reason to question the news services that conducted the poll.   They have no reason to push poll to skew the results.  Spinning news to fit memes is exactly what Republicans do when results are contrary to their intentions.

As a veteran of one war, I can see similarities in how we are conducting this war.  We’re really doing nothing different that what we did in Vietnam.  We have developed and use the same formula in every major conflict since the end of World War II.

Here is the US formula for the cycle of war in 14 easy steps.

1.  Begin by telling the American people a pretext for involvement.  Mainly appeal to the themes that Americans can relate to.  We want to assist a peoples’ plight from oppression, people who are dying to be free, to have democracy, to have human rights, to have equality, to live life in the pursuit of happiness.  In this case, we were attacked.

2.  Find a puppet we can install to put in charge so the world won’t think we’re the outright aggressors.

3.  Begin to fight the insurgents by supplying arms to the puppet government.  Funny, we call them the insurgents, but in reality we’re supporting the real insurgents, the puppet government only a few of the citizens support.

4.  We send advisory personnel there to “train” the army of the puppet government and prop them up.

5.  Things don’t go as planned, and begin to get out of hand, so we sent a few thousand troops over there to support the failing army.

6.  Things continue to go against us, as the army we supposedly trained can’t tie their own shoelaces without us.

7.  So, we escalate. We send tens of thousands of troops over there, since we want to protect the ones already there, stabilize the puppet government, so we can make a hero’s exit and leave behind a solid democracy.  Overwhelm them with sheer numbers.

8.  We bomb the bejesus out of the “enemy”, who in reality the population supports, killing thousands of innocent civilians in the process.  Funny, it doesn’t seem to be doing any good, so we drop more bombs.

9.  Finally, things begin to falter and we get war weary, the citizens back home are restless, more and more troops are coming home in bodybags.

10.  We finally see the futility of our actions and begin to pull out, completing the task in a couple of years so as to evacuate our personnel safely.

11.  The “enemy” then fills the vacuum we created by pulling out, and begins to disembowel the army we armed and trained, allegedly, and the country begins to disintegrate.

12.  Out of guilt, we evacuate the puppet government and its leaders, since if they stay, they will face a firing squad.  We fly them to Paris so they can live a life in exile in semi luxury, at least the puppet heads.

13.  Thousands of our soldiers are not so lucky.  Many come back in bodybags; others wounded, physically and mentally, and the government turns their backs on them, making them fend for themselves.

14. We lay low for 25-30 years, then begin to look around again.  Hmmm, let’s see who’s getting oppressed…….

And all the while, we took the lives of thousands of innocent civilians caught in the crossfire, giving them the very treatment we said the “enemy” was doing in the first place.

And the MIC makes huge profits while thousands of families cope with their loss.

That’s how it was and this is how this conflict will end.  When will we ever learn, and stop waving our dicks?

The American people still support the president’s decision to send more troops to Afghanistan even if they do not support the war.  My take is that Americans want a “strong” president like Hobbes’ Leviathan.

In a recent CNN poll the results are somewhat contradictory on the surface at least.

“Respondents were asked: “Do you favor or oppose the U.S. war in Afghanistan?” Here the answer is that only 43% favor the war, and 55% oppose it.”

But another question: “Regardless of how you feel about the war in general, do you favor or oppose President Obama’s plan to send about 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan in an attempt to stabilize the situation there?” Here it becomes 59% in favor, to 39% against.”

Americans whether we like it or not love the appearance of strength especially in their executive.  Yes it’s part of being mentally lazy but on questions of national security, at least until proven wrong, most Americans give the executive the benefit of the doubt.

Of course over at Huffy the outrage de jour is the fact that detainees in Gitmo will probably be there most of next year.  Again our progressive reactionary friends instead of seeing this coming are reacting like this is another sell out from President Obama.  The president definitely underestimated the legal mess that Bush made at Gitmo.  Furthermore there were some missteps in the beginnings with WH counsel.  However Congress has been the main culprit in slowing the pace of trials and closing of Gitmo.  The delay in closing Gitmo has much more to do with the party of NO, because they want to use it’s closing to scare most Americans because they have so little to offer in 2100. While conservdems are grandstanding to get reelected in more conservative districts and states.

On the domestic front this is why I think in the end Americans will give Obama credit or blame on healthcare reform.   Healthcare reform does not need to be a monumental success but it cannot be a total failure either.   That’s why for the life of me I cannot figure out why Dems are holding back implementation so long.

The president has so many gambits occurring at once that’s why I truly laugh when people say he’s not a strong and a timid leader.  The last president in many of our lifetime’s to put so much on the line at the same time was LBJ.

The military, for a number of years, had a draft.  It was done away with in the 1970s and there has been an all voluntary military ever since.  I think it is time we go back and re-institute the draft, especially in light of our participation in two simlutaneous wars, and military personnel are becoming more scarce.

But here is where the military has gotten it wrong, for so many years.

I am a Vietnam Vet, am 61 years old, and the military thinks I’m too old to track down, and go after, terrorists.  The maximum age one can be to join the military is 42, and I’m 19 years too old.  But, I maintain that they have it ass backwards.

Instead of sending 18 year olds to fight , they ought to draft us old guys and make those of us who have already served re-up, and also get those guys who weaseled their way out of the Vietnam War the first time, this time.  Let’s not even draft anyone until he’s 35 years old.  Here is my thinking:

First of all, researchers say 18 year olds think about sex every 10 seconds or so.  We old timers only think about sex a couple of times a week, leaving us almost 30,000 more seconds per day to concentrate on the enemy.

Young guys haven’t lived long enough to be cranky, and a cranky soldier is a dangerous soldier.  There is much for the older guy to be grouchy about – achy back, knees and neck; trouble sleeping; always tired, etc.  Older guys are more impatient and maybe letting us kill some terrorist asshole will make us feel better and shut us up for a little while.

An 18 year old doesn’t like to get up before 11 a.m.  Old guys always get up early to take a piss, so since we’re up anyway, we might as well be up killing some fanatical religious zealots while we’re at it.

If we got captured, we would be reliable in not spilling the beans because we would forget where we put them.  Just remembering name, rank and serial number would be a real challenge for us.

Basic training, better known as boot camp, would be much easier for us old guys.  We’re used to getting cussed out and yelled at and we’re also used to eating soft food like C-rations.  Over the years, we’ve also developed an appreciation for guns.  We’ve been using them as excuses to get out of the house and away from the cursing and yelling.  They could go easier on the obstacle course, however.  In all my time in Vietnam, I never had to climb over a 20 foot wall with a rope hanging from it, nor did I do any pushups after a firefight.  Now that I think of it, running was kind of a waste of energy, too, for I’ve never seen anyone outrun a bullet or oncoming shrapnel.

An 18 year old has his whole life ahead of him; he’s still learning to shave, talk to a pretty girl, probably never had sex, and he still hasn’t figured out that the brim of a baseball cap is to shade his eyes, not the back of his head.  All these things are good reasons why we should keep them at home and let them learn a little more about life before sending them into harm’s way.  With us gone, they’ll have more access to horny cougars, too, and really learn how to do it right instead of fumbling around with an equally inexperienced girl.

So, let us old guys track down those dirty, cowardly, bastard terrorists.  The last thing they want to deal with is a bunch of pissed off old fogies with attitudes and automatic weapons who already know their best years are behind them and don’t have much more time to live anyway.

Finally, why not also draft women over 50, provided they are in menopause??  You think old men have attitudes?!?  Oh, my God !!  You can put them on guard duty, and we old farts might get a good night’s sleep, for a change.

The numbers appear to be leaked by The White House, 30,000 more troops for Afghanistan.

Some of the buzz from the MSM is that Pres. Obama will present this as a part of a plan for winning in Afghanistan and that we should be out by the end of his first term.

I’ve previously expressed my criticism of the whole concept of “winning” in Afghanistan, namely that it will always be nebulous as there is no concrete finish line. The Taliban can have a resurgence if beaten down as they have shown and the corrupt, dictatorial “democratic” government is a ticking time bomb.

However, in politics, one can either lock their eyes on the context of the current moment in time…or analyze it to determine the subtext, the big scheme and unspoken strategy lying beneath it of which this may only be a part.

This is all hypothetical but let’s consider Pres. Obama’s current position, the political landmines on Afghanistan and actually taking constuctive steps there in an attempt to explore whether this may in fact be a prelude to withdrawal.

In an environment where winning a Nobel Prize and spending a weekend with his family are considered by his foes as outrageous affronts to the American People, how would “We’re pulling out of Afghanistan!” play?

The Repubs would cry, “He made us lose!”, “We’re in danger of being attacked now!”, “He’s too weak on defense to protect us!”, etc.  Once Teabaggers removed the obstructions in their mouths, they would scream, “Traitor!”, “Surrendererer!”, “He let the terarists win!”, “If we’re attacked now, it’s his fault!”

And the Dem Party would be painted as weak on defense, palling around with “terarists”, leaving our country open to attack, etc.

So, my proposition is that in order to pull out, Pres. Obama may feel that we first have to go in.  There are goals and tactical missions that could be accomplished in a brief period to help the Afghan people and root out any remaining Al Qaeda. We could leave Afghanistan on a strong note of accomplishments which will be good for our relationship with that nation, other nations and of course among the teabag-less majority here at home.

If this was his goal, to settle things down there as the first step of a pull out, he could hardly make that known to anyone. Though he did start whispering something like that in my ear at that WH dinner I crashed but I was elbowed out of the way by this bleached blond who had a copy of “Arianna Huffington’s Guide to Getting Undeserved Attention” in her purse.

No, I am not happy that the 30,000 are being sent even if it is towards the goal of pulling out. Things don’t always go as planned and those troops and more could get bogged down, killed and wounded there for many years to come.

But I do hold out the slim possibility that there could be a silver lining to this unpleasant dark cloud.  At least we know, if Bush was still in office or if McCain was, this wouldn’t even have a remote chance of happening.

Only time will tell…

President Obama is going to announce his plans for Afghanistan after Thanksgiving.

It may be ironic that by then we will be done giving thanks.

Word right now is that the military anticipates over 30,000 more soldiers being sent there. Pres. Obama will present his decision and reasoning to the country in a national address.

There are many considerations that have gone into this decision but two key questions many have are on the basic premise of the war and what signals that we have succeeded and can the end of the war.

First, let’s consider what the premise of the war is. Is it to defeat The Taliban there? Is it to destroy Al Qaeda there? Is it to help build the country’s infrastructure? Is it to help ensure an honest democratic government (when we get one, let me know)?

Pres. Obama will present us with what his premise is for our continuing the war. Doubtless, he will mention the need to confront those who attacked us on 9/11. The problem with that premise is that they are most likely in Pakistan. Another probable premise is to help free the people of Taliban control. The problems with that premise are numerous.

First, The Taliban in Afghanistan are not a united group, they are a collection of warlords, religious fanatics, local tribes, etc. The Taliban fighters are experienced in guerrilla force, using their knowledge of their native terrain against our military. Sound familiar to certain unwinnable war in the ’70’s?

Second, our goal then is to spend blood and treasure on freeing the people of Afghanistan from Taliban control…so they can instead be under the control of a corrupt dictatorship masquerading as a democracy? If we are fighting there to put the people under the thumb of the corrupt Karzai, are we really the good guys in this?

Third, we supposedly defeated the Taliban after 9/11. They regrouped and grew back to a formidable force. Why would we expect any different result after we “defeated” them again?

Let me propose a few premises and questions:

a. Fighting a war to permanently destroy The Taliban has proven futile in the past and may very well be proven futile again.

b. Al Qaeda has evolved, they no longer have training camps with monkey bars. They no longer are physically centralized anywhere (they have the internet and are loosely spread around the world), certainly not in Afghanistan. However, a big contingency of Al Qaeda are now in Pakistan.

c. Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Afghanistan has rocks. Which country would pose more of a threat if Al Qaeda took it over?

d. With our military stretched thin and our treasury at a breaking point, how can we afford to continue pouring billions a month into nebulous wars? Isn’t this drain on our government and military readiness a substantial threat?

e. If the end game is to beat back the Taliban so the illegitimate government can control the country, how is that really an end when our military would need to remain to hold back the Taliban from returning to control as has happened before?

f. While we focus most of our military and resources in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban, could we pay a price for not instead applying them to fight Al Qaeda in Pakistan?

There is one huge issue here as well, the humanitarian issue. Real human beings, especially women and children are suffering under Taliban. If the U.S. were to pull out, could we leave these people at the mercy of The Taliban? We don’t have to and we shouldn’t.

Now I don’t plan on running for President until 2016 so I won’t be in a position to implement my plan in the near future but I do have a doable proposal that has a real exit plan.

My proposal is to first accept reality. We can’t kill all the Taliban. We can’t control all of Afghanistan anymore than the Soviets or the many others throughout history who have tried. So we shouldn’t be fighting to gain control of the country.

However, we can create and protect safe zones, Green Zones, as we did in Iraq. But instead of creating them to protect a U.S. occupation, we could create them for The Afghan people. We could begin by creating one safe and protected community at a time, training Afghans to take over the duties of protection and policing and spend a fraction of what we’re spending now on the war on building a functional infrastructure in that town. Schools, running water, electricity (solar and wind energy would do quite well there). Money could be spent to relocate businesses and people (especially the vulnerable women and children) to this Green Zone and there would be the prospects of a decent life for its citizens.

Once one Green Zone city flourishes, another could be supported in another part of the country. The cycle could continue and if successful, could allow the Afghans themselves to eventually finance and manage the modernization and prospering of their own nation.

And as for the Taliban, as opportunity and jobs grow for young men, as more can make a decent living and enjoy their lives, fewer and fewer will be poor and desperate pawns to be prayed upon for recruitment by The Taliban.

The approach to some big problems is sometimes micro-solutions. By taking on a big task we can’t accomplish, we help no one. By taking on the same goal with a series of smaller, achievable and finite missions, we are helping people along the way as we proceed to the overall goal of helping many more.

BTW, your campaign contributions to Adlib 2016 are not tax deductible.

There’s this site I know, you may have heard of it. It starts with an H as in “Hell”. They have a story up right now as their top screaming headline, quoting CBS that President Obama has decided to send 40,000 troops to Afghanistan.

In the meantime, CBS News has posted an update at the top of their article on their site which says:

Editor’s note, 9:57 p.m. EDT: The White House has issued the following response to this story, attributed to White House National Security Advisor James Jones:

“Reports that President Obama has made a decision about Afghanistan are absolutely false. He has not received final options for his consideration, he has not reviewed those options with his national security team, and he has not made any decisions about resources. Any reports to the contrary are completely untrue and come from uninformed sources.”

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/09/world/main5592551.shtml

And is this update, which undermines the shock and awe of the story, displayed at that newsy progressive site which begins with an H as in “Hypothetically-newsy”? Not as of the time of this writing, 3 hours after the update was posted at the CBS site.

So many outrages, so little time. What’s more upsetting?

That Pres. Obama may have given into McChrystal and assured more war, billions of our treasure and lives of our soldiers for a goal that no one has yet defined let alone determined is winnable?

That CBS could have falsely reported this story, that by doing so they could be helping to lobby for a bigger, costlier and more deadly Afghan war?

That Pres. Obama may not be honest with the nation when he says he hasn’t decided yet?

That the site that begins with an H as in “Hate-filled” would call itself a news organization but mislead its readership by only presenting part of a story because the full story might not be as inciting to progressives (read “profitable to the site”)?

You decide!