Guest blogger Bruce Braun agrees with Michael Weiskopf on Obama’s decision to increase troops in Afghanistan and adds some points on why he thinks it was a bad decision.
Given that Obama, like Bush, Clinton, et.al are all career politicians, his actions should not be a surprise to anyone. Especially, if one has spent more than ten minutes examining the lists of broken presidential campaign promises.
No matter how seemingly sincere a candidate for the presidency may portray themselves on the campaign trail, once in office, campaign promise amnesia sets in about 30 seconds after being sworn in.
I disagree that Obama was elected by appealing to our “best instincts”. He was elected because of the intense hatred and backlash towards Bush and a joke Republican ticket. It helped that Obama was an attractive candidate, preaching a message of harmony and peace while evidencing how racial attitudes have changed along with a sophisticated campaign management team.
How much difference a year makes! For those of us who voted for Obama on the basis of his campaign rhetoric, we overlooked that first and foremost, he is a politician, like any other politician. Obama is the product of a political system and political class elites. And we forgot that like all politicians, they will say and do just about anything to get elected and to stay in power. We are then stuck with them for two, four or six years with free reign to do just about anything they want, with a blank check, courtesy of us, the US taxpayers. We allow them to gerrymander their districts in ways that essentially guarantees lifetime job security short of being convicted of felonies.
Do we really expect 100 senators and 435 members of the congress to ever come together in a bi-partisan way about anything? The only show of a modicum of unity we ever see, is when something like 9-11 takes place. And even then, all 535 of those elected representatives begin exhibiting amnesia within six months after an attack, about the blood they were demanding in revenge.
Our founding fathers crafted a Constitution and a Bill of Rights that was just six pages long and has been the foundation of our republic for almost 300 years. Now look what we have: Healthcare Reform, Obamacare, whatever you choose to call it, is over 2000 pages long and Title 26 or the US Tax Code runs 5.6M words!
We will never know what took place in the Afghanistan War discussions over the past 11 months, despite the campaign promises for greater transparency in government. Michael makes excellent points in his essay, especially in regards to who should have been invited to weigh in on the ramifications of potential decisions by Mr. Obama. However, original ideas such as Michael’s are not part of the psyche of our political class.
We have created a global geo-political welfare state over the past 60 years for almost every third-world conflict. Got a problem with your country or the country next to you? Call the US. They will send you billions and spill their young people’s blood for you, without question or accountability on your part. Are you ripping off and subjugating your citizens? Murdering them too? Not a problem. Exporting narcotics? No sweat. It is the American Way!
We need to face the reality that we do not have a two party system that works in and for the best interests of the citizens of this country. We have one party, the political class, that exists for the propagation of their interests. This is why Mr. Obama and the Congress makes the decisions they do and pisses away our hard-earned monies and sacrifices the blood of dedicated military.
