By Jerry D. Rose
On Tuesday, December 1, President Obama will be going to West Point to announce his long-awaited decision on the future of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. The likely details have long since between leaked and involve a decision to send some undisclosed tens of thousands of troops, along with a strange in “strategy” in which the focus will be on empowering local tribal militias in the fight against the Taliban rather than relying on the “corrupt” central administration of Hamid Karzai.
On this eve of that “announcement,” Common Dreams ran two pieces on the subject. The first was yet another of Michael Moore’s “open letters” to Obama, this one appealing to him to disdain the military people’s demands for escalation, searching his “heart and mind” to do what Moore says was expected of him by millions who voted for him for President: i.e., end our Asian military operations and not escalate them. The thrust of many of the comments on the Common Dreams comment board ranged between praise for Moore’s candor and courage, and condemnation for the dubious role he played throughout Obama’s candidacy and presidency, one of acting both as critic and as someone who imagines himself “close” enough to a figure he greatly admires and whom he apparently hopes to “influence” by these open letters. My own response follows:
ooooooooooo
Jerry D Rose November 30th, 2009 3:42 pm
Moore to Obama: “You still have a few hours to listen to your heart, and your own clear thinking.”
I rather tremble to think what might result when Obama “listens to his heart” and engages in “his own clear thinking.” His “heart” has been abundantly demonstrated in every act of cruelty against those who have opposed his ambitious rise to power. I couldn’t count the victims of his ascension to the throne: from his own grandmother to his UC preacher to booting Dennis Kucinich from Presidential debates to….well the name of his victims is Legion (including the great mass of fellow black Americans); and why would you, Mr. Moore, believe that Obama’s heart would bleed at the thought of “how many kids will you kill today?”
As for his “clear thinking,” that is precisely what I fear. His clear thinking will give him a cost/benefits analysis that his escalation of Afghan operations will yield the maximum advantage for his further accumulation of power. It will mute the “soft on terrorism” fools who have far too much influence in a public saturated with a macho video-game conception of the necessity of America to be a BIG POWER in the world. And this benefit comes without any significant cost of diminished support from Michael Moore-type “liberals” who will swallow their disappointment in Obama on this issue and continue to write their “Progressives for Obama” open letters to the President asking him to consult his heart and his clear thinking on yet another issue (like a truly progressive health care reform or truly humane immigration or trade policies) that they will say once again would be the inevitable product of such self-searching. Not so, Mr. oh-so-nice and cuddly Michael Moore, you’ve hitched your cuddlies to the wrong star and all those good people who voted for Obama (alas the majority of my personal friends) will follow that “heavenly body” into its ultimate burn-out in the space of human affairs.
oooooooooooooo
Another Common Dreams commenter entered this comment:
dciconoclast November 30th, 2009 7:05 pm:
Awesome post. In terms of “cost/benefit analysis,” I was just trying to imagine what would evolve if troops were withdrawn now, versus what will happen with this troop increase. Literally the only real benefit I can even imagine to this increase is, as you said, “further accumulation of [Obama's] power.” Or so I assume he hopes. There is just no conceivable logical reason to believe that an increase of this size will make any positive difference in Afghanistan — though logic predicts many negative results.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Also on November 30, Common Dreams posted an article by John Brown, formerly of the U.S. Foreign Service, who resigned a diplomatic post in protest against the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Unlike Michael Moore, Brown seems to have no illusions that Obama might be persuaded by a last-minute appeal to abandon the escalation plan. Rather he focuses on a matter that is already being spoken about by commentators: the likelihood that Obama will have a “hard sell” with the public in gaining their support of his plan. Brown disagrees somewhat, noting that, unlike the situation of Bush who had to resort to clearly false propaganda like non-existent weapons of mass destruction, Obama can be more straightforward about his intentions, since the U.S. public is so conditioned to war-like actions of their government that plans for war are almost automatically accepted, as war for Americans has become as “American as apple pie.”
One commenter entered this comment.
oooooooooooooo
Thalidomide November 30th, 2009 10:44 am Obama may not be as crude as Bush but his actions prove his profound ignorance of history. He is heading for a disaster in Afghanistan and will pay a heavy political price as he should. Americans love wars even stupid wars as long as they are quick and easy and they score them like a football season which means when things go bad the coach often gets fired. It is obvious that the president is either too dumb or too weak to stand up to the real military rulers of the country so he will legitimize the pentagon’s wishes and make them a reality even though they are against the true national interest of the United States.
————————
In response, I made this comment:
oooooooooooooo
Jerry D Rose November 30th, 2009 2:59 pm
Thalidomide: “Americans love wars even stupid wars as long as they are quick and easy and they score them like a football season which means when things go bad the coach often gets fired.” The relevant word here is OFTEN gets fired. But losing teams don’t always fire their coaches, it “depends” on the situation. Way back in 1969 I published an article “The Attribution of Responsibility for Organizational Failure” in Sociology and Social Research (vol. 53, pp. 323-332). In the article, I tabulated every managerial turnover in major league baseball for a 50 year period. I found that the effect of losing on a manager’s job depended on the team’s performance (league standing) not just in absolute terms but relative to the performance of the team before a particular manager took over. A manager of a perennial pennant winner like the Yankees had a very short window of opportunity to maintain that success before he was canned; whereas a new coach of a perennial cellar-dwelling team (this is how John McGraw began his long tenure with the NY Giants) would be judged a “success” where the manager of a Yankee time should be judged a “failure” for a mediocre performance of his team.
So if you’re going to use the sports analogy in current politics, please remind yourself that Obama succeeded a “manager” who (at least in the eyes of people of left and center political persuasion) was a spectacular failure, almost insulating himself against having to suffer the “political consequence” (not being re-elected) that you say will be the result of what I agree will be the ultimate failure of the Afghanistan “plan” however it is dressed out to appear. And that’s just the central tragedy of Obama “accountability” to the American people. That center/left coalition that makes up the majority (maybe 60%) of the electorate is going to complain perhaps (almost certainly), but it won’t exact the political price of Afghan failure, because it will contrast, for example, a meaningless (and maybe militarily harmful) “exit strategy” or “withdrawal timetable” with the failure of the “old manager” (Bush) or maybe a likely “new manager” (like Palin) to allow for these marginal “improvements” on the dismal team performance of the Unites States in its military operations in Afghanistan. So look for those supposedly “divided” Democrats to push for something like Obey’s “surtax” to pay for the war and, when that fails, fall once again behind their centrist “manager” (Obama) because they see no alternative to support this Demican over any Republicrat that they’d get if they “fired” the boss. I mean whom would they hire? Someone like a McKinney or Nader or Ron Paul or Kucinich who might actually END the military operation? Nah, they ain’t qualified to coach in the big leagues.
I think what I’ve said might make more sense tomorrow after Obama articulates his “plan” and the spinning begins.
…………………………………
Jerry D. Rose is editor of The Sun State Activist
Recent Comments