Home › Blogs › SteveB's blog ›

Where is the Liberal Rage?

Submitted by SteveB on Fri, 10/16/2009 - 05:31

Crossposted at The Rockefeller Republican.  There are now plan for more  troops in Iraq and Afghanistan than there were in the Bush administration. From The Washington Post:

President Obama announced in March that he would be sending 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. But in an unannounced move, the White House has also authorized — and the Pentagon is deploying — at least 13,000 troops beyond that number, according to defense officials...

The deployment of the support troops to Afghanistan brings the total increase approved by Obama to 34,000. The buildup has raised the number of U.S. troops deployed to the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan above the peak during the Iraq “surge” that President George W. Bush ordered, officials said.

Furthermore it looks as though these troops will be in pace for a very long time. From New York Times Magazine:

"For what McChrystal is proposing is not a temporary, Iraq-style surge -- a rapid influx of American troops followed by a withdrawal. McChrystal's plan is a blueprint for an extensive American commitment to build a modern state in Afghanistan, where one has never existed, and to bring order to a place famous for the empires it has exhausted. Even under the best of circumstances, this effort would most likely last many more years, cost hundreds of billions of dollars and entail the deaths of many more American women and men." "And that's if it succeeds."

So my question- where is the liberal rage? If it does not materialize does that mean all the antiwar demonstrations were just political theater? Does the left really not care about this issue?

 

0
Your rating: None

Comments

It's there

Submitted by cr on Fri, 10/16/2009 - 12:26.

Huffington wrote on Joe Biden to resign because of it. Also, Libs have never thought that Afghanistan was a bad one to fight. And I bet they are split between the peacenicks who are against all wars and mere everyday liberal that probably think it's a good thing we're over there.

Now, if Obama sent more troups to Iraq, then you'd see people blowing up.

 

One of the harder parts of Afghanistan is that it's such a messed up coutry. There's no industry, it's landlocked and without resources, but it's where al qaeda is and next to Pakistan. Does more troups help, or does it provoke a backlash. And it's not up to one general. As with Iraq, ask a different general, get a different answer. When really, with that particular country, there is no good answer.

I don't know where it was written, but someone said, 'maybe muddling through afghanistan isn't so bad'.

I personally could expect us to be there a very long time.

It wasn't liberal rage at the war specifically

Submitted by Samthrax on Fri, 10/16/2009 - 20:55.

I think by now we should just cotton to the idea that it wasn't the objection to the war, period - it was objecting to a war from a Republican President.  Just as many measures are opposed now because they come from a Democrat President.  It's the parties - that's it. Few, if any, Reps or Senators are voting out of anything except the party line.  On the left, you have Kucinich and a few others.  (Obama is a paid stooge - he works for the same people Bush did, and surrounded himself with the same crowd of a bunch of vicious buffon dunces from Wall Street.  He could give a crap.)  On the right...you pretty much got Ron Paul.

Neither the Democrats - or Republicans at this point, let's face it -  want to actually do anything for the American people.  They just want to ensure the hegemony of their party.  That's called a party dictatorship, and weren't we supposed to be leaders in the fight against that kind of thing? 

Sure

Submitted by cr on Sat, 10/17/2009 - 06:48.

No doubt partenship plays a part. But if you look at opinion polls (and legislative obstruction), there wasn't much debate about Afghanistan. We just did it. Iraq, however, was a hard sell. And like all hard sells when they go bad, it becomes a political tool.

The left does want us out of there, and I know plenty of people on the right that feel the same way. However, I really believe we want to help out Afghanistan, but how do you help a country that has nothing to help itself?

As for the other stuff. . .  take money out of politics. Strike down incorporation. No money from unions, companies or lobbyist. Private donations only. I'm there. I think the argument that is free-speech is bunk. There are rights and there responsibilities.

 

 

 

 

 The outrage has different

Submitted by In between on Sat, 10/17/2009 - 08:10.

 The outrage has different levels. I don't think it is a liberal thing. I think people saw a lot of incompetence and the use of neoconism and the Wolfowitz doctrine. And at the same time we saw the neglect of our own country. This seems to be the way with republicans. It eventually comes to foreign policy and then we see the laissez-faire in running our country.

With some 30 books and hours of documentation on the war, we find out that the war was doomed to failure from the beginning. Bush 41 had 500,000 troops for one war and the war paid for. Bush 43 had 170,000 troops for two wars and the war not paid for. The war was also projected to cost some 50 billion dollars and now we see a trillion, at a time we saw the neglect of our country and infrastructure. 

We also saw with only 170,000 troops a quagmire in Iraq-a war in which Bush said each week that "we are winning the war on terror" only to see it failing for over 3 years. Also during this time and actually for some 5 to 6 years, we saw the neglect of Afghanistan-the original war on terror. We saw Al Qaeda go into Pakistan. 

So we have two wars, Iraq is getting better but we just don't know the future with that. And that is after the Iraq Study Group and others trying to figure out in how to win the war. Afghanistan, after years of neglect, is a basket case, along with Pakistan. We cannot leave these areas as it would create a void for Al Qaeda. Which was the original intent of going to war in the first place. It drove me nuts watching this unfold and nothing was being done. 

We saw a war and country being run by ideology. 

To me, it makes no difference what Obama does. We saw the worst of the worst for 8 years. Maybe the blame should go with the system we have. We just vote for a guy off the street and we expect a "president". And that (along with political parties) has pretty much become a joke. We see one party caught up with welfare, and the other party with neoconism, militarism, corporate fasciism, laissez-faire, and religionism.