(second piece below this)
http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/liberals_are_useless_20091206/
*Liberals Are Useless
*
Posted on Dec 7, 2009
By *Chris Hedges* <http://www.truthdig.com/chris_hedges>
Liberals are a useless lot. They talk about peace and do nothing to
challenge our permanent war economy. They claim to support the working
class, and vote for candidates that glibly defend the North American
Free Trade Agreement. They insist they believe in welfare, the right to
organize, universal health care and a host of other socially progressive
causes, and will not risk stepping out of the mainstream to fight for
them. The only talent they seem to possess is the ability to write
abject, cloying letters to Barack Obama /--/ as if he reads them
/-- /asking the president to come back to his "true" self. This sterile
moral posturing, which is not only useless but humiliating, has made
America's liberal class an object of public derision.
<snip>
============================
Back to Bush...
*A War President*
*By William Kristol*
*December 05, 2009 "**Washington Post*
<http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2009/12/obamas_afghanistan_speech.html>*"
-- In* his Monday open letter/cri de coeur to the man he supported for
president, Michael Moore asked Barack Obama
<http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mikes-letter/open-letter-president-obama-michael-moore>:
Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West
Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are
increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you
are the new war president. Pure and simple.... Please say it isn't so.
Well, it is so. President Obama went to West Point
<http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/12/obamas-afghan-policy-speech-at.html>,
said it was an honor to be with young soldiers who embody what's finest
about our country, described approvingly and patriotically America's
historic achievements in the "noble struggle for freedom," and spoke as
a war president. A good thing, too. Because when you're at war, you need
a war president.
There were unfortunate aspects of Obama's speech: the foolish eagerness
to tell us he's as eager as can be to get us out of Afghanistan as soon
as he can; the laying down of a pseudo-deadline for beginning a process
of transitioning our forces out in July 2011, combined with the claim
that the pace and duration of the withdrawal is to be conditions-based
-- a typical example of Obama trying to be too cute by half; the silly
harrumphing that "it will be clear to the Afghan government -- and, more
importantly, to the Afghan people -- that they will ultimately be
responsible for their own country," as if we were there to help the
Afghans become "responsible for their own country" again, as opposed to
fighting for reasons of vital national interest.
Still: By mid-2010, Obama will have more than doubled the number of
American troops in Afghanistan
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/12/AR2009101203142.html>
since he became president; he will have empowered his general, Stanley
McChrystal, to fight the war pretty much as he thinks necessary to in
order to win; and he will have retroactively, as it were, acknowledged
that he and his party were wrong about the Iraq surge in 2007 -- after
all, the rationale for this surge is identical to Bush's, and the hope
is for a similar success. He will also have embraced the use of military
force as a key instrument of national power.
At the press briefing this afternoon
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/press-briefing-senior-administration-officials-presidents-west-point-speech>
by two senior administration officials, a questioner pointed out that
the government of Iran "regards the U.S. government's policy of surging
forces as following Bush policy" and that the Iranian regime sees "no
change in U.S. policy."
One senior administration official responded:
One reason that this policy may seem to Iran as consistent with
previous policies is that it's founded on the same national
interest, and that is that, fundamentally, at the very core of this,
is the U.S. national interest to protect America and America's
allies. And the threat that emanates from this region, centered on
al Qaeda, persists.
So that's why there -- it's easy to understand Iran's perspective
perhaps that there is some continuity here in the U.S. policy.
That's because the interest is consistent.
"The interest is consistent." That's the heart of the matter. It's
encouraging that Obama seems to understand this fact.
On Jan. 20, 2009, in his inaugural address
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/inauguration/address/>,
President Obama said, "And for those who seek to advance their aims by
inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that, 'Our
spirit is stronger and cannot be broken. You cannot outlast us, and we
will defeat you.'" He might have repeated that confident assertion
tonight. Perhaps he can repeat it in his next speech as war president.
--
"There is nothing more dangerous than a shallow thinking compassionate
person" Garrett Hardin
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