The real question underlying all this is whether the United States will give up being the world's imperial bully and the whole mind set of paternalism and coercion that goes with that.

We are at real risk of self-destruction from within, ruining our own economy and curtailing our own civil liberties and regard for law, while bleating about endless foreign threats.

Some would deny it, but we are determined to prove that "Afghanistan is where empires go to die."

The article is really soft on Obama, while presents the concealed truth: where it cost him nothing Obama may be different than Bush/Cheney; but in fundamental questions he's just like them. Look at the phone calls, speeches, meaningless peace negotiations - these are empty words, bearing no cost, moderate political consequences. Look at the hard facts - Gitmo is still operational, two wars are ongoing, military strikes are carried on in a foreign country - this agenda is just the same as Bush/Cheney's. The sweet speeches are supposed to de-fang the hard-line foreign policy, and Obama succeeded in buying time with them, having a few months of relief after the Cairo speech. Now this "optimistic fog" has passed, Obama has to invent something new to buy time with.

I think the psychology of authors is that they set their mind to write a tone, positive or negative, and then skew everything to fit the tone they want.

No one seems well enough versed in military affairs to see what the military historians are saying about Iraq.

So look here:

Victory in Iraq

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htwin/articles/20100907.aspx

You know, prior to the whole 9/11 thing that happened, very few people believed that Afghanistan was particularly dangerous. Yes, the Taliban was on the rise, Massoud was falling back and Osama was plotting whatever (we didn't know yet what that was) he was plotting, but really, it's Afghanistan. The land of backwards people that play that dead goat on horseback game. Yet one day later, it suddenly looked a whole lot worse.

Now its September 2010, and this Afghan Study Group says it isn't worth the cost. People will tout that as sondly researched and obviously right and lets get our boys home and pull out. The Taliban, still on the general rise and certainly controlling large swaths of territory, including parts of the north where they never held sway before 9/11, will settle down and slowly push the kleptocrats under Karzai out of power (or maybe not so slowly).

Suddenly we're back at square 1, with a secure haven for radical jihadists sending a message out to the world, we beat back the US, NATO and the UN and we're still here, possibly stronger than before. Watch out, cause another attack is on the way...

Then what? Do we do the Cheney thing and wait for another devastating attack on US soil to once again fire the short-lived passions of American Democracy to fight a war on the opposite side of the world?

Perhaps its not as "not worth the cost" as some people think. Unfortunately, this all comes down to the Democracy Problem:

A wise farmer looks out over the fields of his neighbors and sees storms coming from the horizon. A fool looks out only over his own farm and never sees the storm coming. And in a democracy, everyone gets one vote, and the fools vastly outnumber the wise.

But we're still living in the shadows. "By far, the most important speech of his first year in office was the Cairo address in which he promised a "new beginning" in the Middle East". Ah, the Cairo speech. It convinced Israelis of all political stripes and their American supporters that Obama is an ideological anti-Zionist, that he's ready to throw the Jewish state under the bus. ""After 9/11," Obama said, "our calling was to write a new chapter in the American story. Instead, we got a color-coded politics of fear covington va flower shops. " He promised a post-post-9/11 foreign policy that would replace the fearfulness and belligerence of the George W. Bush era with a new sense of openness and opportunity. One reason voters ultimately flocked to Obama was that he promised to liberate Americans from the darkness into which they had been plunged by the terrorist attacks. " " So we stumble ahead with the utterly meaningless "peace" negotiations, meant to create the illusion of progress. In the end, Israel will go away, by slow leak, if not by catastrophe. Zillions will have been wasted in this fool's errand (in the sense that a fool and his money are soon parted).