Army recruiters threaten teenagers to increase enlistment numbers

"Beat those swords into ploughshares, then beat those ploughshares into grenades."

Barack Obama's Op-ed in last Monday's New York Times, along with his visits to Iraq and Afghanistan have apparently done well for his popularity in the United States. His call for a 16-month phased withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq is certainly going to gain him support amongst voters, the majority of whom finally see the U.S. presence in that country for what it is: the result of an ideologically driven program to decieve the American people into engaging in an imperialist nation-building exercise that reaped benefits only for political hacks and the military industrial complex.

Sadly, however, Obama isn't about to abandon nation-building as a way of spending American tax dollars. Instead of bringing the troops home in 16 months, he makes very clear that he seeks to "redeploy our combat brigades" in order to meet "our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven." He also has no desire to actually end our involvement in Iraq either:

"After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and , so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces.... I would consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government to ensure that our troops were redeployed safely, and our interests protected."

How is maintaining enough troops in Iraq to go "after any remnants of Al Qaeda", not just in that country but in "Mesopotamia", (a region that feasibly could include Syria, Jordan, and Iran) an end to the war? What does he mean when he refers to "our interests" being "protected"?

This is a case of beating your swords into plowshares, and then beating those plowshares into grenades. Mr. Obama is making a politically expedient move: Assuage the anti-war voices in the United States by calling for a supposed withdrawal from Iraq, while also trying to appear strong in the face of the enemy, whoever that happens to be if he gets elected.

Then there is the issue of "our broader strategic goals" in Afghanistan and Pakistan. What Obama and sadly most Americans, who still view this conflict as the "good war", do not realize is that like any front in the "War on [insert euphemism]", the war in Afghanistan will never be "won" because you cannot ever destroy an idea. In the case of Afghanistan, that idea is a historical tradition: Resistance to foreign occupation. Like the unforgiving terrain of that nation, Afghanis are unforgiving towards outsiders who come bearing arms. From as far back as Alexander the Great, to the Mongol conquests, further on to the occupations by the British and the Russians (later the Soviet Union), no one has ever really held Afghanistan. It is a nation of nations; different languages, ethnicities and tribes, each supported by a foreign interest hoping on stabilizing the country enough to extract the valuable gas and oil deposits common through central Asia. Obama's clear shortsightedness in hoping to "win" a war there is based on a typical lack of historical thinking.

Also, beyond pragmatism, the U.S./NATO invasion of Afghanistan was no less immoral than the invasion of Iraq. The number of Afghanis who have died as a result of the anti-Taliban/Al Qaeda campaign has by now far exceeded the number of people killed in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. President Bush, acting without consideration for diplomatic alternatives, and exploiting the anger and fear of the U.S. population, as well as their ignorance of their government's long history of foreign interventions, attacked a country full of people who had never threatened them. Bush, and his cabal of neo-con advisers, convinced voters that finding Osama Bin Laden would be as simple as it looks in war movies and commando-oriented video games. The United States government thought, just as in Iraq, that invading a country and altering its political landscape would be a cakewalk since all human beings desire an American style of "freedom." The past 7-years of resistance in Afghanistan have proven that idea wrong.

Now that war has spilled over into Pakistan, a nation that is tacitly an American ally. Obama sites this nation as an Al Qaeda "safe haven". What does he propose to do about it? Pakistan's new government is unhappy with America's actions in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and may not cooperate with anti-terror operations. How does he propose to deal with that? More unilateral action?

Obama ends his op-ed with the words "it's time to end this war." But really, it's a deception: The war will go on, regardless of who's elected President, or to Congress, or whatever. Our constant state of war, that fuels the military industrial complex, will continue to eat up our tax dollars. And our healthcare, infrastructure, and educational systems (not to mention our debt and trade deficits) will suffer for it.

A Union Story by David Macaray