Obamastan

The big multimedia sales pitch isn't until tonight but Obama has already issued the orders to escalate the war in Afghanistan by sending over at least thirty-thousand more troops (at a million dollars per soldier per year). Even if he didn't stumble arrogantly into a decision, Obama didn't make a decision any different, in substance, than Bush's decision. It was a decision to let the Military-Industrial-(Intelligence) Complex-- yeah, the ones President Eisenhower warned us about-- push the country into an unwinnable, disastrous war. Watch Eisenhower:



Towards the very end of his brilliant new book, Idiot America, Charles Pierce spends some time with Marine Corps General (ret) Anthony Zinni talking about how Bush willfully and tragically blundered into war in Iraq.

Zinni's expertise [expertise being mocked and despised inside the Bush Regime] was in devising ways to keep as many soldiers as possible from getting killed in pursuit of a specific objective. He gently chided the [Senate Foreign Relations] committee for its lack of curiosity and its passive acceptance of the gruel it was being fed. He continued to oppose the war in public appearances, but the war came anyway, because nobody who could have stopped it, stood up and tried.

That was what stayed with Anthony Zinni as the war was launched, and Saddam fell, and Iraq exploded, as more than three thousand Americans died over four years during which everything he thought would happen did happen, over and over again. The country had wandered into this war, eyes half closed, stunned and shocked and too willingly sold. The people had left the country on automatic pilots too long to pull out of the crash.

Obama needs to come up with about 10,000 troops from our allies to make up the gap between what McChrystal is asking for (now; he'll need far more later, of course). The U.K., under duress, offered 500. A few other countries have kicked in another 3,000: Poland 1,000, Georgia 700, Italy 500, South Korea 300 (although all non-combatants), Slovakia 200, Germany 150, and Macedonia. What no Fiji? No Tonga? No El Salvador? The Coalition of the Unwilling is working out as well for Obama as it did for Bush.

As Mr. Gibbs spoke Monday morning, the president was on the telephone with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France. The French daily Le Monde, citing diplomatic sources, reported on Monday that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had asked President Nicolas Sarkozy of France last week to send an additional 1,500 troops to Afghanistan, to supplement the 3,750 French soldiers and 150 police officers now there.

Last we heard from Sarkozy on Afghanistan he said that France wouldn't send one more soldier there. He's telling Obama he's lucky he's not pulling out the ones who are there... for now. NATO diplomats think Obama will be lucky if he gets half what's he's asking for. Eric Massa last night on Obama's fool's errand: