Obama�s plan for a military escalation in Afghanistan is bad news for Afghanistan and the United States, and for the peoples in both countries, and really for the entire world. Something this stupid this violent this wrong this futile this doomed can�t conceivably do anyone anywhere in this world any good, outside the US� munitions industries shareholders. That�s all fairly obvious, as his shameful caving in to DC conventional perceived wisdom on the issue, and on matters of so-called national security as well.

My gut suspicion on Obama early on was that he was going to leave a lot of people disappointed or worse at him, and so far I�m right there, dammit. Sometimes, and this is one of them, you�re glad to be wrong on a prediction. The question is is how serious he is on the 18 month from now withdrawal. Arguments have been put forward that his accepting McChrystal�s war proposals now with this timeline attached is going to give him the leverage to get out from Afghanistan in the future. That�s one way of looking at it, but I think the more likely and accurate way is to point out that he caved in once to this sorry set of arguments of McChrystal and the War Machine, so it is likely that he will cave in to what fundamentally will be the same set of arguments 18 months from now when they are fronted to him then. By then, there will be the political exigencies of the upcoming election, which he can�t afford to lose to the warmongering, reactionary, put-all-women-back-into-the-kitchen Republican candidate, so there will be another stall, if not another boost in forces in theater to right-flank the Republicans. Most of our intellectually torpid and corrupt press will praise him for doing that, which will get him votes, and maybe the election as well.

Obama had an excellent opportunity, his best moment, to liquidate both wars - and it has now passed. Doing that may have made him a one-term president, but doing something so right and necessary would secure his place in history*, and set him up for some future political comeback once we had come to our senses and gotten over the shame of our losing two wars. Obama�s unwillingness to face that eventuality, and to punt and hope for something better coming out of his future second term, shows him to be a captive of a conventional mindset and a captive of the DC political culture and the greedy self-centered DC political operators surrounding him who want eight and not four years in power, and a captive of perceived generally accepted wisdom in general. This doesn�t bode well for a future war disengagement, either.

But we should look beyond this one decision of his to the larger question of why we are still at war in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Bernard Fall, the Franco-American historian of the Vietnam War, pointed out that it was obvious in 1950 that as a result of France�s defeats by the Vietminh on the Route Coloniale - 4 battles that France had lost the war, that there was no chance of it militarily regaining Vietnam as a colony again, and that France had to come to terms with the Vietminh and leave the country. Fall pointed out that France�s failure to do so, and its pointlessly continuing the war for another four years, showed how broken the French government, the Fourth Republic, was. Same as here, now. The complete failure of any sector of the US government, and any significant nongovernmental institution or organization to face, and act on, the painful obviousness of the failure of our two wars shows that American government, and our society as well, is quite severely broken. The congress, the news media, the intelligentsia, the churches, everyone has rolled over on the wars. We all will be judged harshly for it, in the present by the rest of the world, in the future by our descendants, and in the hereafter by the Almighty. Our duty isn�t so much to pressure Obama, as it is to figure out where we went, where we are now, wrong in the big picture, and to fix it. Obama�s decision for more war is the symptom. The disease is in us, and we must find, fight, and cure it.

*A real, earned, place in history. And a worthy place in the hereafter, as well.

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, Daniel N. White, has lived in Austin, Texas, much longer than he figured he would. He reads more than most people and a whole lot more than we are all supposed to. He recommends all read his earlier piece in BC, 1975 Redux, which is still, in his estimation, the best piece on the Iraq surge anybody printed when it started. He is still doing blue-collar work for a living - you can be honest doing it - but is fairly fed up with it right now. He invites all reader comments, and will answer all that aren� t too insulting. Click here to contact Mr. White.