AIN'T GONNA STUDY WAR NO MORE

I'm not going to listen to the President's speech Tuesday about the Afghan war.

I already know that he will announce sending 34,000 more soldiers, at a cost of 34 billion in borrowed dollars per year, to end the war in victory.

I already know that some of those soldiers will die; by enemy fire, by friendly fire and by their own hand, for no reason at all.

I already know that some of those soldiers will kill innocent Afghan men, women and children for no reason at all.

I already heard this same speech about escalating a senseless and failed war in Vietnam many times during the 1960's and 70's by President's Johnson and Nixon.

I already heard this same speech about escalating a senseless and failed war in Iraq many times during six years under President George W. Bush.

I already know we are going bankrupt establishing an empire of client states in the Middle East that only make anti American terrorism more attractive and America less safe.

And I already know the outcome: The war party wins again...and America loses.

Also published in the Chicago Sun Times, November 30, 2009

BEEN DOWN THIS ROAD BEFORE

The people in the war party, who think nothing of sending the idealistic and the desperate to the Middle East to die in the desert in fairy tail wars, should be required to view the Bill Moyer's Journal "Hearing History: The LBJ Tapes" which aired November 20.

It told of the escalation of the Vietnam War, mostly through the actual tapes of President Johnson and his advisors assessing the deteriorating Vietnam civil war which began spinning out of control shortly after Johnson assumed the Presidency, in November, 1963, and ending with the colossal buildup to over half a million soldiers and 58,000 dead by the time it ended twelve years later.

It was stunning to hear LBJ's gut tell him right from the getgo that the war was unwinnable due to the utterly corrupt and hated South Vietnamese government, which essentially put America on the wrong side of a civil war. Equally stunning was the 1964 GOP Presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, declaring with absolute certainty, that LBJ's dithering and indecisiveness was leading America to lose the Vietnam War, and LBJ buckling to Goldwater's pressure by widening the war, setting the table for its disastrous resolution.

Watching LBJ announce his decision to escalate a war he knew we could not win and did not need to win is as heartbreaking a speech by a President we may ever see....until possibly the current President has to stand before us in the next few weeks to tell us his decision whether to escalate another lost and unnecessary war.

Let's hope the President of hope has the audacity to listen to and ponder the destruction of his predecessor forty-four years ago.

Also published in the Glen Ellyn News, November 25, 2009

ONE DOWN AND ONE TO GO

This Thanksgiving, I will give thanks that President Obama has had the good sense to delay his inevitable decision to send more canon fodder, also known as American soldiers, to bleed and die in our senseless and failed war in Afghanistan till after we celebrate turkey day.

Now, if the President can find a way to delay that decision till after Christmas, he will be giving all of us, especially those aforementioned doomed soldiers, the best Christmas present of all.