Reply #24: Jamie Rubin, Cruise Missile Liberal, Calls for Hypnotizing Americans About Afghan War [View All]

[Octafish]

Excellent point, mike_c. Somehow, in discussing the horse race, we fail to discuss the horse.

Jamie Rubin, Cruise Missile Liberal, Calls for Hypnotizing Americans About Afghan War

by Jeremy Scahill
Published on Wednesday, September 16, 2009 by RebelReports

Jamie Rubin, one of the leading Democratic Party hawks, was on MSNBC's Morning Joe Wednesday to discuss Afghanistan policy. Rubin, who served as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's top deputy in the 1990s, was a major figure in shaping and refining Clinton's "military humanism" doctrine. He was a passionate advocate for war against Iraq, which Clinton waged militarily and economically throughout the 1990s; he was a central player in the US-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and, significantly, US support for the Kosovo Liberation Army, which a senior US official, Richard Gelbard, had labeled "without any questions, a terrorist group."

Rubin is a famed cruise missile liberal who has seldom seen a war he didn't like. It is no surprise that he would be hitting the cable shows to support the war in Afghanistan at a time when public opinion is increasingly against US involvement. Democratic lawmakers are finally questioning the Obama administration's escalation there. Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence and hardly a radical anti-war voice, said Sunday: "I believe the mission should be time limited, that there should be no, ‘Well, we'll let you know in a year and a half, depending on how we do.' I think the Congress is entitled to know, after Iraq, exactly how long are we going to be in Afghanistan." On Sunday, Senator Richard Durbin, one of Obama's closest friends, said, "I think at this point sending additional troops would not be the right thing to do." And it is not just powerful Democrats asking questions. Prominent conservative George Will recently wrote in the Washington Post that it is "time to get out of Afghanistan." While Congress is not even considering cutting off funds (only 30 House Democrats voted against war funding last round and only Senator Russ Feingold (and independent Bernie Sanders) in the Senate), the tide is changing ever so slowly.

Rubin is predictably finding himself on the side of a band of discredited neoconservatives led by William Kristol who have launched a campaign to support the US war in Afghanistan. He is not alone among Democrats. Howard Dean recently got along swimmingly with Newt Gingrich and Chris Wallace on FOX News discussing his support for the war in Afghanistan and the Center for American Progress has issued pro-war reports and done events with neoconservatives. Rubin, who is married to CNN's Christianne Amanpour, is currently an adjunct professor at Columbia University's School of International Politics and Public Affairs. Rubin remains an informal advisor to President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

On Morning Joe, Rubin laid out what can only be described as a crude plan to hypnotize Americans into believing falsehoods about the Afghan war. "We need to really really put to bed the issue that I think is behind everybody here, which is that this is another Vietnam," Rubin said. "And I think that Vietnam is a terribly debilitating analogy for our country. Every time something is difficult, we say, "Uh, it's Vietnam.' Afghanistan and Vietnam have nothing to do with each other. The whole world is on our side in Afghanistan. The whole world was clearly not on our side in Vietnam. The people in Afghanistan prefer an outcome that is not the Taliban, while in Vietnam as you know, the situation was different. So, let's take that analogy, throw it out the window, and deal with the facts on the ground."

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/16-9

Ignorance, like corruption, goes across the political spectrum.