Vietnam-lite is unveiled - Asia Times

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

Complete with falling dominoes in Pakistan and a military audience.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KL03Df04.html

The United States is in the midst of the most serious unemployment crisis since the Great Depression, and US President Barack Obama is following George W Bush in lavishing trillions of dollars on a few big banks. American taxpayers got nothing. Now, they get the cherry in the cheesecake; Obama escalating his war in Afghanistan. A Vietnam-lite - with a tentative expiry date, July 2011, for the start of a withdrawal.

The much-hyped Obama speech on Tuesday night at West Point - edited by the president himself up to the last minute - was a clever rehash of the white man's burden, sketching a progressive narrative for US national security clad in the glorious robes of "the noble struggle for freedom".

On a more pedestrian level, history does repeat itself - as farce. With Obama's surge-lite, US plus North Atlantic Treaty Organization occupation troops in Afghanistan will reach in the first half of 2010 the level of the Soviet occupation at its peak in the first half of the 1980s. And all this formidable firepower to fight no more than 25,000 Afghan Taliban - with only 3,000 fully weaponized.

Each soldier of the new Obama surge (a word he did not pronounce in his speech except when he referred to a "civilian surge") will cost US$1 million - though the Pentagon insists it is only half a million.

[BeFree]

1. Don't worry Asia

...we're there to save you from yourselves.

Money is not a problem.

/sarcasm

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. kick