President Obama's Afghanistan Escalation Speech
By Phyllis Bennis
December 2, 2009
Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and co-author with David Wildman of the forthcoming Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer.
There was one way in which President Obama’s escalation speech brought significant relief to the 59% of people in this country, as well as the overwhelming majorities of people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East and elsewhere who oppose the U.S. war in Afghanistan: It was a pretty lousy speech. That is, it had none of the power, the lyricism, the passion for history, the capacity to engage and to persuade virtually every listener, even those who may ultimately disagree, that have characterized the president’s earlier addresses.
And for that failure, we should be very grateful.
Anti-War Escalation Needed
Near the end of his speech, Obama tried to speak to his antiwar one-time supporters, speaking to the legacy of Vietnam. It was here that the speech’s internal weakness was perhaps most clear. Obama refused to respond to the actual analogy between the quagmire of Vietnam, which led to the collapse of Johnson’s Great Society programs, and the threat to Obama’s ambitious domestic agenda collapsing under the pressure of funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, he created straw analogies, ignoring the massive challenge of waging an illegitimate, unpopular war at a moment of dire economic crisis.
Obama also did not acknowledge that about 30% of all U.S. casualties in the 8-year war in Afghanistan have occurred during the 11 months of his presidency. He did not remind us that the cost of this war, with the new escalation, will be about $100 billion a year, or $2 billion every week, or more than $11 million every hour. He didn’t ask us to consider what adding another $100 billion — let alone $500 billion, or half a TRILLION dollars over the next five years — to the already ballooning deficit will do to our chances for real health care reform.
President Obama didn’t ask us that. But we know the answer to that question. We need to build a movement that can respond to that answer, that can respond to the new challenges of these new conditions — because while this is not a new war, we face a new political moment. We need to build new alliances into a movement that can bring this war and occupation to a rapid end, so that we can begin to make good on our real obligations to the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as to the people of our own country who struggle to find jobs, health care, and climate justice. We need to build a movement with roots in the trade unions, in the labor movement, and among those struggling for economic rights, particularly among communities of color. We have to push Congress to make good on their “concerns” regarding this new escalation by refusing to pay for it, and to support those members of Congress who are trying to do just that. Congress hasn’t given Obama a blank check for this war yet — not even a $30 billion check. And there’s still time for us to make sure they don’t.
Read the full article at:
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6613'
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