Welcome to mcdowellnews.com. Skip directly to: our Keyword Search, Section Navigation, Content.

mcdowellnews.com - The McDowell News

HomeNewsEntertainmentSportsLifestylesOpinionCommunityWeather Online Tools Jobs | Real Estate | Shopping | Classified

Combs: Obama surge proves Dems love war as much as Repubs

By Britt Combs | The McDowell News

Published: December 1, 2009

When a Republican president finds himself losing popularity, he moderates his position by spending billions on AIDS research or inner city schools. When a Democratic president becomes unpopular for being too liberal, he establishes his moderate bona fides by sending soldiers in search of foreign dragons to slay.

President Obama has graduated from anti-war president who inherited a conflict he doesn't want to imperial president and war enthusiast. He will order at least 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan beyond the 21,000 he deployed months ago.

Robert E. Lee once said, " It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we would grow too fond of it." Barack Obama apparently disagrees.

The dove Democrat is a myth. Voters fall for that one again and again because, (blush) they're not terribly bright. Their last true peacenik was Jimmy Carter. To find another peaceful Democratic president, you must look to Grover Cleveland, whose second term ended in 1897. Shock! The record proves Democrats love war and killing.

Why shouldn't Americans love war? Government-funded historians and economists consistently pretend that war mobilization in the 1940s ended the Depression. Wars provide government cover to impose all kinds of restrictions, taxes and search and investigative powers. Wars always occur far away in remote lands populated by olive skinned heathens, rich with unclaimed natural resources and desperately in need of some good ol' Yankee know how and a "public-private partnership" to exploit them properly.

Before his Tuesday speech, Obama's handlers said he'd sell the surge as vitally linked to the exit strategy, but that's hogwash. Military eventualities can and will inevitably arise making "withdrawal" unwise. It's a promise no one can hold him to, and no honest man would make such a promise.

Recently in this space we criticized the president for mimicking his predecessor's war strategy despite having run as a peace candidate. We learned that the lies and the squandering of human life -- both soldier and civilian -- delegitimized the government of the United States. A handful of readers called me to task for that (although the silent majority agreed with me), saying that the Washington elites were legitimate, unlike Saddam or the Taliban. "We elect our leaders," wrote one angry fan of this column. Yet the fact remains that leaders do not have an open-ended mandate; their actions are restricted by law. Republicans and Democrats, however, disregard the law in the name of "security." Their status as outlaws and oath-breakers makes them illegitimate, no matter how they were elected.

In 1968, Richard Nixon was elected to end the war in Vietnam. Given the opportunity to "declare victory and go home," he chose instead to escalate the conflict in pursuit of the "honorable conclusion." He failed. His failure led to his personal destruction, the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and millions of civilians.

Escalating the war in Afghanistan might make Obama more popular with the blood and guts imperialists of the right wing, and he might have the leftists so brainwashed they will go along with it, just as they always did with Clinton and his many military rampages overseas, but it will not make it any easier to get out later, it will not increase American popularity and it will not make it harder for al Qaeda to recruit new suicide bombers.

Afghans, like Americans, have an inalienable right to alter or abolish their government and replace it with one that seems to them more likely to secure their safety and happiness. Many there wish for a libertarian society and a limited government, but that is something they will have to work out for themselves. Nation building in Afghanistan strips the people there of their dignity, and makes any Afghan who cooperates with the Americans little more than a teacher's pet. Teacher's pets get no respect at all among their peers. No one wants a fait accompli democracy handed to them at the point of foreign bayonets.

The president says he needs more time, money and blood to train the Afghan army and police to protect themselves. He is being deliberately deceptive, spouting blatant nonsense. Afghans have been fighting wars and policing crime for millennia. They have all the training they need or want.

When it's all said and done, more American money, lives, property and liberties will have been lost, more Muslims will have been radicalized, and Afghanistan will have stood down yet another invader. And more American soldiers will have been betrayed by their government. Well done, Mr. President. You're the Republican of the Year.