President Obama's speech on escalating the war in Afghanistan

President Obama's speech was at West Point, in front of war enablers and myrmidons, was escalating the Afghanistan war and indicates he is trying to have it both ways. He is trying to appease the war lovers and the peace lovers. He is escalating the war in Afghanistan but will bring all the troops home from Iraq by 2011 ("Today, after extraordinary costs, we are bringing the Iraq war to a responsible end. We will remove our combat brigades from Iraq by the end of next summer, and all of our troops by the end of 2011.") and will bring the troops home from Afghanistan by 2011, ("And as commander in chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home. "). Just in time for the 2012 election where he will campaign on the points that he ended the Iraq war and is bringing the troops home from Afghanistan. He will say this will help reduce the deficit. This will keep the support of the anti war democrats. Smart politics.

I liked President Obama's speech where he sympathized with the Afghans for having suffered foreign occupiers. He deftly left out the American occupiers. ("The people of Afghanistan have endured violence for decades. They have been confronted with occupation — by the Soviet Union, and then by foreign al-Qaida fighters who used Afghan land for their own purposes.")





And the usual scare rhetoric from the politicians who always benefit from keeping the populace scared. ("For what's at stake is not simply a test of NATO's credibility — what's at stake is the security of our Allies and the common security of the world.") Imagine that. If we don't defeat a bunch of raghead radicals the whole world will be destroyed.

War will not change the hearts and minds of Islam. Technology will. Cell phones, the birth control pill, and the Internet are already diminishing the power of the Imams the same way technology diminished the power of Christianity.

The best recruitment for the radical Muslims is our presences in their countries. Imagine how you would feel if a Muslim army invaded and occupied your country and tried to tell you to run your country the way they run their country. I suspect many of you would become "terrorists" or "insurgents" as described by the occupiers.

The Imams are not afraid of our armies, they are afraid of the words in our Bill of Rights.

To the war lovers I ask, what happens when you destroy the Taliban and al Qaida in Afghanistan? Do you then invade Pakistan to rid them of al Qaida? Who is next? The Philippines, Indonesia, Ukraine, and any other country that will have people who resent the bullying tactics of the Mighty U.S.? Even if you destroy al-Qaida you will not get the rest of the world to love you, and your safety will always be at risk because you act like an arrogant, haughty, bully.

Since the war of 1812 the U.S. has never been at war with a country that was more powerful than it. The U.S. has always attacked and invaded countries that were smaller than it. No wonder the world thinks we are a bully.

War lovers are right out of the book, "The Demonic Male", by Dale Peterson and Richard Wrangham.

If the world was all one race, religion, and government, men would still kill each other. They are the only animal that can produce their own food, and more than they need, and man can desalinate water, thus preventing droughts and famines. Despite these wonderful abilities, the human animal is still the only one that kills its own kind for pleasure. Public torture was banned only a few decades ago. Now it is in the back rooms or on TV for our virtual pleasure.

“Man can be the most affectionate and altruistic of creatures, yet he's potentially more vicious than any other. He is the only one who can be persuaded to hate millions of his own kind whom he has never seen and to kill as many as he can lay his hands on in the name of his tribe or his God.” -Benjamin Spock, pediatrician and author (1903-1998)

Charles Tolleson