I've been talking with a number of avid Obama supporters in recent days about his advocacy for widening the war in Afghanistan.  Their arguments are for the most part of the following sort.  Afghanistan is a breeding ground for terrorism, so the U.S. has something between a right and an obligation to conduct warfare there to clean up this breeding ground.  Sometimes the argument also includes some notion about how we should introduce democracy there and/or liberate women, but the basic argument is that we need to clean up the terrorist breeding ground.  I could write about why the democracy and women's rights arguments are mistaken (and these arguments were made, in particular, by Laura Bush in 2001), but that would require a post in itself.
Let me suggest that we think through this advocacy of what Obama somtimes calls "the right war" as opposed to the wrong war in Iraq.  Of course, as in all wars, those who will suffer and die are for the most part not responsible for anything and are absolutely innocent.  Further, I don't remember Afghanistan or any Afghanis attacking the U.S. Yes, Osama probably was living there--at least I have no reason to doubt this, but he didn't control Afghanistan and wasn't part of a government there.  I'll get in a minute to the question of why he was there.  But first, let me point out that the Taliban was reported to have asked the Bush administration after 911 for evidence to support what Bush was accusing Osama of doing and the Bush administration refused to provide such, preferring to go to war.  Indeed, these twin wars against Afghanistan and Iraq are now known to have been planned well in advance of 911.  So, what is the basis for this war in Afghanistan?
And why was Osama there?  Is his presence there evidence of Afghanistan of some sort of breeding ground that requires the US to conduct war there to clean up?  What history should one consider to understand the situation?  This "breeding ground for terrorism" has been the recipient of warmongering incursions of similar sorts for the better part of the past two centuries.  Britain and Russia played what was called at the time "The Great Game," in Afghanistan and Persia (now Iran) from early in Queen Victoria's reign until the early 20th century.  This Great Game concerned rival attempts to obtain colonial rule over these places.  I haven't time nor space here to discuss this great game, but a visit to your local library, or a quick Google or Wikipedia skim can reveal some of the basic sordid tale.  Basically, Britain and Russia played a murderous game over who would take colonial control of Afghanistan and Persia (two familiar recipients of war and war threats from the US today).  
Russia continued the game in Afghanistan under the Soviet government in the 1970s and 1980s, which invited Jimmy Carter to involve the US and the CIA, and it was then that Osama entered Afghanistan with CIA covert and financial support.  So, if we have to go in a clean up this breeding ground for terrorism, it's only because we need to go in a clean up the mess we played a central role in creating.
What's up with that?  The US plays a part, with Britian and Russia, in creating the situation in Afghanistan (and Iran and Iraq, but that would need to be another post, which would include the US and the CIA overthrowing elected governments and installing pro-US and Britain dictatorships), and the atrocious result of this meddling somehow bestows a right on the US and NATO to go to war there.  This sounds warped to me.  We wouldn't accept this argument if it were applied to justify some other country going to war there.
And remember, wars bring suffering and death for the most part to innocent people.  The villagers who are the recipients of the bombs dropped by US planes never attacked us and never were part of any breeding of terrorists.
But if one wants to create a breeding ground for "terrorists", if that's the word one wants to use for people who wish us ill and think about doing us harm, then continue the sorts of Great Games that outside imperialist powers have been playing in Afghanistan (and Persia and Iraq) for almost two centuries.  Sounds like a losing policy to me, but I'm sure you know better. 
Never mind, for a minute, the poor politics of conducting war against the Afghani people.  Think for a minute about whether we want to be the kind of people who are too intellectually lazy to be a moral people.  I say this because to support a war in Afghanistan because one thinks we "need to clean up this breeding ground for terrorism" is revealing a lack of historical perspective and requires that we think of the mess simply as something that exists apart from our responsibility in creating it.  I also say it because we cannot morally justify doing what a war does.  Wars are not war movies and they are not portrayed on the TV news.  Wars are an astonishing suffering and massive death by violence.  We can refer to cleaning up a mess, but in fact we are blowing people brains and guts out of their bodies and our clean language cannot change this fact.
Cleaning up a mess sound like a good idea, I suppose, but remember that the verbal imagery is no different from the "ethnic cleansing" that we know is just a euphemism for committing genocide.
So, I find it hard to work up any enthusiasm for the present Obama candidacy.  Sure, McCain may be even more bloodthirsty, and indeed, Obama may not be bloodthirsty at all in his hear.  Maybe playing great games for political gain is only a game and we can call it cleansing.  But this doesn't change the fact that we are talking about brutality and death and it is the result of our political games that continue from long ago into today's political campaign.

I just read a comment on another web site that was written by a Brit who wrote that Obama reminded him of Tony Blair.  When Tony Blair was elected as leader of the New Labour party, he talked of a new politics of hope that would end the years of political bickering and game playing.  He wrote of finding common ground and compromise in place of oneupsmanship.  In short, his words sounded much like those of Obama in this campaign.  We all know where the Tony Blair story ends: New Labour has been the party of corporate capitalism and colonialist wars.  New Labour has gutted civil protections in Britain in ways that the Tories could not have accomplished, often in a way that Bush/Cheney can only envy. 
I was looking for a trope to capture my general uneasiness with Obama, and this is it.  Of course, even after New Labour became extremely unpopular, they won the last election, because their voters feared the alternative of the Tories taking power.  And yet, so many of us in the U.S. are continuing to think that we will hold our noses and vote for Obama, even after he has begun clearly to reveal his true self since winning the nomination.  FISA is only the beginning, I'm afraid of a Tony Blair regime in the U.S. under the name of Obama.  Can one really say that Britain or the world are better off today because New Labour defeated John Major?  Not really.  Of course, no reasonable person could vote either for the Tories in the UK or for McCain in the US.  But New Labour hasn't been better by much, if at all.  What really do we have to think that Obama won't be more of the same.  Nothing new about New Labour.  Not much change in Change We Can Believe In.

I just came across the following site:
http://www.womenforfairpolitics.com/

It says that it's a site founded by women from Ohio who were Hillary supporters, but I was led to believe it's a front for the McCain campaign.  It includes video from a female McCain spokesperson.  It also includes a "poll" asking whether you will vote for McCain, write in Hillary, or abstain in November.
Check it out and tell me your thoughts.  Looks like typical Rovian sick politics.  Anyone have any reason to think it's legitimate?  Seems to crude to be.

On March 28, 2007 Fidel Castro wrote an article in the Cuban journal, Granma.  He noted that one year earlier, on March 26, 2006, George Bush had articulated a US energy policy with a central role for agriculture in solving the energy crisis.  Castro quoted from an AP report: "The AP states: “President Bush touted the benefits of ‘flexible fuel’ vehicles running on ethanol and biodiesel on Monday, meeting with automakers to boost support for his energy plans."  Castro referred to this as "a sinister policy," and said that "the tragedy does not lie in reducing those energy costs but in the idea of converting food into fuel."  Castro went on the say that Bush's proposal was totally lacking in realism, that the numbers didn't add up, and that converting food into fuel would have disastrou consequences for food supplies. 
That was the first time I had seen such comments being made about the biofuel idea.  Mainstream media comments on CNN, Fox, NBC, and the like mostly (if my memory is accurate) focused on the positive change in Bush's attitudes; thank God that Bush is awakening to realize we have a real energy problem.  More recently the media have noticed a food crisis world wide, with food riots breaking out in many countries, rationing imposed by some governments and by some American retailers (e.g., Costco and rice), and inflation romping for food staples.
So, I ask, isn't it a good idea to listen to people outside one's group of friends?  If we were talking to, and more importantly listening to, people outside the usual set of talking heads on our media wouldn't we get exposed to a wider set of ideas--some of which happen to be right.  Who would have dreamed that wisdom about our capitalist system would be coming from Fidel Castro and not from the President's best economic advisors?  
I mention this on TPM because the question of whether America should talk to those outside the scope of its favorites is the focus of controversy in the past few days.  Bush and McCain have made it a campaign point, and even Senator Clinton has been calling such talks naive.
I suspect that Obama wouldn't help himself right now by point out that Fidel Castro had words that appear in retrospect to be wise on this one issue.  Surely the Republicans (and Clinton) would jump on him for this (even though we would have been better off listening to Castro one year ago).  But doesn't this illustrate that we are stupid if we talk with and listen to only those who have be certified as our allies and friends?

An initial warning:  This posting is meant at least in part to be satirical.
News reports are that Hillary has loaned her campaign in excess of 6 million dollars in the past month.  Earlier she loaned her campaign 5 million dollars.  Now, loans generally come with interest rates.  What interest rate is she charging her campaign.
After word comes out that Hillary is loaning her campaign millions, she goes on the prowl for donations.  Is she using the donations to repay her loans?  How else could she repay her loans?  I wondered how she and Bill could have accumulated over 100 million in the eight years since leaving the White House.  Indeed, they left heavily in debt, it was reported.  Clearly, they have a knack for hustling up the bucks in ways that don't rely on her paychecks.
Could these loans be another hustle?  Are donations to her campaign paying off her loans to herself -- including interest?  Is she persisting like the energizer bunny in her campaign not because she really thinks she can win -- and most commentators think she cannot-- but because she's turning a profit?
Of course, it may all depend on the meaning of "campaign."  And it may all depend on the meaning of making a loan to one's self.
Just asking.

Twenty two percent of Republican voters in Indiana and 26% in North Carolina decided not to vote for the Republican candidate, John McCain, at least votes reported by midnight.  That's a lot of Republican voters going to the polls just to show that they are unsatisfied with the Republican candidate.  

Given that it seems increasingly likely that Barack Obama will be the nominee of the Democratic Party, now might be an appropriate time to raise some doubts about his viability as a candidate in the fall.  A popular claim for some years on sites such as DailyKos, MyDD, and sometimes TPM, is that votes for Ralph Nader were responsible for putting (and keeping) George W. Bush in the White House.  Is the Obama candidacy primed to repeat this situation?

Marcy Winograd is an Executive Board member of the California Democratic Party.  She initiated a story that has played on MyDD, Huffington Post, etc., that Obama operatives have been involved in a purge of possible delegates from California to the Democratic Convention to be held this summer.  Winograd suggested that the California Obama campaign had purged almost all progressive anti-war activists from its delegate candidate lists. 

 I am reminded of the situation at the Democratic Convention in Boston four years ago when Kerry was nominated.  Anti-war demonstrators were shunted to obscure locations in pens surrounded by police and security so that they would not be seen or heard.  People carrying an anti-war message inside the convention floor, including delegates, on signs or on clothing or pins, were confronted by convention security and forced to remove the messages.  Of course, Kerry campaigned on what was essentially a pro-war position, which would have marginalized the anti-war people anyway.  I guess the thought on the part of the Kerry people was that with Bush as the Republican candidate, the anti-war vote would go to Kerry even though Kerry, too, was a pro-war candidate.  Even so, it seemed at the time to be foolish to thoroughly antagonize anti-war Democrats by marginalizing them physically as well as in terms of policy.

Now, the appearance is raised of similar Obama attitudes, with anti-war activists being purged from the roles of possible delegates.  Granted, some more recent reports have held that the purge is being undone, but the damage has been done to the extent that a basic tendency similar to Kerry’s of four years ago exists in the Obama campaign.  Whether this indicates that Barack is less anti-war than his posture has suggested is unknown to me, but it certainly raises that fear.  This fear is compounded by reports that Obama’s Iraq advisor, Colin Kahl, is saying that Obama will keep 60,000 to 80,000 troops in Iraq for years to come. 

Quite independently from the question of how one should read the tea leaves in all of this in terms of what they portend for the policies of an Obama Presidency, there is the short-term question of what this means in terms of votes leaking from Obama to the very real candidacy of Nader, and the possible Green Party candidacy of Cynthia McKinney.  When Democrats complain about “Naderites” costing Gore and Kerry the past two elections, my thoughts go to the ways in which their candidacies encourages such votes.  I know several people who tried to vote for Kerry last time (because Bush/Cheney are so completely terrible), but ultimately couldn’t get themselves to vote for “the other pro-war candidate, Kerry.”  Don’t count out the possibility in a 2008 Obama race that many won’t be similarly tempted if Obama equivocates his positions.  I, for one, already am alarmed at his argument that the war in Iraq is distracting the US from “the real war in Afghanistan.”  So far as I can tell, Osama Bin Laden is long gone from Afghanistan and the poor folk who are dying there at US, British, and other NATO hands aren’t responsible to much of anything that merits what is being done to them. 

There are other signs that Obama is willing to give up many votes to Nader and/or McKinney.  His consistent pro-Israel tilt, of course, seems calculated on the perception that his candidacy cannot afford a vigorous anti-Obama attack from the pro-Israel lobby.  For me, however, some of the good of his famous “more perfect union” speech was undone when he referred to Israel as a stalwart ally and placed the blame for the problems of the middle East as “emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.”  There are plenty of legitimate reasons for people the middle East to resent both Israel and the US that don’t follow simply from some perverse Islamic ideology.  The seeming dismissal of all responsibility for Israel and the US (and other Western powers) by Obama is appalling and it too will bleed votes from the Democratic nominee to Nader/McKinney. 

Obama repeatedly has stated a willingness to meet with foreign leaders who have been banished from diplomatic contact for years, including the leaders of Cuba, Iran, and North Korea, but he has resisted the possibility of meeting with the Hamas leadership of Palestine.  "They're not heads of state. They don't recognize Israel," Obama said. "You can't negotiate with somebody who doesn't recognize the right of a country to exist."  Yet, Hamas was elected by the Palestinian people in an election that outside observers, including the pro-American politician, Jimmy Carter, as legitimate. 

So, even as Obama campaigns as the candidate for change, he is inviting many to view him as the same old same old.  He’s for talking, so long as the pro-Israel lobby won’t be prompted into attack mode against him.  Apparently the anti-North Korean and anti-Castro lobbies are perceived as less powerful, so he’s enthusiastic about change that they won’t like.  He’s anti-war in that he talked against the war when Hillary voted for it, but he has consistently voted to continue funding it since he entered the Senate.  Now, by all appearances, he has no enthusiasm to permit a visible and audible anti-war presence at the Democratic Convention.  If the election in November is as close as the current polls suggest that it will be (and as close as the last two Presidential elections were), should we be surprised if Obama’s losing margin is less than the votes that go to Nader and McKinney?  And if this happens, will the Democrats again be blaming the “Naderites” or will they blaming the failure of the Democrats to provide a clear alternative to the pro-war policies of the other pro-war party? 

I may yet find myself able to vote for Obama in November (although I cannot imagine being able to vote for Hillary, even against McCain; she hasn’t distinguished herself from the Republicans sufficiently for my vote).  Obama’s recent behavior, however, is lessening that possibility.