Click on the headline to link to an American Left History blog entry-Hey, Even “Non-Professional Leftist” Senator John Kerry Gets It On Afghanistan, Kinda, dated Wednesday, August 18, 2010, referred to in this entry.
Markin comment:
This week they have been uncorking the champagne bottles at the Obama White House and bringing out the bottom desk drawer Scotch bottles out at the Pentagon over the completion, a little ahead of schedule, of the American combat troop withdrawal from Iraq. Of course, that little matter of 50,000 hostages (oops) troops still remaining should make anyone who has even a minimum grasp of what the words "total withdrawal" mean or the minimum math skills(or has a good graphic calculator) scratch their heads. Oh well, the debt-piling American governmental executive branch and its bottomless pit Pentagon allies never let numbers get in the way of a little military adventure- mission accomplished, part two, sir. (We will speculate on "part three" if things unravel a little more in Iraq when the insurgents put some “heat” on the Iraqi government, if the parties ever get around to putting one together). But that is music for the future. Right now I want to look at this situation from our side, our anti-war side. Why? Well, after over seven years of war only the most hardened leftist opportunist, or benighted Pollyannaish pacifist, can claim that any of our anti-war actions played a role in this draw-down.
A few years ago, around 2005 and early 2006, at a time when in the post-Bush re-election period the situation in Iraq, for a whole series of reasons, was unraveling and rank-and-file soldier discontent posed a real, if time limited, possibility that the war could have been ended then I had, on several occasion, headlined my commentaries with the slogan (roughly put here) - Rev Up The Troop Transports, Gas Up The Troop Trucks, Hell, Pass Out The Sneakers, Cut and Run Now! The gist of that slogan was predicated on the idea that we (meaning a then slightly resurgence anti-war movement combined with that palatable, if unfocused, troop discontent) has a shot at ending the war on our terms- immediate, unconditional withdrawal. Or at least to give them a hellish fight around that possibility. Well, this week the last combat units were trucked across the Iraq border to Kuwait with all due ceremony. Although, every leftist, hell, everyone to the left of the unlamented Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bush cabal, should rejoice that the American troops are being withdrawn from one of the world's hot spots, even if not completely, we can gather no succor from our failure to get those exit trucks and planes revved up on our dime. So the slogan, the now bitter-tasting slogan, is still in play- Obama-Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S. / Allied Troops And Mercenaries From Iraq!
Needless to say the shell game withdrawal in Iraq only frees up additional troops for the Afghan quagmire and that is where we of the anti-war movement still have a shot at affecting history, especially with recent polls trending (nice word, right)to opposition to that war among the general American populace. And here is where déjà vu comes in, as I reflect on our anti-war struggle over the past several years. I can remember in the late summer of 2002, as the Bush war-drums were being beaten for Iraq war, I was at an early, small anti-war demonstration trying, trying like hell, trying vainly nevertheless, along with others to avoid the Iraq quagmire. One of the other protesters at that demonstartion held a poster with the slogan–Down With The Bush-Kerry War Drive! I thought that odd at the time because, not being totally up-to-date with the inner workings of bourgeois politics, I did not realize that well-known anti-Vietnam warrior, Massachusetts Senator Kerry, had the presidential “fire in his belly” and was planning, seriously planning, to run for the Democratic nomination in 2004. As part of that posture in 2002 Kerry was ambiguous (hell his name defines that term, “on the one hand and then on the other” is his mantra), at least in public about whether he was going to support an upcoming (October 2002) Bush-inspired war resolution. This fellow protester, no radical as it turned out, had as it also turned out good “inside” information that he was going to support the resolution, as part of his emerging post-9/11 hard anti-terrorist presidential profile.
Now the reason that I have brought all this up is that this week we have been treated to another Kerry grandstand play in Afghanistan. Not having learned anything from his 2002 vote (or subsequent 2004 aborted presidential bid, based in part on that vote and his wishy-washy maneuvers away from it)dove-hawk, ploughshares/swordsman (you can fill in additional dichotomies at your leisure) Senator Kerry provided key support for the December 2009 Obama-initiated Afghan troop escalation strategy. In a recent post(see linked post above)I noted that now as Senate Foreign Relations Committee czar, Kerry is starting to get “queasy” over the quicksand situation in Afghanistan and has sat down with Afghan puppet Karzai to give him the “skinny”-shape up, or we (the U.S. government) will ship out, maybe.
As I said in that post no one would ever, at least since the minute that he got before the cameras in 1971 at the Senate hearings on Vietnam, accuse old Senator Kerry of being a “professional leftist”, a thorn in anyone’s side. But, I will take the Senator word as good coin TODAY (I will not, nor should you, speculate on tomorrow) about getting out and give him the slogan to fight around (when he is ready, of course) Obama-Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops And Mercenaries From Afghanistan! That, my friends, is the slogan that we desperately need to fight around, with or without Kerry, if we are going to get those exit troop transports and troop trucks revved up in Afghanistan. And this time on our dime. Forward!
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