10,000 More Troops for Afghanistan? The Pentagon Request Isn't Really New

Bigger, MORE important news/G20

Yes Indeed, Our L&S Obama is walking away fully erect with excitement from the G-20 has SOLD THE FARM. 250 Billion of the SDR (YOUR new world currency) has been authorized by (OUR?) leaders to be issued by the IMF (International Monetary Fund). In addition, the new FSB (Financial Stability Board) controlled by the IMF has been authorized with the mandate:

The FSB is to "collaborate with the IMF to provide early warning of macroeconomic and financial risks and the actions needed to address them,... reshape our regulatory systems so that our authorities are able to identify and take account of macro-prudential risks,…extend regulation and oversight to all systemically important financial institutions, instruments and markets. This will include, for the first time, systemically important hedge funds; ..endorse and implement the FSF’s tough new principles on pay and compensation and to support sustainable compensation schemes and the corporate social responsibility of all firms;...take action, once recovery is assured, to improve the quality, quantity, and international consistency of capital in the banking system. In future, regulation must prevent excessive leverage and require buffers of resources to be built up in good times."

Further good news... this "agreement" allows in 2011 to remove the EU and USA control of the IMF basically to the highest bidder. Say hello CHINA, who by that time given the Obama/Pelosi spending spree will OWN US. We will no longer have the "economic clout" to counter so the only other option will be to cave-in or war.

And Obama thought Bush left HIM a MESS?

10.000 More Troops for Afghanistan....Isn't Really New

Of course it isn't really new. It is really Vietnam re-visited. We started in Vietnam with U.S. trainers first, then

with incremental increases that in the end we had 500.000 troops there. And the U.S. commander there, William Westmorlad, was asking for more - just like Gen. David Petraeus is now asking for Afghanistan.

Will that suffice? President Lyndon Johnson was bragging that "unless the North Vietnam and the Viet Cong negotiate a peaceful solution with the U.S., they would be beaten on the battlefield," on quote. Now Obama sounds like Lyndon Johnson, but uses the pretext of occupying all Afghanistan - like we did with South Vietnam- as a "dismantle the Al Qaeda" operation. Al Qaeda is already dispersed, and basically non-functional, but he uses the Al Qaeda name to justify more troops to quell indigenous Afghan resistance because Americans won't object to any military move that has "Al Qaeda" as the target. In Vietnam it was the "specter of Communism." All political demagogues in history had to claim a noble cause to justify conquest and occupation of foreign territories in order to desensitize the public and mute dissent.

But the joke is on us now, and it will be on us when we eventually exit Afghanistan without achieving anything more that we have up to now. This is apparent from the news that come out of Afghanistan that our puppet president there, Hamid Karzai, has sighed new laws that the Taliban want. An Example of that law allows parents of girls as young as 9 years old to be forced into arranged marriages! What is the moral of the story when we send 10.000 more troops to prevent the Taliban from overthrowing that government that acts like them? If we cannot make a difference in the lives of Afghans, and the Al Qaeda is supposedly in Pakistan now, why are we in Afghanistan?

Obviously Obama wants to sound and act tough to secure his re-election in 2012. But that will cost him his global luster and good will. Obama must come to his senses, read the history of the Vietnam War, see the parallels, and make the correct decisions before his Afghan policy and ideals start to become corrosive. His honeymoon with the public here, and his international shine will not last forever if he continues the George Bush's foreign policy. Nikos Retsos, retired professor