"Where to Begin Rebutting the Afghan Blather?" -- Christopher Dowd

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End of article below; whole thing here: http://original.antiwar.com/christopher-dowd/2009/08/18/where-to-begin-rebutting/

But you know what? No one cares. Our Beltway elite barely even try to justify these elective wars with coherent rationales anymore. In fact, Obama could have gotten up on that stage yesterday and justified the Afghan war as the latest front in the war on drugs (which is now a sub-justification) and no one would have cared. Not one major politician would say boo about it. They don’t care enough anymore about our opinion on these wars to treat our intelligence with respect. They know that these wars are going to go on no matter what Americans think and no matter which vetted mannequin of the two-party fraud occupies the White House. No matter what imbecilic justifications they advance for these wars, the wars will continue until the last nickel can be made from them.

I’ve seen some commentary lately about how the Afghan war is not winnable. These columns miss the point. D.C. doesn’t care about "winning." It has no definition of winning quite on purpose. The war in Afghanistan is a war for war’s sake.

What the Imperial City on the Potomac wants is a long, low-burning conflict with tolerably low casualties and extremely high overhead. It will end only when Americans are pushed to the precipice of real economic hardship and their two-party system is in genuine jeopardy. Only then will the Empire declare victory and come home. And after a decade of holding a huge pity party for ourselves, in which we file into movie theaters to watch film after film showing how Americans were actually the victims of the weakling nations we destroyed on the other side of the globe, D.C. will plot the next round of wars against the next batch of "madmen" ruling over distant, impoverished countries that are absolutely no threat to us at all. My guess is that it will be the "Bantu threat" in 25 years. And, yeah, we will fall for even that.

from Linda: Which is why it is GREAT that Cindy Sheehan is going to Martha's Vinyard to confront Obama on his vacation. Go to http://www.cindysheehanssoapbox.com/ to find out and help Cindy's quest.