Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
As a jaded curmudgeon, it upsets my world a bit when something disappoints me by being better than I expected. Such was the case with today’s piece over at Salon titled “Obama, Clinton and a permanent state of war: The never-ending bloodshed that one (sic) wants to talk about.” The typo in the headline that was three hours old when I read the story notwithstanding, Robert Hennelly echoes many of my longstanding gripes.
Hennelly pointed out, rather bravely given Salon’s readership, that instead of bringing anything like hope or change, Obama continued and enlarged the misguided war on terror that he promised to wind down. Worse yet, after more than seven years of uninterrupted and increasing global bloodshed, he’s about to hand the office over to a woman who enthusiastically voted for the war in Iraq. The same woman who has said precious little on the campaign trail about what she’ll do as America closes in on two decades of non-stop war. Her “ideas” about the blowback that endless war is causing at home are, of course, laughable.
“Yet, even without our attention, the war drones on and the human misery continues to mount… We just don’t get how our accidentally killing civilians with drones might radicalize the surviving family and tribe.” Hennelly wrote, echoing something I’ve been saying for years; that we can’t win the “war on terror” when we have no strategy and our tactics create several more terrorists for each one we kill with a drone strike.
Of course, he did put in one ‘graph to remind us all this is, after all, Salon.
“’Over half of our discretionary budget goes to the Pentagon and the conservatives are saying we can’t afford any social programs. We can’t afford college educations. We can’t afford better schools,” Harris said. “They spend so much on the Pentagon and the military industrial complex that could be spent on human needs,’” Hennelly quoted Leslie Harris, who came from Dallas to attend the DNC in Philadelphia as a guest.
Of course the Left yearns for more taxpayer money to be stolen from the productive and wasted on inefficient “entitlement programs,” as government theft and redistribution is their answer to everything; but at least he hit upon some rock solid points. I’m actually pleased to see such a piece on a site like
Salon as their readership and target audience do need to be reminded of the fallibility of their revered politicians. It does bear repeating that Obama has done exactly nothing in the last eight years to wind down the endless bloodshed of the so-called “war on terror.”
In fact, the only thing Obama has done about the war is whine and cry about having inherited it in the first place, as if he didn’t know that was going to be the case when he ran for his first term. Take it back, Obama facilitated the rise of ISIS by ignoring all of his advisers, Clinton included, and declining to leave a sizable stay-behind force in Iraq after combat troops were pulled out of the country. Into the ensuing power vacuum stepped ISIS. Of course, the president won’t admit that; the Left considers Bush and Cheney to be ISIS’ parents, never minding that Obama then has been its indulgent uncle.
According to the piece, the Democrat Platform calls war a “last resort.” Hennelly correctly points out that despite that supposedly core aspect of Democrat faith, the endless war has only expanded in both geographic reach and body count under Obama’s watch.
“The fact that this policy was executed by our first African-American President, or gets continued by our first female President doesn’t expiate our sins and our lack of imagination.” Hennelly concluded.
It is very, very rare that I finish reading something on Salon and find myself nodding my head in agreement. Let’s hope the intended audience doesn’t scroll past that piece in favor of some of the Trump-bashing or Hillary-adoring pieces that are, I’m sure, more to their liking.
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