- With word being leaked out over the weekend that our
Nobel Peace Prize President is close to announcing plans to escalate the
US troop level in the Afghanistan War by 50%, we are about to have perhaps
the ultimate of ironies-a president announcing a big step-up in American
war-making on November 11, the day known around much of the Western world
as Armistice Day.
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- While
modern Americans might not know it, with all the boom and bombast and mindless
flag-waving featured in the military parades popular in today's warrior
culture, November 11 was originally established by Congress back in 1919,
a year after the day the guns of World War I finally went silent over the
blood-drenched fields of Europe in what was once, in a naïve spasm
of optimism, referred to as the War to End All Wars. In declaring the national
holiday Armistice Day, Congress said it was to be "a day dedicated
to the cause of world peace."
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- It's
hard to see how President Obama, who has yet to actually receive his Nobel
Prize as a peacemaker from Norway's King Harald, is contributing to peace
with the addition of another 34,000 US soldiers and Marines to the 68,000
already fighting, killing and dying on Afghan soil. Maybe he thinks holding
this escalation to 34,000 instead of accommodating Afghanistan Theater
Commander Gen. Stanley McCrystal's request for 80,000 more troops is an
act of pacificistic moderation.
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- I
doubt it. (Incidentally, some Pentagon and White House flaks are referring
to this escalation as another "surge," but you can't call a 50%
increase in troop commitments a "surge." It is what it is-a massive
expansion of the current war effort.)...
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- For the rest of this article, please go to:
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- http://www.thiscantbehappening.net
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