Stuck In The Karzai Dilemma

More and more people are finally beginning to see the truth about Islamist terrorism. Recent attacks against our “intellectual superiors” in Europe have created a backlash. No matter how much our biased media wants to blame the West for terrorism, they cannot allow a threat to their livelihood to go unanswered.

Chris Matthews had a fascinating interview with State Department spokesperson, Marie Harf. As a member of the “Obama Department” and a former campaign advisor, Harf is completely insulated against reality. She repeatedly demonstrated her ignorance during the interview.

This ignorance exists from the top to bottom. President Obama recently said,

“…I reject a notion that somehow that (Islamist extremism) creates a religious war because the overwhelming majority of Muslims reject that interpretation of Islam. They don’t even recognize it as being Islam. I think that for us to be successful in fighting this scourge it is very important for us to align ourselves with the 99.9% of Muslims who are looking for the same thing we are looking for…”

So if al-Zawahiri and al-Baghdadi are not Muslim, what religion do they belong to? It’s not just wishful thinking, Obama is really just a compulsive propagandist. .1% doesn’t come anywhere near the support base for Islamist extremism. The Pew Research Center did a study which revealed that 15% of US Muslims between 18 to 29 years old thought that suicide bombing was justified. Keep in mind that the average age of a suicide bomber is in the early twenties.

Regardless, Obama would never say that the term “White Supremacy” is a problem because it is supported by only .1% of whites. Such an argument could be used to justify the rebranding of the term “White Supremacy” to something like “Misrepresentative Cross Section of Unnamed Master Race”.

You can see the hollowness of this rhetoric when Chris Matthews asked Marie Harf how can we stop terrorism. She replied;

“…We cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s lack of opportunity for jobs…” Harf then doubled down on this nonsense by saying, “We can work with countries around the world to help improve their governance. We can help them build their economies so they can have job opportunities for these people…”

This lack of understanding by intelligent people can only be explained by denial. The resulting rationalizations just cloud any attempt to define solutions.

The Myth of Oppressed Terrorists

Over a dozen years ago I had a Jewish business associate who traveled extensively in the Middle East. I made a comment that since he dealt with educated people he probably didn’t have to worry that much about religious prejudice. His reply stunned me. He said that educated people in the Middle East were more indoctrinated than the uneducated.

Newsweek supports this observation with a quote from terrorism expert, Walter Laqueur, who stated that terrorists are, “relatively well educated and gainfully employed”.

At the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Marc Sageman, was concerned about our lack of knowledge concerning terrorism. He conducted a survey of 162 terrorists. His study (that was conducted over a decade ago) would stun the ill-informed Obama Administration today.

• About two-thirds of the terrorists went to college, in an area of the world where only about 10 percent of young men get a post-secondary education


• About 87 percent came from generally secular backgrounds (most of the other 13 percent, who studied at the Muslim schools known as madrassas, were Indonesians)


• Most came from middle or upper-middle class households

We can still help Muslim countries build their economies, BUT WE WILL ALSO NEED A PLAN TO COMBAT TERRORISM!!!

The Trap of the Karzai Dilemma

Former Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, owed his political power to the United States. Operation Enduring Freedom helped him gain political office. During his presidency our country was his primary financial and military supporter.

Yet Karzai’s relationship with the US was very strained, particularly with President Obama. Back in 2011 Karzai had a public meltdown. US air strikes (the preferred military reaction of the Obama Administration) had killed and wounded some innocent Afghan civilians.

(Before continuing I would like to make it clear that while I am criticizing the Obama Administration, I am not attacking our military. Airstrikes in a warzone against armed combatants are legal under the Geneva Conventions. However, friendly fire incidents show that if friendly military units can be accidently targeted, then innocent civilians are also at risk. Their deaths are not necessarily intentional and are often caused by the fog of war.)

Getting back to the point, Karzai reacted to American air strikes by declaring;

“With great honor and with great respect, and humbly rather than with arrogance, I request that NATO and America should stop these operations on our soil… …This war is not on our soil. If this war is against terror, then this war is not here, terror is not here.”

Despite his dependence on the US, this was just one of many anti-American tirades by Karzai. It betrays another dependency. In order to stay relevant to his people Karzai had to use Anti-Americanism to distance himself from his ally.

Anti-Americanism is the Problem

President Obama rose to prominence thanks to the political power of his church, Trinity United Church of Christ. It was led by his mentor; Pastor Jeremiah Wright, who is infamous for his anti-American sermons. His declaration of, “God Damn America”, is a testament to how deeply Pastor Wright felt he could pay tribute to anti-Americanism.

Obama’s debt to anti-Americanism is constantly being repaid. Last September Obama made a speech to the UN urging them to fight against ISIS. He switched gears for a moment in an amazing display of the Karzai Dilemma.

“I realize that America’s critics will be quick to point out that at times we too have failed to live up to our ideals; that America has plenty of problems within our own borders. This is true. In a summer marked by instability in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, I know the world also took notice of the small American city of Ferguson, Missouri – where a young man was killed, and a community was divided. So yes, we have our own racial and ethnic tensions. And like every country, we continually wrestle with how to reconcile the vast changes wrought by globalization and greater diversity with the traditions that we hold dear.”

I would like to translate that into plain English for you. He is basically saying that, “I may sound like a George Bush warmonger, but I am as anti-American as you”.

In the Middle East the media and schools teach only that America killed the Indians, oppresses minorities, props up Israel and colonizes the planet. They know nothing but the bad that our country has done (or what they claim we have done). Populist Democrats preach the same thing. Islamist and Populist propaganda converge in Anti-Americanism.

President Obama would like to destroy ISIS, but leave anti-Americanism intact. That is impossible.

The only way to defeat Islamic Terrorism is to disarm the reason for its existence. Anti-Americanism helps to radicalize and recruit new members. It also helped to rationalize the justifications for the beheadings of James Foley, Steven Sotloff, and Peter Kassig.

The Karzai Dilemma leaves President Obama powerless because he must always kowtow to anti-Americanism while fighting America’s enemies.

• Whenever President Bush was responsible for an airstrike that resulted in collateral damage (real or imagined), Obama could ride his high horse.


• Whenever President Obama is responsible for a similar airstrike it raises uncomfortable questions. So he fishes for sympathy by slyly insinuating to the listener that he is a black man and the US oppresses his race. His UN speech was a classic example of unstated assumptions used as propaganda. 

It gives me no pleasure to watch him squirm. These airstrikes are often necessary. I wish collateral damage did not exist, but I do not subscribe to a populist ideology that promises a perfect world. I support President Obama’s war on ISIS, but I know the truth. His anti-American populist ideology is a part of the problem.

If you really want to win the war against ISIS you must change Mr. President. You can still preach about the racism of America’s past, but do not forget that it is not just America’s history. It is the history of the world and a part of human nature.

Blaming the sins of the world on the US ignores the great history of our representative democracy and the present day triumphs of civil rights. The solution can’t be found by fabricating white racism, when the problem is truly black racism against whites. (White racism does exist, but it was not a factor in the violence between police officer Darren Wilson and Blood gangster Mike Brown.)

Many countries in Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East don’t have the diversity from global immigration that we have. For many of them free speech and equal rights are only a dream. And they often suffer from terrible corruption that snuffs out struggling businesses. We are a white majority country with a black President and more equality than any populist hustler will ever sincerely admit.

Mr. President you rode the tiger and don’t want to get off. If you really want a great legacy here is your chance. Work to destroy anti-Americanism and the associated victimhood rackets. That will help rot away the foundation of Islamic terrorism…

Time to Make a Stand

President Obama Fiddles While the World Burns

In Iran the most amazing things are happening. Every year on the anniversary of the 1979 storming of the U.S. embassy in Iran, pro-government demonstrators march in front of the embassy to denounce America. This year Democracy activists are counter-protesting and appealing to the U.S. for help. It is an amazing turn of events which reveals that Obama Administration has been neglecting Iran’s Democracy movement for too long.

Many protesters gathered in chants of, “Obama, Obama — either you’re with them or you’re with us”. Obama’s culture of self-loathing anti-Americanism is being challenged like never before. His foreign policy of playing nice with our enemies and tough with our friends is not paying off. The leftwing ideology of anti-Americanism is cracking at the seams.

President Obama has been dithering for too long. His policy of ignoring the truth about the Iranian regime in order to foster dialog with them is angering Iranians who long for freedom. While the Mullahs of Iran are helping to kill American troops, support further instability in the Levant, oppress their citizens and stall efforts to prevent its nuclear proliferation… Obama does nothing.

Obama and His Generals

It is an all too familiar pattern. After some early hope that Obama would live up to his hawkish campaign promise to focus on the battle against terrorism in Afghanistan, the President has become negligent towards what he once referred to as the “central front” in the War on Terror (or rather what used to be called the War on Terror). Judging by the way he has always shunned our top generals in the field, it was inevitable.

On January 10, 2007, Obama was quoted on MSNBC as saying the following about the Iraq Troop Surge:

“We cannot impose a military solution on what has effectively become a civil war. And until we acknowledge that reality - we can send 15,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops, 30,000 more troops, I don’t know any expert on the region or any military officer that I’ve spoken to privately that believes that is going to make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground.”

Considering the success of the Surge it would be logical to wonder which military officers Obama was talking to.

In May of 2008 Vets for Freedom released an ad challenging Presidential candidate Barack Obama to meet one on one with General Petraeus, whom he had been reluctant to consult with. It was a part of a firestorm of criticism that forced Obama to visit Iraq and meet directly with Petraeus.

So Obama didn’t sit down to meet with General Petraeus, one on one, until July 2008. Therefore he never properly consulted Petraeus (the principal architect of the Surge) before condemning the operation. Furthermore, he had to be shamed into directly meeting with the general through determined political pressure. Obama didn’t speak privately with any military officer who believed that the Surge would make a substantial difference on the ground because he was not interested in meeting with military leaders that would express such sentiments. His consultations with military leaders were dictated by his desire to shape his military policy according to his own political agenda and so he consulted only with military leaders who he felt would support his preconceived conclusions.

This is not an isolated trend. In August of this year the Obama Administration shelved a report from General Stanley McChrystal asking for a troop increase in Afghanistan. By the end of September it became known that the President didn’t meet with McChrystal in person since the general took over command of Afghanistan in June and only spoke to him on one occasion during that time. Once again, after concerted political pressure, Obama was shamed into meeting our top commander who was in charge of our most critical war zone.

President Obama is not as interested in winning the war in Afghanistan as much as he is interested in promoting himself politically. I don’t doubt that he would like to win the war, but he has other priorities ahead of that goal. His non-stop political campaigning takes precedence. Obama is running for the 2012 presidential election now, just like he spent much of his only term in the U.S. Senate running for President in the 2008 election.

When Obama finally met McChrystal, the general had to fly to Denmark where the President was campaigning to have the 2016 Olympics hosted in his hometown! McChrystal was lucky that Obama was able to squeeze in 25 minutes to meet him. He was third down in the list of the President’s priorities.

Associated Press related that Obama originally turned down several requests by the Chicago bid committee when they asked him to take part in Chicago’s presentation to the IOC. Despite Obama’s long commitment to Chicago’s bid, he professed that he was too deeply involved with the debate on health care. Ultimately the lure of Chicago politics won out and Obama decided that one day wouldn’t jeopardize his work on health care “reform”. The meeting with McChrystal was added at the last minute to a schedule that was put together at the last minute. It was a measure of Obama’s appreciation for his top general in Afghanistan.

Note: You have to cringe at the first paragraph of the AP article… (sorry the link is already dead and I can't find another respectable link.)

In a quick dash of salesmanship, President Barack Obama is in the Danish capital, putting his personal powers of persuasion on the line to boost Chicago’s Olympics bid.

Without the colorful embellishments of the American media, Obama’s exaggerated powers of persuasion really don’t amount to much in the real world.

With the haphazard meeting out of the way, the media could now turn its attention to attacking McChrystal. The same tired arguments that were shown to be false during the Iraq Troop Surge are being regurgitated in Afghanistan.

As mentioned above, Obama predicted at the beginning of the Surge that it would fail. The popular sentiment was that an increase of American troops in Iraq would lead to more violence. Yet the opposite was true. This is because ever since the Vietnam War our society has cultivated a misconception of war and occupation. There is no evidence after the success of the Surge that the sentiment of the Iraqi public dramatically changed to the point that they overwhelmingly “loved” their occupier. What happened was more realistic and is the cornerstone of COIN strategy. Our allies in Iraq felt more protected and our enemies felt more threatened. This was how the Surge was so successful.

Where is our Afghan Strategy?

When the Obama Administration ordered the deployment of 17,000 troops to Afghanistan in February 2009, the increased troop levels were expected to last three to four years. Yet in September Obama said that we need an Afghan strategy before sending more troops. He stated, “I just want to make sure that everybody understands that you don’t make decisions about resources before you have the strategy ready.”

So why did he order troops to go to Afghanistan in February if he didn’t have a strategy? Its bad enough that President Obama neglects to consult with his top commanders and has to be shamed into meeting with them one on one... but he just completely neglects our troops in Afghanistan so he can campaign for healthcare “reform”, promote Chicago’s Olympic bid, play golf and fight a war against Fox News.

This was his greatest mistake. By using his Alinsky tactics of attacking and attempting to isolate Fox News, Obama has offended his most prized ally, the media. Now they are starting to see the Obama Administration for what it is.

So President Obama... You have no choice, but to abandon your rhetoric of self-loathing anti-Americanism. Iranian protesters need you. Your top generals deserve your ear. Afghanistan has to have more troops to defend its people who are isolated by mountainous terrain and victimized by a terrorist enemy who can slip through a porous border. Do something… you are the leader of the free world and you cannot sit on the fence any longer.

Obama's Track Record on Unity

Lipstick on a Politician

Obama’s rhetoric reminds me of a salesman who knows his product, but doesn’t really care about anything more than making a sale. His comments earlier this week are a treasure trove full of irony. For the choice quote of the night he stated;

“In one week, we can choose hope over fear, and unity over division, the promise of change over the power of the status quo.”

It would be comforting to listen to a leader who speaks of “hope over fear” in post 9/11 America, if he was talking about the fear that our enemies have spread… but Obama is not talking about Al Qaeda or the Taliban. He is talking about his fellow Americans as he falseheartedly speaks of unity.




Obama claims to stand for unity while he accuses his opponents of using the politics of fear. He has no right to make such accusations. If Obama didn’t run for president he would still be attending services at his former hate filled church, Trinity United Church of Christ, while denying that it is controversial. He only gave up his church after months of pressure from his critics. So Obama wasn’t able to deliver his closing “unity” speech at his former church.

First Obama lied, issuing denials about what he knew was going on at Trinity:

“Had I heard those statements in the church, I would have told Reverend Wright that I profoundly disagree with them. What I have been hearing and had been hearing in church was talk about Jesus and talk about faith and values and serving the poor.”

Then he admitted the truth:

“Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes.”

The disclosure of Rev. Wright’s hateful speeches forced Obama to condemn his pastor’s comments and it was only after this created a public feud between the two that Obama finally left his church. Yet Obama still refused to denounce the divisiveness of his church. As he left his church Obama stated:

“ I’m not denouncing the church and I’m not interested in people who want me to denounce the church.”

Obama refused to condemn his church’s outdated 20th Century Black Nationalism even as he distanced himself from it in the name of political expediency... Black Liberation Theology is the basis of the vision statement of Trinity United and the heart of its philosophy. It is a sick creed of reverse racism. James Cone is the leading advocate of this theology and has described its theories and his feelings towards whites in the following manner:

“Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy.”

“Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him.”

“What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.”

“What we need is the destruction of whiteness, which is the source of human misery in the world.”

“Whether the American system is beyond redemption we will have to wait and see. But we can be certain that black patience has run out, and unless white America responds positively to the theory and activity of Black Power, then a bloody, protracted civil war is inevitable.”

“All white men are responsible for white oppression. It is much too easy to say, “Racism is not my fault,” or “I am not responsible for the country’s inhumanity to the black man”...But insofar as white do-gooders tolerate and sponsor racism in their educational institutions, their political, economic and social structures, their churches, and in every other aspect of American life, they are directly responsible for racism...Racism is possible because whites are indifferent to suffering and patient with cruelty.”

Some of the quotes that Rev. Wright made infamous are included below:

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America’? No, no, no, not God Bless America. God damn America — that’s in the Bible — for killing innocent people. God damn America, for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America, as long as she tries to act like she is God, and she is supreme.”

“The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied.”

Obama claims to be a uniter, but the reality is that this election has forced him to distance himself from his divisive past. We are the ONES who have waited for him to catch up to the 21st Century. Not the other way around as he so falsely suggests.

Before Obama had focused on his ambition to be president, he wrote an autobiography in 1995 entitled “Dreams from My Father, A Story of Race and Inheritance”. This book honestly related his feelings on race and reveals the motivation that led Obama to join such a militant black church. Although his mother was white, he rejected his whiteness and sought to embrace his black heritage exclusively. This was despite the fact that in his teenage years he was raised in a loving white family and experienced no notable acts of racism from whites.

His book, “Dreams from My Father”, describes this transformation. In his own words he decided to “never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn’t speak to my own. It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself.”

He completely rejected his “whiteness”. As he wrote, “I ceased to advertise my mother’s race at the age of twelve or thirteen, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.”

My aim isn’t to prove that Obama was (or is) a racist, it is to show that for much of his life his worldview was divisive. I used his own words to map out the ‘us against them attitude’ that drew him to Trinity United Church. Once again from his autobiography he wrote, “To admit our doubt and confusion to whites, to open up our psyches to general examination by those who had caused so much of the damage in the first place, seemed ludicrous, itself an expression of self-hatred.”

Obama contemplated Black Nationalism as a political tool overriding all other concerns. Again, in his own words, “I wondered whether, for now at least, Rafiq wasn’t also right in preferring that that anger be redirected; whether a black politics that suppressed rage towards whites generally, or one that failed to elevate race loyally above all else, was a politics inadequate to the task.” He settled this question by joining Trinity and adopting the anger of Black Nationalism as his identity. (Rafiq was a friend of Obama’s who was a member of the Nation of Islam, it is not believed to be his real name.)

I do not accuse Obama of being a Muslim. He was the member of a church that spread a message of hate. There are good Christians and there are bad Christians. Just as there are good Muslims and bad Muslims.

So on what basis does Obama champion the cause of unity? In 2007 the National Journal’s annual vote ratings gave him the most liberal voting record in the Senate. Its interesting that many times Obama uses the word “we” when he is really referring to himself. On Super Tuesday he gave one of the worst speeches that I have ever heard. At one point Obama said, “we are the ones that we have been waiting for”. He states these empty slogans as if they were biblical quotes. I don’t need Obama, McCain or any politician to change my life. Change is constant and my life doesn’t revolve around Obama. Its no accident that at Obama’s rallies his crowd chants “Obama, Obama, Obama”, but at McCain rallies his crowd chants “USA, USA, USA”. Obama’s cult of personality comes at the expense of everything else.

On the other hand McCain actually fulfils a requirement that unity demands. He is not afraid to cross the political aisle. McCain even worked closely with Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy on immigration reform. That is a good example of a Conservative (however moderate he may be) reaching out across party lines to someone widely regarded as an extreme liberal in American politics. McCain is also not afraid to buck his own political party, as he proved when he forced the Bush Administration to accede to the McCain Detainee Amendment. It was a measure to enhance the rights of detainees, which incurred the wrath of many Conservatives.

Obama has no similar credentials, but he still promotes himself as a uniter when all he represents is division. The politics of fear comes from the discharge of suicide bombs and hijacked airliners. They are the tools of our enemies. Obama would be better served by targeting these terrorists with his accusations and not his fellow Americans.

Storm Clouds on the Horizon

Cindy Sheehan is running for Congress against the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Ironically, Pelosi has been an outspoken opponent of the Iraq War and so has Sheehan. Conservative observers have been amused by the friction between the two leftwingers. According to Sheehan’s website:

“Nancy Pelosi is a politician. She declared opposition to the war in Iraq, but consistently votes to fund it. She has offered no analysis of the real reasons motivating the war in Iraq. She voted in favor of invasive wiretapping and immunity for corporations that engage in illegal wiretapping. She has initiated no legislation to fix our ailing schools, health care facilities, the housing crisis, etc. She has accepted money from the following corporations, to name a few of the many: Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Comcast Corp, and Wells Fargo Bank.”


Over the years Bay Area radicals have been expressing their discontent with Pelosi. The feeble Democratic-controlled Congress has been powerless to stop President Bush from escalating the Iraq war and winning a pivotal battle against the brutal insurgents. Obama took a stab at reducing the U.S. role in Iraq, but failed. He didn’t have much time to spend on his attempts to hijack the progress made by the Surge because much of his short career as a U.S. Senator has been consumed with his presidential campaign. He has only been a U.S. Senator since 2005 and has been campaigning for almost two years.

In any case, the same forces that Pelosi’s anti-Iraq policy helped unleash in her raw pursuit of power have boomeranged against her.

In March 2007 CodePink, the radical “antiwar” group, organized a protest they called ‘Camp Pelosi’. It was a round the clock vigil in front of Pelosi’s San Francisco home. The protestors demanded that Pelosi cut the funding of the Iraq war. It became a string of on-and-off protests that continued to dog Pelosi for a long time. Additionally, CodePink wasn’t satisfied with just harassing Pelosi at her home so they took to following her to political events and harassing her there. Since CodePink found that protesting President Bush has been ineffective they started to target Democrats like Pelosi and Hillary Clinton. Gael Murphy, a co-founder of the group, claims that their efforts targeting the Democratic Party have made a difference. During the primaries she said, “We’ve gotten to a place now where Hillary and Obama are falling all over each other to be the leading peace candidate”.

Another co-founder of CodePink, Jodie Evans, has become a bundler for the Obama campaign. She has pledged to raise between $50,000 to $100,000. CodePink’s most visible leader and close Sheehan ally, Medea Benjamin, bragged about the influence that their radical group has on Obama. She declared that, “we have the ability to push from the inside and the outside. And it is being right here in this kind of place and places like this around the country that are the antidote to the people who are pushing Barack Obama to be quote ‘centralist’, which means be a warmonger”.

While CodePink has aggressively attacked leaders of the Democratic Party such as Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, they have been relatively supportive of Obama. CodePink has set up two watchdog groups to attack Pelosi and Clinton, ‘Pelosi Watch’ and ‘Listen Hillary’. Even though CodePink’s grievances with Pelosi and Clinton also apply to Obama, they have been willing to overlook these similarities. Instead CodePink claims to be willing to work with Obama on the same issues that CodePink viciously attacks Pelosi and Clinton. This sentiment is shared with many leading leftwing radicals.

An open letter published in The Nation declares support for Obama and warns that the signatories of the letter will challenge him on issues that they don’t share. One of these issues is “the escalation of the US military presence in Afghanistan”. The letter is signed by prominent leftwingers like Phil Donahue, Juan Cole, Gore Vidal, Howard Zinn, Christopher Hayes (the editor of The Nation) and many others... especially JOURNALISTS.

So what will happen if Obama becomes president? CodePink is concerned that Obama is influenced by “centralists” who take a more favorable stance towards the use of military force. On the subject of Afghanistan they have cause for concern. Both presidential candidates favor increasing the U.S. troop presence in that country. The battle in Afghanistan is often referred to as the “Good War” and no frontrunner in any presidential election has opposed it.

Yet the “antiwar” lobby has been firmly against it. At the very first instance of U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan back in October of 2001, the “progressive” website Common Dreams declared the war a failure. In an editorial, Marion Winik (a commentator on NPR’s “All Things Considered”) stated, “Whatever they say, I think we've already lost”. Common Dreams may be a radical publication, but look at the many mainstream writers and prominent Democratic Party loyalists that have graced its pages; Jesse Jackson, Adriana Huffington, Naomi Klein, Paul Krugman, Michael Moore, Ted Rall and many others.

During the 2008 Election the Left has united around Barack Obama. However, if he is elected president, Obama will have a great deal of difficulty maintaining this fractional alliance under his Afghan policy. After the 2004 election, when the Democratic Party stood stunned at its losses in the Congressional and Presidential elections, there was a burning reaction to get even. The same thing can happen to the Republicans in 2008. It is easy to be the opposition party, you merely have to be contrarian. Unfortunately for the Democrats, the partisan warfare during the Clinton Administration shows that the Republicans are just as good at this game.

Since the Republican Party is almost universally united behind the war in Afghanistan, Obama will miss out on a reliable support base on this issue. These bitter Republicans will be consumed with a desire for revenge and dreams of power, much like the Democratic Party has been for the last eight years. Meanwhile Obama’s supporters will be ideologically divided over the Afghanistan War.

I take no pleasure in this partisan bickering. During the Clinton Administration I supported the President against the partisan attacks that he suffered from. If Obama is elected president I will support him on his Afghanistan policy, if he follows it as he has already presented it. My overriding concern is victory over our fascist enemies. I would rather have a leader that I could be confident in, but if Obama wins the election he will have to do in the meantime.

There are two issues that will be of the utmost importance for our next president and Obama is problematic on both issues.

1) The War in Afghanistan
2) The Economy.

Obama’s weak ability to prosecute the Afghan War is scary enough, but he has also taken over $100,000 from Fannie May and Freddie Mac as they slid into a collapse that required a costly bailout. At the same time McCain warned against the problems of the GSEs. When Obama’s serious lack of experience is also taken into account you have to conclude that there is no HOPE for the prospect of an Obama Administration. It’s only an empty slogan...