Feeling the weight of war

[babylonsister]

Feeling the weight of war

By Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 12, 2009


War and tragedy are putting President Obama through the most wrenching period of his young administration. Visibly thinner, admittedly skipping meals, he is learning every day the challenges of a wartime presidency. Health-care reform, climate-change legislation, the broken economy -- all are cerebral exercises compared with the grim responsibility of being the commander in chief.

snip//

"There are many honors and responsibilities that come with this job. But none is more profound than serving as commander in chief," Obama said in a speech in the cemetery's auditorium. He then mentioned the title of commander in chief a second time, and a third ("As long as I am commander in chief . . .").

Then he returned to the White House, to the Situation Room, for another Afghanistan war council, another session to contemplate sending more young men and women to war.

"It looks to me from the outside that the reality of being a wartime president is beginning to sink in," said Eliot Cohen, a former Bush official and a military historian at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

"It really involves the whole person, not just the mind," Feaver said. "It's a very emotional role. Emotional in a positive sense. You have to order men and women to risk their lives. That requires a moral courage, an emotional stability. It's very different from a policy wonk job."

Obama has often been described as possessing the political magic of John F. Kennedy, but his tenure so far has similarities to that of Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B. Johnson: an ambitious domestic agenda built around a more vigorous federal government, paired with an increasingly thorny overseas war. Making things even more complicated, if Obama sends significantly more troops to Afghanistan, the sworn political enemies of his domestic policies could become his critical allies as he tries to sell his war plans to a skeptical nation.

"With this decision, he's really going to own this war, and he's going to be sending young men and women to their deaths. And when that realization sets in, it's a very grim thing. He may have known it intellectually before, but what I think is happening is he's learning it viscerally," Cohen said.

more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/11/AR2009111127507.html

[ShortnFiery]

1. We shouldn't be over there. Congress has NOT declared *WAR.*

If it's so damn important and laudatory, why doesn't Chelsea Clinton resign her Hedge Fund Executive Position and volunteer for the Military Police? She could tool around Kabul and provide much needed security.

NO, the Democratic Power Elites won't send THEIR CHILDREN to go kill and die for the Corporations comprising the MIC.

What are we fighting for? I tell you straight up: FOR $$$ profits to the MIC ... all those BLOATED privatized corporations who support our war machine.

It is VILE. There's no other damn reason to be over there because we are making America LESS SAFE every damn day we have combat troops occupying those two MUSLIM nations. :thumbsdown:



Obama doesn't have the moral courage to stop this madness and we'll sure as Hell send at least 30,000 troops over there and a shitload of our tax dollars will be pissed away on the weapons of death and destruction.

Who truly benefits: Only one entity - The Masters (Corporations) of WAR. That's it!

I don't care if President Obama is the smartest man in the entire world, if he sends more troops to kill and die for the MIC, he's lost my vote. He's sold out to the Corporations and intelligent and/or pragmatic or not, he's immoral.