Guardian: President orders air strikes on villages in tribal area

[G_j]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/24/pakistan-barack-obama-air-strike

President orders air strikes on villages in tribal area
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
The Guardian, Saturday 24 January 2009

Barack Obama gave the go-ahead for his first military action yesterday, missile strikes against suspected militants in Pakistan which killed at least 18 people.

Four days after assuming the presidency, he was consulted by US commanders before they launched the two attacks. Although Obama has abandoned many of the "war on terror" policies of George Bush while he was president, he is not retreating from the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders.

The US believes they are hiding in the tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan, and made 30 strikes last year in which more than 200 people were killed. In the election, Obama hinted at increased operations in Pakistan, saying he thought Bush had made a mistake in switching to Iraq before completing the job against al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The US marine corp commander said yesterday that his 22,000 troops should be redeployed from Iraq to Afghanistan. Gen James Conway said "the time is right" to leave Iraq now the war had become largely nation-building rather than the pitched fighting in which the corps excelled; he wanted the marines in Afghanistan, especially in the south where insurgents, and the Taliban and al-Qaida, benefit from both a nearby safe haven in Pakistan and a booming trade in narcotics.

Obama has warned that he is prepared to bomb inside Pakistan if he gets relevant intelligence about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. He had also said he would act against militants along the border if the Pakistan government failed to.

..more..

[Dennis Donovan]

1. Lobbing missiles into areas where there are civilians is NOT the way to prove to the world...

...that the US is "under new management."

[malaise]

2. I object

That is all

[spanone]

3. President Obama is going to have a hard time beating back the hawks in the pentagon.

they will fight him tooth & nail....they are already fighting him on the guantanamo closure....no telling what lies they are presenting him with.

[bigtree]

4. these bombings will effectively undermine any attempts at outreach

. . . to elements that Obama expects to align with our interests there. These attacks will ensure a long extension of the quagmire Bush was tending.

I'm dismayed that Obama's government hasn't made any attempt to correctly identify just who the military is attacking. This lumping all those killed under the moniker of 'militants' is disheartening for any expectation that we'd have an honest, rational approach to the mission in Afghanistan.

[G_j]

6. the medium is the message,

A moratorium/cease fire, would be the highest road and the clearest message.

Never underestimate the power of the Pentagon!

And you are right, this is a Bushian quagmire!

[ConcernedCanuk]

5. If it is true that Obama supports bombings overseas, then he is NOT going to solve anything

.
.
.

I'm gonna watch and wait

but aggression never won anything in the long run

and shit - it's thousands of miles away that wouldn't have a hope in hell of attacking the USA

Trillions wasted on war when people are starving at home

yeah

we noticed

[depakid]

7. My guess is that the new president is sending a message

[G_j]

8. a mixed message?

actually, an interesting aside about the arrows in the eagle's talons, it originally stemmed from roots of the Iroquois Confederacy.
The story of the 'Peace Maker' who united the warring tribes, and showed them how one arrow can be broken in half, but many arrows are that much stronger. The original symbolism represented the strength warring peoples could have when they lived in peace. But then the eagle didn't represent war either. :shrug:
I believe the founders saw the arrows as representing the original colonies.

[depakid]

10. It's a very cool story/tradition -and may well be rooted in actual history

The story (and the Iroquois) deserve a thread of their own (actually many threads) -but in this short 'jack, there's a cool bit from wiki that May well apply to your insightful connection:

Haudenosaunee (The Great Peacemaker) was a prophet and spiritual leader credited as the founder of the Iroquois confederacy (from which America drew many of its ideals).

The Great Peacemaker was the man of ideas- yet along came Hiawatha, the politician who actually put the plan into practice.

Hiawatha was a skilled and charismatic orator, and was instrumental in persuading the Iroquois peoples, the Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas, and Mohawks, a group of Native North Americans who shared similar languages, to accept The Great Peacemaker's vision and band together to become the Five Nations of the Iroquois confederacy. (Later, in 1721, the Tuscarora nation joined the Iroquois confederacy, and they became the Six Nations).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiawatha

[Mari333]

9. okay, thats not change.

same old horseshit as bush.

[Odin2005]

11. Good. The Taliban need to get their extremist, misogynist, nut-job asses whupped.