Good post — and damn you for getting me to subscribe to another community.
But all that said, has he really backtracked on his promise to end torture? I thought he had come through on that one.
He had, but I think he's started to backtrack on that, too. At least to my mind, indefinite detention, as mentioned in Schell's article (link to the full article — The Nation is now asking you to subscribe to read the full thing — is now here; I've also edited my post for that reason), he's changed his mind about "indefinite detention" and, though I can't find a source just now, I'm pretty sure he's also about-faced on off-shore military prisons, which to means that torture is going to continue.
But I'll see if I can find some harder evidence.
Meanwhile, morality aside, after reading your reply I was suddenly struck by some frightening parallels between the US today and the USSR in the early 1980s, when it became clear to everyone but the Kremlin that their Afghan war was a lost cause.
It's pretty much universally acknowledge now that the Soviet Union was a corrupt, economically bankrupt basket-case, probably from the late 60s/early 70s onwards, but until the Berlin Wall came down there was almost no one I am aware of who was saying so.
And yet, after the (Afghan) defeat, hindsight tells us that war was the proverbial straw that broke the Bolshevik back.
And now, today, the world's "hyper-power" is stretched to its military limit fighting two (three, if you count Pakistan; and I predict we will be soon) insurgencies, while its economy is broken and its own oligarchs are busy lining their pockets rather than trying to right the ship of state.
What happens when the current army is simply used up? Would the American people put up with a draft to fight three wars that don't really do anything but make America less secure?
I've just pulled an all-nighter, so I don't want to risk making a fool of myself yet again, but it's something to think about ...
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancing_serpent
We *should* be worried
Date: 2009-05-29 08:14 pm (UTC)But all that said, has he really backtracked on his promise to end torture? I thought he had come through on that one.
He had, but I think he's started to backtrack on that, too. At least to my mind, indefinite detention, as mentioned in Schell's article (link to the full article — The Nation is now asking you to subscribe to read the full thing — is now here; I've also edited my post for that reason), he's changed his mind about "indefinite detention" and, though I can't find a source just now, I'm pretty sure he's also about-faced on off-shore military prisons, which to means that torture is going to continue.
But I'll see if I can find some harder evidence.
Meanwhile, morality aside, after reading your reply I was suddenly struck by some frightening parallels between the US today and the USSR in the early 1980s, when it became clear to everyone but the Kremlin that their Afghan war was a lost cause.
It's pretty much universally acknowledge now that the Soviet Union was a corrupt, economically bankrupt basket-case, probably from the late 60s/early 70s onwards, but until the Berlin Wall came down there was almost no one I am aware of who was saying so.
And yet, after the (Afghan) defeat, hindsight tells us that war was the proverbial straw that broke the Bolshevik back.
And now, today, the world's "hyper-power" is stretched to its military limit fighting two (three, if you count Pakistan; and I predict we will be soon) insurgencies, while its economy is broken and its own oligarchs are busy lining their pockets rather than trying to right the ship of state.
What happens when the current army is simply used up? Would the American people put up with a draft to fight three wars that don't really do anything but make America less secure?
I've just pulled an all-nighter, so I don't want to risk making a fool of myself yet again, but it's something to think about ...