Theodore Roosevelt, Obama and Afghanistan

I've been meaning to write more about Theodore Roosevelt for some time, given the central role he plays in the history of United States imperialism, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Today the New York Times published an article [From a Carrier, Another View of America's Air War in Afghanistan by Elisabeth Bumiller] that allows me to make some connections to our current era.

According to the article, there is a weapon of mass destruction, an aircraft carrier named the, yes, U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, parked in the sea off Pakistan. Every day, weather permitting, jet bombers take off from the carrier and bomb the people of Afghanistan. They try to bomb Taliban, soldiers. The Taliban were the ruling "party" until the U.S. installed a puppet government in 2002. I am not at all fond of the Taliban, but I recognize that they are the only group in Afghanistan that is fighting against foreign domination. They are, largely, the same group that the CIA once armed in order to drive the former Soviet Union out of the country.

It is very safe on the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt. Accidents are the greatest danger to the sailors and combat pilots. It is not so safe on the ground for American troops, given how much they are hated and how many Afghanis have armed themselves. But mostly a battle in Afghanistan goes like this: the Afghans attack the Americans (or their NATO henchmen). The Americans hunker down in fear and scream into their communications gear that they are under attack. The nearest fighter-bomber screams in and unleashes bombs. The Afghan (Taliban) soldiers are mostly killed; those who are not dead, retreat. What is amazing is that given that this scenario is repeated daily, the Afghans are brave enough and motivated enough to fight the invaders.

The left opposition in the United States of America largely blames the war in Afghanistan on former President Bush, forgetting that the Democratic Party leadership were frothing at the mouth to go into Afghanistan too. "Progressive" Democrats hoped that the election of President Barack Obama would bring an end to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but instead Obama has broadened the war to include Pakistan and is sending another 17,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. He is escalating the war. Since the war is against the Afghan people, it cannot be won without essentially exterminating those people. Barack Obama has quickly joined the long list of American presidents, starting with George Washington, who have participated in genocide.

Theodore Roosevelt, in contrast to Obama, was an honest man. A miserable, twisted, psychotic murdering honest man, to be sure, but everyone knew that. He began calling for war at an early age. He was among a cabal that pushed Spain into a war with the U.S. that it did not want, the Spanish American War. He gloried in fighting the war himself. Unlike Obama, who has never been in the U.S. military or in the militant opposition to U.S. imperialism. Elected Vice-President and assuming office in 1901, "T. R." quickly became President when Leon Czolgosz successfully assassinated President William McKinley. As such, he presided over the genocide against the Philippine people, usually known as the Philippine War, in which 2 million islanders, mostly non-combatants, were murdered by U.S. troops.

If the U.S. ruling class were running the Philippine War today, they'd call the anti-U.S. opposition terrorists. Regardless of whether they were Islamic or Communist or just Nationalists or Vegitarians, and regardless of the tactics they used.

Theodore Roosevelt, like most humans, had his good side. He was a nature lover of sorts. He loved to kill wild animals with a rifle, being too slow-footed and chicken shit to try to kill them with his bare hands. He enlarged the national park system. Given the complexity of the legislative process, he probably signed some laws you would approve of, and some you would oppose. Such is the nature of the Presidency.

Theodore Roosevelt particularly liked to slaughter bears. Strangely, that brought us the beloved stuffed animal toys known as Teddy Bears.

So the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt is named appropriately. From it, at no risk to himself, Barack Obama can kill Afganis.

Lyndon Johnson II: Barack Obama Escalates War in Afghanistan

Were you hoping Barack Obama was just feinting to the right in the presidential election, and was secretly a man of peace?

You can stay in denial of reality by not reading the February 17, 2009 "Statement of the President on Afghanistan."

There seems to be a fundamental problem with the people of Afghanistan. They don't want their country run by the United States. Just like the nation of Vietnam, which had an independence movement that predated the American Revolution.


So the President is sending in more U.S. troops. They aren't carrying Care packages. They are going to be armed to the teeth. They are going to kill anyone they can who disagrees with the idea that Barack Obama should rule the world.

I was going to compare President Barack Obama to President Nixon, because Nixon inherited the Vietnam War from President Lyndon Johnson. Who inherited in from President John Kennedy. Some people claim Kennedy inherited the war from President Dwight Eisenhower, but that is a misrepresentation. Eisenhower kept a handful of American military advisors in South Vietnam who had been sent there by Harry Truman after World War II.

The French occupied Indochina and kept it as a colony. That kind of colonialism, white colonialism, was fine with the U.S. When the Japanese liberated Vietnam from the French, it really p.o.'d President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He built up a giant invasion fleet in Hawaii to kick the Japanese out of Vietnam and China. When the Japanese surrendered, Vietnam was not granted independence. It was handed back to France.

Lyndon Johnson works best compared to Barack Obama because he was a New Deal Democrat who ran a peace campaign against his Republican rival, Barry Goldwater, in 1964. Under Johnson, the U.S. military support for maintaining the colonial economy turned into a full scale war that massacred well over a million Vietnamese.

In the end, it was Richard Nixon who made peace with Vietnam and China. He talked tough, but he pulled out the U.S. troops (after initially trying to napalm the region into submission).

Who knows, though, maybe the U.S. can win in Afghanistan. Maybe Islam can be extinquished and lamb kababs replaced with big macs.

Can we use either of two political parties to commit crimes against humanity and war crimes?

Yes We Can!

President Obama Does Afghanistan

Do you remember the patriotic frenzy after the destruction of the World Trade Center? It was not just Republicans who were frothing at the mouth. We - Americans - the good guys - had been attacked. And unprovoked. By some guys who did not even have atomic weapons. They did not even have cruise missiles. They didn't even have artillery. True, they had once had surface-to-air missiles, but the CIA gave them those and they had been used up fighting the Russians. They attacked us with nothing but courage and skill. Outrageous.

Only a couple of Democrats in Congress voted against attacking Afghanistan. No matter that the government and people of Afghanistan had nothing to do with the attack. True, the "criminal" or "religious" organization that actually carried out the World Trade Center attacks had bases in Afghanistan, but all kinds of war criminals are trained or based in the United States, and we Americans don't think that means anyone else should invade our country and overthrow our government.

The tiny remnants of the American left, mostly veterans of the Vietnam War or of the protests against it, dragged themselves out of hiding, started protesting and demonstrating, and eventually, especially after Iraq was invaded, managed to start influencing broader public opinion.

The politicians of the Democratic Party then supported the illegal war crime that was the invasion of Iraq. Still, at protest marches, a large segment of the demonstrators focused their hate on a man they were sure had worse grammar aptitude than they had, President George W. Bush.

Then as the country soured on the war, as people began to understand the history and players better, some Democratic Party politicians wet their fingers, felt the wind shift, and came out against President Bush's poor management of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In 2006 the Democratic Party won the House of Representatives largely because they pretended to be a party of peace. They now claimed had been tricked into rushing into war by that evil Bush. It never occurred to a bunch of politicians that another politician might occasionally tell a little lie.

They could have cut off appropriations for the wars (the House can do that) but they did not. They wanted the war to be an issue to help them in the 2008 elections.

The economy turned sour, and the Democrats now own the House, the Senate, and the Executive Branch.

And the war goes on. The only change: now Democratic Party politicians blame their failure in Afghanistan and Pakistan on the ineptitude of the puppets the CIA installed in those countries.

Can Barack Obama get the CIA to change the American puppets running Afghanistan and Pakistan?

Yes he can!