Escalating Afghanistan

[Democratic Senator Diane] Feinstein joined with GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia to apply public pressure on Obama to escalate further the war in Afghanistan, announcing on ABC News that "she didn't see how President Barack Obama could turn down [Gen. McChrystal's] request for 40,000 additional troops in Afghanistan." Obama deserves some credit for at least refusing to capitulate immediately to the military's demands without taking time to consider alternative options.

  Glenn Greenwald

I rarely disagree with Glenn, but I don’t think that’s deserving of credit without knowing that he is actually debating the decision and not simply postponing it. Glenn goes on to give me more reason to believe he’s only postponing it:

The Washington Post today reported that as part of Obama's March order for 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan, "the White House has also authorized -- and the Pentagon is deploying -- at least 13,000 troops beyond that number."

Implementing the McChrystal plan will perpetuate the longstanding fundamentals of US national security policy: maintaining a global military presence, configuring US forces for global power projection, and employing those forces to intervene on a global basis.

[...]

As the fighting drags on from one year to the next, the engagement of US forces in armed nation-building projects in distant lands will become the new normalcy. Americans of all ages will come to accept war as a perpetual condition, as young Americans already do. That “keeping Americans safe’’ obliges the United States to seek, maintain, and exploit unambiguous military supremacy will become utterly uncontroversial.

  Boston.com

It's not only perpetual war that is the result, but also the endless civil liberties erosions and expansions of government power -- detention, surveillance and secrecy -- that inevitably accompany it.

   Glenn Greenwald

Indeed.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.