Signs of Progress

And danger

By Justin Raimondo

"I suppose progressives and others hopeful for a more rational foreign policy are going to have to be content, for the moment, with crumbs from the presidential table, such as Barack Obama's recent statement to the New York Times that we might consider negotiating with elements of the Taliban. This is, however, not entirely good news, because the counterinsurgency doctrine that animates this proposal aims at replicating our alleged "success" in Iraq, where the U.S. military allied with hard-core Sunni fundamentalists against largely foreign forces said to be affiliated with al-Qaeda. The blowback from this tactic has yet to hit the fan, but you can be sure that when the U.S. military begins to downsize its presence in Iraq, these soldiers of the "Awakening" – armed and subsidized by us – will move to fill the power vacuum and run straight into the Shi'ite militias. The resulting conflict will no doubt cause the Obama administration to think twice about leaving, as the Iraqi government asks us to intervene. Having planted the seeds of the coming civil war, we'll have ample pretext to renegotiate the status of forces agreement......

The Freeman appointment is one test of where we are going: if the Lobby succeeds in derailing it, that will tell us who's still in the driver's seat when it comes to steering our future course. The Lobby is fighting to assert its power of veto, which it exercised effortlessly during the Bush dark ages. Is this the bright dawn of a new day, or will the same old clouds darken our horizon for the next four years?....."