We Send Troops, We Send Troops Not, We Send Troops, We Send Troops Not

Obama plays one-on-one with an advisor as he makes his decision about troops to Afghanistan

Barry 'The Flash' Obama On the Court

Yesterday was Veterans’ Day and as all Presidents do, Barack Obama went to Arlington to pay respect to our nation’s heroic dead. He seem to have surprised everyone by actually walking among the Iraq and Afghanistan war graves–although why that should have surprised anyone can only be ascribed to just how unexpected a noble gesture is after the Bush years. George Bush made the typical patriotic noises on each of his Veterans’ Days, but he always took care not to greet bodies at Andrews Air Force Base or visit the gravesites lest lightning come suddenly out of the sky. Instead he asked us to support our troops by going out and spending money like it was 1997. Very few of us could actually do that after the FIRST Bush recession–unless we were employed by Goldman Sachs and doing God’s work to make ourselves rich. God helps them that help themselves and gosh darnit, those superproductive workers at Goldman Sachs have done nothing but help themselves!
But I digress–I do that a lot since the Bush years, which seem to have kicked up my ADHD several notches. I think it’s because ADHD characterized our leadership in those days. Bush managed to send out troops into Afghanistan–where they were charged to find Osama bin Laden and were called away to go fight in Iraq when they were on the verge of actually finding him. In Iraq, our troops were charged to take away Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction–which have been forgotten ever since we got tired of looking for something that wasn’t there. We DID manage to find Saddam Hussein–or at least, we found him when somebody handed him over to us in a drugged stupor. If that hadn’t happened, I’m sure we’d have forgotten about that also–like we did about several billion dollars for rebuilding Iraq which managed to disappear unaccounted for. Donald Rumsfeld managed to mislay 2.3 TRILLION dollars somewhere in the Pentagon–which is quite an accomplishment. And of course, we forgot that the levies in New Orleans weren’t up to standard, and at last, we gave away 350 billion dollars to bail out financial companies without asking anyone what they did with the money.
But to return to the veterans. Back in those heady days of fantasizing that we would conquer the entire Middle East so that another 9/11 would never happen again, it was practically a mark of treason to suggest that our military adventures in Sand-flea-istan were ill-advised. But finally, most of the country has come to believe that sending troops on missions with no good reason is not exactly the best use of the armed forces. While most of the country still believes however that the “troops should be supported no matter what,” some of us are still trying to make the argument that the best support you can give the troops is to get them the hell out of someplace they aren’t supposed to be. We’ve declared victory in Iraq so we can skedaddle at the most auspicious time–has anyone heard much news out of there in a while–must be our national ADHD again! And now we turn our attention back to Afghanistan, where the Pentagon, bless their pointy little heads, is telling us we can win if we only nearly double our troops there by sending in 40,000 more. The question is, what are we supposed to win? Al-Qaeda did a little mountain climbing and now lives in Pakistan. The Taliban are trying to wrest power from the corrupt Karzai government–which WE put in place. What the hell are we doing there anyway?
So–now it’s on Barry’s plate. President Obama has at least 4 options of what to do about our military presence in Afghanistan. The option that makes sense–getting us the hell out of there–has been taken off the table–like the single payer health care option had been–leaving us with four different ways we can lose American lives and waste its money in order to achieve some nebulous victory. If we don’t do it, we are told, then all the American lives already lost will be meaningless. That kind of reasoning is like the horseplayer on a losing streak who has to keep betting or else he won’t make back the money he’s lost. DUHHHH! If you can see how stupid the one is–why can’t you see how totally dumbass stupid the other is?
Anyway, Obama has these four options and as always, he’s acting as coy as Miss Scarlett when she’s deciding which beau she’s going to let bring her some barbeque. He’s acting as coy as Steve Jobs when he’s about to introduce the iVibe. You’d think the White House had turned into a backyard fish pond filled with big carp! Which BAD move will Obama decide to take? Just this week, our ambassador to Afghanistan came back and said–DON’T DO IT! But, we can’t let out boys down or the wingnuts will come out and say Obama has no guts for a fight because he’s a socialist fascist and a secret Muslim to boot. Which trying to make sense of makes my head hurt! Obama says he will announce his decision after Thanksgiving. How much you wanna bet he’s trying to find some middle ground solution that neither withdraws troops not sends enough in to do anything? We’re taking bets. Stay tuned for more information!

ANNOY YOUR FRIENDS! CONFOUND YOUR ENEMIES! PRESS ONE OF THESE BUTTONS--OR ELSE!

The Battle for the Hearts and Minds … of our ALLIES!

No misconduct by the troops--they merely ran through a Swedish run hospital, forcing patients out of beds and tying up the staff.

Thank you and have a nice day...

Back at the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003–was it really over six years ago now? My, how time flies when you’re having fun!–we discovered that there were some interesting wrinkles in our treatment of the local populace. They did not especially like being called “hadjis”, “ragheads”, “towelheads”, or “sand niggers”, and seemed to get upset if they were politely told to “put your face in the ground mother****er or I’ll blow it off!” The effort to get the Iraqis to trust us became known as the “Battle for the Hearts and Minds”–to distinguish it from the “Battle to Bomb Saddam Hussein Back to the Stone Age,” which seemingly was mostly accomplished in three weeks. Although it took several more months to capture Saddam Hussein himself, we could congratulate ourselves on the Stone Age part, especially since parts of Baghdad still do not have 24 hour electricity, seven days a week. The Battle for the Hearts and Minds took a bit longer because even our leadership didn’t understand that breaking the Geneva conventions did not endear us to the populace, saying “Stop” to someone who didn’t understand English doesn’t always give you the right to open fire, and that Blackwater Security was a bunch of trigger-happy psychotics whose boss thought he was on a holy crusade. But I digress.
Now that we are back in Afghanistan, finishing the job that George Bush left against a country that probably shouldn’t have been invaded in the first place (if you remember, we demanded that the Afghans hand over somebody they neither had in custody nor knew where he was, giving us the excuse to invade, overthrow the Taliban government, find Osama bin Laden, and then give up on the 5 yard line so we could play in Iraq), what the media refers to sometimes as the “GOOD war”, destined to become the same quagmire that the British fell into in the 19th century and the Russians in the 20th, yet we still have our image problems. THIS time, it’s with our own allies. After the NATO air strike that killed 70 civilians (who we claim all but five of were insurgents and yes I’m quoting the Washington Times for the irony value), we then turned to a civilian hospital run by a Swedish charity, broke down doors, tied up four of the staff and two innocent bystanders visiting relatives, and forced patients out of beds while we looked for insurgents. Our MEN searched the women’s ward and ordered the staff to report if any insurgents sought medical aid before we gave them permission to treat them. The staff refused. According to Fox News (who else?) U.S. Military Challenge Allegations of Misconduct at Afghan Hospital. Someone who wasn’t there said that no one was tied up and doors were only kicked in with the permission of staff. Since civilian hospitals are supposed to be neutral territory, troops shouldn’t have entered in the first place. I suppose there was no misconduct because we didn’t shoot anyone or tase them, but really, tying up staff and visitors should be left for the BDSM club in Kabul.
In the meantime, we at Intravenous Caffeine have decided to remain on a once a week schedule for a while longer as we prepare a few items for publication. The first is a rendering of Edgar Allan Poe’s THE RAVEN which will be available here and at various conventions that I will be attending. Please see the link for further information and samples!

ANNOY YOUR FRIENDS! CONFOUND YOUR ENEMIES! PRESS ONE OF THESE BUTTONS--OR ELSE!