Roylat.com

I watched Obama live yesterday. What a tragic disappointment. I kept feeling like I was watching Bush — or Clinton, or Reagan, or Lyndon Johnson justifying military action and demonizing those they plan to kill. I soon found myself incredibly bored. I just kept yawning. It was all so predictable and and disgusting.

I find in the headlines today that the Bush comparison occurred to others – the Huff Post and Der Spiegel, and I’m sure many others. Here is the Der Spiegel headline and summary. I highly recommend reading the whole article.

Searching in Vain for the Obama Magic 

Never before has a speech by President Barack Obama felt as false as his Tuesday address announcing America’s new strategy for Afghanistan. It seemed like a campaign speech combined with Bush rhetoric — and left both dreamers and realists feeling distraught. Full Story

Obama’s action on Afghanistan is certainly another nail in the coffin of my hopes the Obama would bring about positive change. Add his militarism to his “economic” (wall street bailout) policies and what is there left to give one hope?

I watched a very interesting Bill Moyer program that I highly recommend if you didn’t see it. He assembled audios of phone conversations of Lyndon Johnson when he was considering what to do in Viet Nam in the period after he assumed power. The frightening part of it is how much he wanted to avoid committing troops to Viet Nam and how the political forces and  calculations, the military, and American macho character steadily and surely sucked him down the road to war. As I watched it, I saw the inevitability of Obama’s escalation in Afghanistan.

A very sad day for me and and our country and especially for all those from America and in Afghanistan and Pakistan that will be ground up in the meat grinder of war.

In the next few days I will try to send several articles on an important news story in Germany that has received no coverage in the US but that foreshadows what is sure to emerge here as the Afghan conflict escalates.