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With his Tuesday, December 1, 2009, speech at West Point, President Barack Obama finally took the American War in Afghanistan away from the Republican side of the aisle where it’s been living for the past eight years, despite Republican Congressman Ron Paul being the only U.S. Senator or Representative to vote against the Tuesday, September 18, 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists.

One of the men I most respect on this planet, L. Neil Smith, still hasn’t forgiven me for the conditional support my writings lent to President Bush’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

I’ve been on the record since well before the end of the Bush administration calling for all U.S. troops to be withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan.

But tonight I came close to again giving another President of the United States my conditional support for sending more troops to Afghanistan.

Luckily I came to my senses in time.

You see, Obama sounded — in his speech at West Point tonight — almost like Ronald Reagan.

President Obama said what the mission was — to tromp down on the Taliban and round up Al Qaeda — then promised the American people what true conservatives promise when sending American troops to war: when the mission is accomplished I’ll bring the troops home.

Obama even gave a timetable for the mission and homecoming — troops back home by 2011 — as Reagan would have done.

Which of course got President Obama all the attacks from the Neocons on Fox and CNN for promising precisely what Ronald Reagan would have.

The problem is that the Afghanistan mission President Obama outlined makes no sense.

Therefore President Obama — unlike Reagan, when he sent troops into war for limited objectives — had to be lying.

While he was running for President, Barack Obama was all over John McCain for not being as strong as he was in his commitment to move the war out of Iraq and back into Afghanistan, for the purpose of catching the man responsible for the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden. I liked the “hunting Osama bin Laden” section of Obama’s speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention so much that I even used it in the background of a scene in my movie, Lady Magdalene’s, where a federal agent is on the heels of an American he suspects of running an al Qaeda cell domestically in the United States.

So, of course, in Tuesday’s speech at West Point, President Obama was once again pledging to bring Osama bin Laden to justice, right?

Nope. There was no mention in the speech of Osama bin Laden.

And, of course, the Commander in Chief — speaking for the first time at the United States Military Academy since the mass shootings at Fort Hood — laid out his plans for his military audience to make sure this would never happen again.

No, there was no mention of Fort Hood in the speech.

The President did say that the object of sending an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan was to combat an insurgency by the Taliban.

Excuse me? The Taliban didn’t launch the 9/11 attacks — and President Bush punished them eight years ago for hiding Osama bin Laden. The Taliban are not still hiding Osama bin Laden, so what the fuck?

President Obama also admitted that what remaining al Qaeda there still are in Afghanistan camp out close to the border of Pakistan, and cross over into Pakistani territory our troops aren’t allowed to follow them into whenever they’re pursued.

So adding 100, or 1000, or 100,000 more American troops to this bug hunt won’t bring us any closer to capturing or killing Obama bin Laden and his merry men because they still have a safe haven: Pakistan.

Barack Obama is not willing to enforce the Bush Doctrine — he who shields a terrorist will be treated like a terrorist — on Pakistan, any more than President Bush was willing to enforce the Bush Doctrine on Pakistan. The reason is that — unlike Iran, which is just a nuclear wannabe — Pakistan actually has nukes.

So what’s the actual mission?

Afghanistan has nothing of economic value — except Opium — that the United States wants as a trade good. Is Obama’s universal health-care plan going to be to make Opium the opiate of the masses?

Afghanistan’s terrain is so rugged it’s not a good staging area for the United States to attack anywhere else.

And we’re not going to get the sons of bitches who attacked America on 9/11 by sending more troops into Afghanistan because they’ll scurry away to safer turf.

If the mission is what Senator Obama promised in the 2008 presidential campaign, he would have been talking tonight about how he would pull all American troops out of the region and send the CIA after Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

But, of course, Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, is busy pissing off the CIA rank-and-file by blaming them for following the policies of their previous commander-in-chief to use torture — excuse me, “enhanced interrogation” — on captured enemy.

If President Obama knows of a reason why a single American soldier needs to remain in Afghanistan, he did not give it to us in his Tuesday speech at West Point — nor in any other communication.

The speech — and the war — have yet to be justified to the American people in any honest way.

And since the reasons the President gave us for continuing to prosecute this war are phony, how can we believe this President when he promises to bring the troops home?


My comic thriller Lady Magdalene’s — a movie I wrote, produced, directed, and acted in it — is now available for sale or rental on Amazon.com Video On Demand. If you like the way I think, I think you’ll like this movie. Check it out!

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