Obama pushes the button, and the Left goes crazy

So there it is. Obama has now done what he would always do in office and what he promised all through the campaign last year. And his dearest followers on the left have now gone berserk. Just go onto Huffington Post this morning and you will see no end of lamenting and mourning from the "liberal" blogosphere. We are an emotional and sentimental old bunch indeed. Very easily disappointed, and sway from one extreme to another without impediment or any deliberance.

And I angry? No, not really. I am not an expert in international relations, the state of tribal Afghanistan, or the inner-workings of the power-ranglings in that part of the world. There are not very many alternatives open to any President - Republican or Democrat. Power vacuum, power struggle, more death, more drones and more civic chaos seem to be the only options at the moment. Watching a video of Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame it was striking to see how forthright and damning he was and how Obama would escalate despite his great intelligence and lack of Bushlike expediency - and that was precisely the wrong course to take. Only 100, 000 more troops could defeat the Taliban and that would be very not only economically unfeasible, but also entrench America into a very protacted conflict that could only spiral out of control. Is he right? Its pretty likely he has some coherent concept and idea of how this war will continue. It is an extremely complicated matter and it needs more appreciation and study, and most probably less troops. We shall see.

To engage in lazy and trite parallels to Vietnam or Russian efforts in the 70s and 80s is too dreary to mention. The only reminder that needs to be rehashed is how keen and trigger happy everyone ran into Afghanistan in the first place, all ready to do Bush's bidding and inflict revenge for the sudden atrocity of 9/11. That enthusiasm has disapated very noticably, yet now other questions arise. What is going on in Iraq? Why didn't we hear anything about Afghanistan until last year? The incessant hyper-narrative of today's news cycle driven media seems to be incapable of posing proper questions.

What happens now? My prediction for this war? Ask me in a year's time.