President Obama puts his legacy at risk with new war in Middle East

(theGrio)  In light of the threat posed by ISIS in Syria and Iraq, President Obama wants Congress to authorize military force against the Islamist group in the Middle East. Although the president believes a 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) gives him the legal grounds to go to war on his own, he has sent Congress a draft authorization for their approval.

Mr. President, be careful what you wish for. As Colin Powell once said about the consequences of the U.S. war in Iraq, “if you break it, you own it.” Congress should not give the green light to a new, potentially endless war, nor should Obama pursue it. This would be Obama’s war, and he would own it, with a very distinct chance of jeopardizing his legacy. And these wars never turn out well for America, so why would a war against ISIS be any different?

The Surge We Need At Home

Original link from BlackCommentator.com.

Sometimes, messes are so big that you just can’t fix them. The best thing to do is to leave it alone, and walk away, before you make things worse.

Afghanistan is one of those big messes. President Obama’s decision to claim ownership of the war in Afghanistan—by sending 30,000 more troops to fight the unwinnable war—is an example of misplaced priorities and misguided advice. As the White House parrots the Bush administration by launching a surge in Afghanistan, there is a domestic crisis that requires our attention. And this crisis is a far greater threat to national security than any foreign terrorists, real or imagined. A surge is needed, to be sure, but it is needed here at home.

Of course, the domestic crisis of which I speak is the nation itself. Simply put, America is a mess. Unemployment is over 10 percent, while the effective unemployment rate—which also includes the underemployed—is more like 19.2 percent. In the first three quarters of 2009, there were more than 2.6 million foreclosure filings, with a projected total of 3.2-3.4 million property foreclosures for the year. In the "land of plenty", 40 percent of the food supply is wasted, one in eight people uses food stamps, as does one in four children. About half of American children, and 90 percent of black children, will live in a household that depends on food stamps at some point before they turn 20. And 63 percent of teachers buy food for hungry students with their own money. Is this the most we can expect from the world’s greatest superpower?

Meanwhile, we are told the economy is recovering because Wall Street has recovered. Wall Street never had it so good, as the banks bask in the glow of their TARP-bailout, corporate-welfare recipient status. As the titans of finance are rewarded for their greed, failure, and demolition of the U.S. economy, the upward redistribution of wealth continues in this country. Those who have the most are getting more and more. A consumer-based economy ceases to function as such when the consumers are jobless, penniless, homeless, and hungry. It doesn’t take an expert or professional commentator to realize that something is fundamentally wrong with this nation’s economic system, and that the public will not sustain more of this suffering without some repercussions. For further information on the nature of the repercussions we can expect, you only need to consult history.

Surely, the Obama team is smart enough to know this. After all, they have fancy degrees and extensive book learning. But it would seem that the advisors who are misguiding the President on the economy are as useless—or perhaps as harmful—as his advisors on Afghanistan. Just look at his economic team. Larry Summers is Director of the White House's National Economic Council. In his old job as president of Harvard, Summers ignored warnings not to put so much of the university’s money into the stock market. As a result, the world’s largest university endowment lost $1.8 billion. And this man is the President’s economic czar?

Or take a look at Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner, who failed to pay Medicare and Social Security payroll taxes for four years. Geithner, according to one observer, “should never have been appointed to anything. He's been wrong about just about everything for 15 years.” As head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Geithner oversaw the bailout of AIG. Further, he has been criticized for giving away tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to counterparties that contracted with AIG—a cash transfer amounting to one hundred cents on the dollar, to be exact. Geithner was a part of the problem in helping create the financial crisis and failing to protect the taxpayers from vultures. Now, calls for his resignation are coming from both sides of the aisle.

This is what happens when the so-called “best and brightest”—corporate pinheads with no real-world sensibilities, no moral compass, and no connection to the lives of everyday people— are given more power in government than they deserve. President Lyndon Johnson relied on Robert McNamara, a number-crunching technocrat from Ford Motor Company, to run the Vietnam War like a business. That war was unwinnable, if anyone really wins in war, and McNamara came to know it. But he continued to crunch the numbers to please his President, like any good technocrat. Who cares if in the end, 58,000 Americans and 2 million Vietnamese lost their lives, in addition to hundreds of thousands of casualties, right?

Waging a senseless, immoral and unwinnable war, Johnson cost himself a great presidency. Dr. Martin Luther King called out Johnson on the Vietnam War and was derided by many for doing so, but history proved King right. History has judged McNamara a sorry excuse for a person. And Johnson was unable to accomplish his Great Society anti-poverty programs because the war sucked up all of the resources. And that was when the American empire was far ahead of the competition.

Today, we have a basket case of a nation, and a president who was elected as an agent of change. Yet, the Democrats have become the party of Wall Street. The administration prefers to manage its predecessor’s messes abroad rather than walk away from them. But most importantly, the people don’t have an appetite for war. The only war that concerns them now is the war that has been waged against working people for years, by a predatory economic regime of wage suppression, deregulation and corporate plunder. Today, we see the fiercest battles in this war since the Great Depression.

Obama needs a surge of resources here in the U.S. to help everyday people. He should take a page from F.D.R., or several chapters if he must, and adapt it to twenty-first century sensibilities. F.D.R. saved the people from capitalism, if he didn’t save capitalism from itself. Now is the time to save the people once again.

PTSD Creates Fort Hoods Everywhere

It is an understatement to say the recent massacre at Fort Hood, Texas is a horrible tragedy. Pundits have said much about the alleged shooter, Army psychiatrist Nidal M. Hasan. And they will likely say a great deal more about his motives, his state of mind, terrorism, and al-Qaeda.

I knew it wouldn’t be long before the usual suspects would be rounded up, and the discussion would degenerate into a talk about Islamic extremism and purging Muslims from the military. Hate crimes and scapegoating of the Arab-American and Muslim-American communities are the unfortunate consequences in such an environment. All of America’s young white male ex-marines did not bear responsibility for Timothy McVeigh and his bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, so why should the Muslim community shoulder a burden that does not bear their name?

We should be concerned that at this tragic moment, society will miss a unique opportunity to address the effects of war, and the problems of violence and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The National Institute of Mental Health defines PTSD as “an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. Traumatic events that may trigger PTSD include violent personal assaults, natural or human-caused disasters, accidents, or military combat.” PTSD can cause many symptoms, such as flashbacks, bad dreams, difficulty sleeping, depression, emotional numbness, and feeling “on edge”.

Secondary trauma involves the emotional and psychological effects of working with traumatized people. Therapists, social workers and others who associate with victims of violence can develop symptoms of PTSD. As for an Army psychiatrist such as Hasan, listening to the horrific war stories of his clients on a daily basis must have taken its toll.

As Sandra Bloom and Michael Reichert point out in their book Bearing Witness: Violence and Collective Responsibility, we live in a violent culture that promotes trauma and organizes around trauma. Sadly, we pass that trauma to the next generation, and create a vicious cycle of violence. And society is like the psychiatric patient who must hit rock bottom and show life threatening symptoms before crying out for help. “Our entire culture is doing the same thing - manifesting such extremes of pathology that we can no longer deny that something is pervasively wrong,” the authors suggest. “We manifest this cry for help in our rate of firearm deaths, crimes of violence, and in the epidemic of child-on-child assaults.”

In a nation where Columbine-style school shootings are virtually commonplace, and aggrieved employees “go postal” and mow down their coworkers as a matter of course, Hasan is by no means alone. And as a repository for violence, the military is not dealing with untreated mental illness among its ranks. That Hasan was a mental health professional underscores the military’s failure to deal with a widespread problem.

PTSD afflicts 300,000 veterans from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, perhaps as many as 15% of returning soldiers. Yet, many do not receive the medical treatment they need. Last year there were 128 confirmed suicides by army personnel and 41 by marines, the highest on record. The suicide rate among soldiers in Iraq is five times higher than in the Persian Gulf War, and 11% higher than during Vietnam. In fact, the military suicide rate is higher than the overall U.S. rate, the first time since Vietnam.

Further, stress-related homicides by soldiers - at home and abroad, active duty and after they return home - amount to a crisis situation that does not receive the attention it warrants. Crime has been on the rise on military bases since 2003, according to a recent U.S. Army study. The study also found that soldiers who experienced more combat, and whose units sustained more casualties, had a higher risk of developing mental illness, criminality, and conduct problems.

Prisons are repositories for the mentally ill that eschew rehabilitation and treatment. Consequently, these institutions create sicker people and better criminals in the process. Above and beyond the inherent madness, violence and criminality that institutions of war already represent, the U.S. military seems to assume a similar role. And the ticking time bomb originates not from the jacket of an al-Qaeda suicide bomber, but from within the ranks of the U.S. armed forces.

In the aftermath of Fort Hood, more time spent on gratuitous anti-Arab and anti-Muslim scapegoating is more time that PTSD is not addressed among veterans and active-duty personnel. Additional Fort Hoods are in waiting. However, the larger issue is that society must deal with the mental health effects of trauma and violence - not only on the battlefield, but at home on the streets of America. Violence begets violence, and war is terror, whether it occurs in Iraq, Afghanistan, North Philly, East L.A. or Chicago.

(From BlackCommentator.com and Huffington Post.)