You won it, now earn it!

Obama mottar fredsprisen, originally uploaded by aktivioslo.

What's turning Obama's back to most Americans?

P111209PS-0458, originally uploaded by The White House.

The desicion has been made, we'll escalate our involvement in Af-vietnam-istan...


David A. Stevenson
Bethel, Connecticut

Is it my imagination, or did Presidential candidate Barack Obama pledge to wind down the occupation of Iraq - in order to take care of Afghanistan properly. He properly noted that the Bush administration had failed to complete the mission in Afghanistan.

He is carrying out those campaign pledges. Why is everyone so surprised?

I voted for him - knowing that this was his pledge. I don't understand why others who voted for him are now surprised. Do you think John McCain and Sarah Palin would have done better ? If you do, I suspect you might consider cutting back on your LSD intake.

My take on Afghanistan - from before the election - was that we can only succeed in Afghanistan if we get full cooperation from other nations throughout the world. If America and our President do not get that complete cooperation - then we should pull out of Afghanistan, before what happens to the Soviet Union also happens to us.

Let's allow our President the latitude he deserves now - then comment later.


Jack
New York

Man!, this so deja vu! No clear idea of what we do going in and even more clueless as what will happen to tell us when to get out.

We are fighting an enemy that is an ally and proxy of our 'ally' (Pakistan). The money and arms we give our ally only find their way to our enemy. Is this any way to fight a war?

To get Pakistan's cooperation, we are forced to threaten them periodically with more money and arms (!). It's almost pythonesque: "If you don't do as we say, we'll bombard you with money and guns and you'll be sorry!"

Look, it's real simple: 1. Take the nukes away from Pakistan. This immediately and automatically makes them punch in their own weight class and nervous about 'sub conventional' or 'asymmetric' warfare; 2. Free the Baluchis from their Punjabi oppressors and open up a land route to Afghanistan.

On the nukes, right now we're only looking at 50-60. In five years that number will double and eventually we'll have to take them out anyway.

On Baluchistan, the Khan of Kalat was forced into joining Pakistan so independence is not a new concept for them.

It's not that we can't win in Afghanistan WITHOUT Pakistan. It's that we can't win WITH Pakistan.


Richard S
Novato, California

Obama said he would escalate the war during the campaign, so no one should be surprised here. However, it's up to the Chinese to authorize the expenditure, and they'll likely be happy to do it, because it further reduces our imperial capabilities and puts us further under the sway of our debtors. Lacking the insight and courage to face up to a losing situation and walk away, Obama will likely commit the US to another trillion dollar expenditure plus the suffering of the tens of thousands of soldiers who will sustain life-long mental and physical injuries. And in the end the Taliban (though probably not Al Queda) will own this country because -- guess what? -- they live there and we don't. End of story. Shame on Obama and all the legislators who vote for the DOD war appropriations. This is a massive mistake.



B. Mull
Irvine, CA

It is true that Obama said during the campaign that Afghanistan was the "right" war. I mostly agreed with him at the time. But a year later the country wants to move on, not double down. The war to capture bin laden and shut down the terror camps is over. What was perhaps a war of necessity is now a divisive war of empire. It is a tragic error that will ruin many lives and destroy any remaining hope that Obama would put our country on a better path.


Gefilta
NY

One million dollars. That’s the figure we’re told it costs per soldier per year in Afghanistan. Is there some evil specter in the White House that can turn a bright man into a glass eyed fool? Is it the water in white house sink? Can someone please walk into the oval office (it shouldn’t be too difficult) take hold of the young man sitting there and shake him by the shoulders and say snap out of it! What are you doing man?! Rome is burning!


Scott Moore
Seattle, WA

Remember Nixon said he would get us out of Vietnam, and then we went into Cambodia. So now we're getting out of Afghanistan by escalating. I believe I've seen this before. I was younger then, but I still remember it well.

I hope this time will be different, but I can't imagine why it would be.

If I were president I'd bring those troops home and put 10,000 of them on the Mexican border. That's one tenth the troops we plan for Afghanistan, and it would mean three soldiers per mile of border. Take some of those recon planes and have them patrol our coasts. Take some more troops and have the army corps of engineers work on our failing international highways and decrepit railway system.

This would cost us far less than the war in Afghanistan and all the money spent to support the troops would benefit the economy here, as well as our own infrastructure. We might even get out of the economic crisis at the same time.

Our security and economic well being need to start here in the US, not in some hill of sand and rock thousands of miles away. Let Pakistan and Afghanistan wallow in their own mire and muck without our military aid. That money benefits the military industrial complex, not the American people.

Think people. Think...

Giovanni Arrighi (7 July 1937 - 18 June 2009)

Forthcoming Publications
Giovanni Arrighi. Postscript to the Second Edition of The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Times, Verso, in press, 2009. [PDF]
Giovanni Arrighi and Lu Zhang, “Beyond the Washington Consensus: A New
Bandung?” Forthcoming in Globalization and Beyond: New Examinations of Global Power and Its Alternatives, Jon Shefner and Patricia Fernandez Kelly (editors), Penn State University Press, 2010. [PDF]
Giovanni Arrighi, “Autobiography”, prepared for The Encyclopedia of Comparative Sociology. [PDF]
 
Selected Publications
Giovanni Arrighi, “The Political Economy of Rhodesia”, New Left Review, 39, 1966. [PDF]
Giovanni Arrighi, The Political Economy of Rhodesia. Mouton, The Hague, 1967. [PDF]
Giovanni Arrighi, “Labour Supplies in Historical Perspective: A Study of the
Proletarianization of the African Peasantry in Rhodesia”, Journal of Development Studies, 6, 3, 1970. [PDF]
Giovanni Arrighi, “International Corporations, Labor Aristocracies and Economic Development in Tropical Africa”, in Giovanni Arrighi and John Saul, Essays on the Political Economy of Africa, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1973. [PDF]
Giovanni Arrighi, “Towards a Theory of Capitalist Crisis”, New Left Review, no. 111, September-October 1978. [PDF]
Giovanni Arrighi and Beverly J. Silver, “Labor Movements and Capital Migration: The U.S. and Western Europe in World-Historical Perspective”, in C. Bergquist, ed., Labor in the Capitalist Wrold-Economy. Beverly Hills, Sage, 1984. [PDF]
Giovanni Arrighi and Jessica Drangel, “The Stratification of the World-Economy: An Exploration of the Semiperipheral Zone”, Review (Fernand Braudel Center), 10, 1, 1986. [PDF]
Giovanni Arrighi and Fortunata Piselli, “Capitalist Development in Hostile
Environments: Feuds, Class Struggles, and Migrations in a Peripheral Region of Southern Italy”, Review (Fernand Braudel Center), 10, 4, 1987. [PDF]
Giovanni Arrighi, “The Developmentalist Illusion: A Reconceptualization of the
Semiperiphery”, in W.G. Martin, ed., Semiperipheral States in the World Economy, Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, 1990. [PDF]
Giovanni Arrighi, “Marxist Century, American Century: The Making and Remaking of the World Labour Movement”, New Left Review, 179, 1990. [PDF]
Giovanni Arrighi and Beverly J. Silver, “Workers North and South” in The Socialist Register 2001. Merlin Press, 2000. [PDF]
Giovanni Arrighi, “Braudel, Capitalism and the New Economic Sociology”, Review (Fernand Braudel Center), 24, 1, 2001. [PDF]
Giovanni Arrighi and Beverly J. Silver, “Capitalism and World (Dis)Order”, Review of International Studies, 27, 2001. [PDF]
Giovanni Arrighi, “The African Crisis: World Systemic and Regional Aspects”, New Left Review, II, 15, 2002. [PDF]
Giovanni Arrighi, Beverly J. Silver and Benjamin D. Brewer, “Industrial Convergence and the Persistence of the North-South Divide”, Studies in Comparative International Development, 38, 1, 2003. [PDF]
Giovanni Arrighi and Beverly J. Silver, “Polanyi’s ‘Double-Movement’: The Belle Epoques of British and US Hegemony Compared”, Politics and Society, 31, 2, 2003. [PDF]
Giovanni Arrighi, Beverly J. Silver and Benjamin D. Brewer, “Industrial Convergence and the Persistence of the North-South Divide: A Rejoinder to Firebaugh”, Studies in Comparative International Development, 40, 1, 2005. [PDF]
Giovanni Arrighi (interviewed by David Harvey), “The Winding Paths of Capital”, New Left Review, II/61, 2009. [PDF]


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