Putting his foot down?

I’m watching the Rachel Maddow Show and listening to Seymour Hersh talk about the AP report that President Obama has rejected all Afghanistan war options currently on the table. Hersh says the president has finally put his foot down, after having given the generals carte blanch to create a plan — which meant big war plans were likely to be pushed.

The AP report says that the “main sticking points appear to be timelines and mounting questions about the credibility of the Afghan government” and that the president “wants to make clear that the U.S. commitment in Afghanistan is not open-ended.”

This is better news than I — and many others who oppose an expanded war and who want the U.S. to scale back its military presence — expected. But it is not enough.

We continue to approach the Afghanistan question with an imperial mindset, one that starts with war and ends with war and dismisses any options that do not involve war. We’re not deaf to other possibilities, but actively and aggressively dismissive — including to complaints by the people on the ground we say we’re trying to help.

And in doing so, we ensure that the rest of the world distrusts us.

Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet