The Cloud of War

As we contemplate the ongoing healthcare mess in Congress and hear some words about immigration reform and other pressing social issues across the nation let us not for one moment forget the monstrous cloud of two ongoing wars, Iraq and Afghanistan. The pressures of supporting those military events may prevent the Obama administration from enacting the kinds of social and economic reform the country expected with the election.

James Carroll in a posting today says it all.

The scale of President Obama’s military mistake is becoming clear exactly as the moment of his greatest opportunity to improve American life has arrived. The tragedy, as with Lyndon Johnson, will be the destruction of his proposed social transformation by his simultaneous opting for war, as his core supporters among liberals and Democrats feel bound to oppose him. The day after Obama’s unifying speech on health reform, Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, sent a foreboding warning on Afghanistan, ahead of an all but certain request from the Pentagon for a major escalation there. The storm cloud approaches.

If we are to have any real future in this nation of ours we must end our militaristic policies and begin to seek peace for one and all around the globe.

Peace.