Sanction

Some are getting excited that Obama has apparently, and I stress apparently, made some sane decisions like nixing the planned installation of missiles in Europe and waiting before sending more troops to Afghanistan. Canning the missile defense in Europe is likely due more to the U.S. needing Russia’s support in placing heavy sanctions against Iran than anything else. Of course up till now Russia has been against sanctions but as it just so happens…

Link

UNITED NATIONS — President Obama, in his maiden visit to the opening of the United Nations General Assembly, made progress Wednesday on two key issues crucial to his foreign policy agenda, wringing a concession from Russia to consider tough new sanctions against Iran and securing support from Moscow and Beijing for a Security Council resolution to curb the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

It looks like Iran just lost a friend.

As for not sending more troops to Afghanistan per McChrystal’s request immediately it should not be taken as a sign that the endless wars will be halted or that troops will not be sent. The New York Times has an article today which clearly indicates that our Democratic Napoleons are not giving up but merely “reassessing” their complete and total failure to manipulate the Afghans in the desired manner. And vice president Biden is now pushing Pakistan as the “real” war. It’s getting hard to keep up with which war is the real and true war but I’m sure our stalwart leaders will come through in the end. Perhaps they could be convinced that the “real” war is taking place on one of the moons of Jupiter where our boys can play without hurting anyone.

I believe this reassessment is due to the failed election in Afghanistan. I would say Obama must have been fed some very bad information by his advisors regarding the outcome of the Afghan election which was supposedly a litmus test for the “new” (meaning old and rehashed) strategy mistakenly adopted from the Iraq War. Iraq was a modern metropolitan country and Afghanistan is nothing like Iraq. Iraq is still the more important of the two ongoing wars. Iraq is important because it has oil while Afghanistan is important more from a strategic viewpoint in the overarching plan of containing Russia keeping it from what the U.S. sees as important oil bearing regions in that area. I believe that what we will see is continued tight control of Iraq and their oil while they keep a looser control over Afghanistan likely just enough to maintain a few military bases in the area.