Biden on Cheney's Afghan War Criticisms of Obama: "Who cares?"

In today’s New York Times we have Vice President Biden obviously tiring of the former GOP Administrations’ views of virtually anything.  Here is the article with a short excerpt:

"In the latest exchange between old and new administrations, Mr. Biden rebuffed his predecessor’s criticism about President Obama’s handling of Afghanistan as “absolutely wrong.” And Mr. Biden rejected the last review of the war conducted by the White House under former President George W. Bush and Mr. Cheney as “irrelevant.”

The dismissive reply, which came at the end of Mr. Biden’s three-day swing through Eastern Europe during an interview with reporters traveling with him, underscored the weariness in the current White House with Mr. Cheney’s periodic assaults. At the same time, advisers to Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden consider the former vice president a useful public foil and have not shied away from escalating the debate by taking him on directly."

This is important for veterans to consider, in my mind at least, for one major reason.  The previous Administration threw hundreds of thousands of American troops into a combat situation that it now appears was not necessary. And that is the kindest thing I can say about it. 

This Administration is trying to figure out what to do about that mess.  American lives have been lost and shattered to say nothing of Iraqi and Afghani sheepherders, shopkeepers, farmers, and roustabouts and their families being maimed, killed or displaced. 

It appears now as if this was done to make Dick Cheney’s war industry friends wealthy (read that as wealthier). If one takes a distant and clear view of our actions and responses there in the last eight years or so, it is hard to see a reasonable, self defense interest in what we have done there. We are talking about defense industry greed here.

American lives, as far as we can tell from this vantage point now, seemed to have been sacrificed for profit for the relatively few thousand Americans running the war and "terror protection" industries. Working class/lower Middle class American kids were slain so that fat cats could become obese cats.

To state this simply, that is treason.

How do you feel about that?  What is your opinion regarding your neighborhood kids being sent to a western Asian meat grinder so that Dick Cheney’s friends can buy another mansion, another yacht, another crop of high priced call-girl escorts? As a veteran, how do you feel about their sacrifice?

In this story, NATO defense ministers have endorsed General MacChrystal’s counter insurgency plan for Afghanistan.  That is great, wonderful in fact, except for one thing.  They are not providing the bulk of the troops there and the troops that they are providing are often support personnel.  Odd.  I find their reaction quite odd in light of what they are actually doing there. Once again I am feeling used by friends.

In this story workers have begun to clean up the radioactive site at Los Alamos, the home of the first atom bomb tests.  I don’t imagine too many workers will be coming home from work to greet the wife and kids with "Hey!  Look what I found on the worksite today!"

Now here is a very, very interesting story for veterans to read and understand.  Obama is pushing for renewable energy sources in our country.  Green energy if you will.  American industry giants are opposing him saying that it will ruin our economy!  Wow!  This is a lot more important to us as veterans than it seems.  Will it ruin our economy or their little war industries and energy cartel financial schemes?

This is very important to us, we have essentially gone to war over oil and its allied energy resources since WWII.  This is ultimately why Americans have been injured and died in war since 1941.  So why would American industry not want us to be energy independent?  This is a lot more crucial to our issues than it seems on first blush.

If there was ever an obvious example of American combat veterans getting a look at the reasons they went into combat, this is it. It all comes down to our access to energy resources.  So, why would American industry be against our becoming energy independent?  You really need to think about this. And you need to have an informed opinion on the matter.

CWO3 Tom Barnes, USCG (Ret.)

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