Do Joe Biden, General Petraeus, and Obama Read Our Posts?
I know I'm going out on a limb here, but it WAS just 5 days after I wrote "General Petraeus, Can You Hear Me Now?" that, well, he seems to have heard me. He said those who are simply fighting to support their families should be given an economic alternative.
I was at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard trying to crash his speech on that day, which I didn't manage to do, but I did tell everybody about the bagpipe band in my article. Then on Feb. 28th I ran my Oped News headliner "Obama-stan: Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss," which also caused a minor stir (44 comments) under the title "Obama Deaf, Dumb, and Blind on Afghanistan" at the pro-Obama website DailyKos.com. The point of the article was the same as always: identify the problem correctly, and it will lead you to the correct solution:
The Taliban insurgency is growing as a result of economic conditions, not ideological ones. Most Afghans hate the Taliban, but they need to feed their families.Lo and behold, ten days later VP Joe Biden says in Brussels:
"70 percent of [the Taliban] are there for the jobs, because they are getting paid."
Both pieces hit the point for the umpteenth time that the majority of the "Taliban" fights for the wage the Taliban pays so they can feed their families, and the easy way out of this conflict is to give them jobs. In both cases, it is the first time administration officials acknowledged specifically what many Americans do not understand. They aren't fighting because they "hate our freedoms." They are fighting because they are hungry. Economics is not a vague causal factor behind the insurgency. It is the direct cause.
We never know what difference we are making, we just know we have to keep doing what we are doing, because it's right. It's long odds that the slow awaking of the Obama administration is linked to someone briefing them on million-hit-a-day websites like Kos and OpEdNews, but now I'll take it. If I had bet 100 bucks on that 50-to-1 long shot that won the Kentucky Derby last week, I'd be $5000 richer. Mine That Bird. Damn damn damn.