If the Afghan war then becomes the consuming issue of Obama’s presidency - as Iraq became for his predecessor, as Vietnam did for Lyndon Johnson, and as Korea did for Harry Truman - the inevitable effect will be to compromise the prospects of reform more broadly. At home and abroad, the president who advertised himself as an agent of change will instead have inadvertently erected barriers to change. As for the American people, they will be left to foot the bill. This is a pivotal moment in US history. Americans owe it to themselves to be clear about what is at issue. That issue relates only tangentially relates to Al Qaeda, the Taliban, or the well-being of the Afghan people. The real question is whether “change’’ remains possible. (Source; h/t Greenwald)

I haven't been writing much about Iraq/Afghanistan because what is there new to say? It may seem simplistic; nevertheless, the only compelling reason to explain this commitment to futility is that it benefits certain very important and powerful interests. Your normal politician, who understand the steep price fighting them would require, would rather not pay it, and so finds a way to pursue projects that don't disturb them too much. If Wall Street owns Washington, it's a joint venture with the big players in the defense industry. Insurance and Big Pharma are important players, but not in the same class as defense and Big Finance.

There are other layers of reasons for these policies, but they are all secondary, pretexts, or ex post facto rationalizations, and none alone or in combination would be sufficient to motivate this futile policy, just as WMD, or deposing a dictator, or promoting democracy was never the central motivation for invading Iraq. These secondary layers have legitimacy only as supporting justifications for the central reason: it serves the power and profit interests of a few narrow but very powerful interests.

That's what America has become, and Obama and the Dems are either unwilling or unable to do anything to change it. So nothing changes until Americans use their power-in-numbers to push back against the power-in-wealth that currently dominates the system. But power-in-wealth knows how to prevent power-in-numbers by tried-and-true, divide-and-conquer tactics. The culture wars are its current tool, and liberals are as easily manipulated by this play as movement conservatives.

Politics isn't that hard to understand. It operates according to very basic, very primitive greed and power rules. We're in our current predicament because the American people, smitten by the Reagan fantasy, ceded their power to a pack of wolves who, spouting religious, patriotic, and free-market cliches, have largely destroyed a sane, workable New Deal framework, and in doing so nicely set themselves up to rule the hen house for the last thirty years.

This regression was so easy to effect because people with money have enormous power to co-opt the system to benefit themselves and to fund clever propaganda to cover their rapine. The Republicans took the lead, but the Dems happily followed, so now anybody who speaks out sincerely and passionately for the public interest, or any policy that based in common sense or common decency, is considered either a rube or a far leftist.

So I don't know that any of us could do better than Obama if we were in his position. Presidents only look powerful when they do the will of entrenched power. Resist, and you will be destroyed.