Michael Meacher MP

The implications of the change in the US High Command in Afghanistan go a lot deeper than the sacking of a general for mutinous behaviour.   Obama had already excessively delayed his endorsement of the Afghan surge strategy because he never believed in it, but could find no politically and militarily viable alternative to replace it with.   He felt trapped by its inevitability, but McChrystal and his aides now overplaying their hand against the ‘wimps in the White House’ offers him his best opportunity to re-write the strategy.   First signs are that he intends to take it.

What the McChrystal incident has really exposed is the increasing dominance of US militarism in both American politics and society.   George Bush defined himself as a war President, propagated the Long War doctrine of the unending worldwide struggle against terror, and demanded unquestioning patriotism as the price for achieving US global hegemony. (more…)