Huh, did I hear Obama’s speech right? We’re sending 30,000 troops at a cost of $30 billion to Afghanistan, bringing the troop level to over 100,000. But we’re doing all this to give ourselves time to train the Afghan Security Forces and the Pakistan Forces, as well, who will then root out remaining Al Qaeda and Taliban members in both countries. All this will happen over the next 18 months, so that by Christmas troops can start deploying. Who’s he kidding?

Of course, our troops are going to befriend village chiefs, like the chiefs are dying to talk with us, literally, as we continue pounding their country. All this, as we ask them to point out Taliban hangouts to us for their own good. Of course, with the example of Iraq as to what can happen to their country, this should really be an incentive.

President Obama does mention what a botched mess Iraq was, but nevertheless Mother America’s work is never done. It’s a dirty job and somebody’s gotta do it. So it might as well be us, because that’s been our job since WW II and we’ve spilled blood all over the place to show once more our “American Exceptionalism.”

Oh, and we’re doing this ultimately to prevent “the wrong people” from getting their hands on Pakistan’s nukes with no mention of India’s or Israel’s nuclear arsenals.

Uh huh! But this is part of our national destiny to be World Cop, another word for Empire. And by the way, Afghanistan and Pakistan are supposedly the places that harbored the people who committed 9/11 and killed thousands of our people and still are trying to sting us here and there. So, that’s why we should shore up Afghans’ and Pakistanis’ safety, and our security, which is at stake, too? Is that another agenda, as well?

Also, because AfPak is “the epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by Al Qaeda,” we can expect more to come if we don’t “act now” and accept this offer we can’t refuse. Our soldiers are not there, the Afghans and Pakistanis should know, as occupiers but as helpers, and to help ourselves to the dope, the oil, the pipelines and the money, not to mention keeping a path through Pakistan to China for the black gold to flow. If this ain’t geopolitical, it’s a waste of time. Of course, “the burden is not just ours.” Our allies will help. England is sending an additional 500 troops. Piece of cake.

Then, too, we’ll have the UN, our partners, to work on a “more effective civilian strategy” so that the Afghan government can “take advantage of improved security.” It’s sort of like paying for protection, paying with your country, your freedom, your life. And the Afghans will be “rated for performance” like New York City school teachers. I mean, no more blank checks, except to the Pentagon, Blackwater, and Israel. But no more single bids. There will be transparency. We’re “building a partnership” on a “foundation of mutual interests, mutual respect, and mutual trust.” And mutual baloney.

Back home, we will be building a tower of debt, trying to forget about health care reform and bringing back derivatives with a bang, to give us a “double-dip” recession. That’s our manifest destiny, folks.

And as the camera scanned over the West Point cadets, I did not see the usual ear-to-ear grins, the fists clenched to get at them, the jaws clenching with commitment. I saw serious faces, guys and gals seeing their lives fly out the window like birds from a coop. It was like they were watching a bad movie, called Vietnam Redux, in which ratcheting up troop levels was always the answer to why we were failing. And the more troops we sent, the more came home in body bags, or out of their minds on drugs, or shot to pieces and barely walking. Sound familiar?

But now we have Obama’s “three core elements of our strategy: a military effort to create conditions for a transition; a ‘civilian surge’ that reinforces positive action; and an effective partnership with Pakistan.” Just like that 1, 2, and 3! Got it, kids?

Yes, the president said, “Unlike Vietnam we are joined by a broad coalition of 43 nations that recognizes the legitimacy of our actions.” I’d love to see the list, their troop and financial commitments, thank you. He also said, “Unlike Vietnam, we are not facing a broad-based popular insurgency.” Then, why will we have a hundred thousand troops there? Well, I guess “to keep the pressure on al Qaeda (CIA brand name copyrighted),” which might “create an unacceptable risk of additional attacks on our homeland and our allies.” Oh gosh, no.

Gee, I’ll bet George W. Bush is sitting back home in Texas, slapping his knee, saying, “Sock it to ’em, Obie. That’s the way I like it, uh huh, talk that terrist stuff. It always gets them. Nothin’ like a little, no, a lot of terrist fear.”

And then there was President Obama referencing President Eisenhower who said, “Each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs.” Well, Ike must be rolling over in his grave, seeing the national debt in the trillions, health care hemorrhaging money thanks to the insurance trust, the economy on the edge, millions of jobs lost to offshore outsourcing, a recent gift of one billion dollars made to India for outsourcing development projects. Can you friggin’ believe that, Ike?

This was the President Eisenhower who warned of the military-industrial-complex, of the danger of keeping standing armies, and how they all get in bed with each other to screw the rest of us. Yes, Eisenhower, the West-Pointer from Kansas, whose last home was at Gettysburg, probably to remind him of the horrors of war, which he witnessed in mega-doses. What an obscenity to even mention that man’s name in this buggered speech, which sounded like Rahm Emanuel wrote it.

Especially this line: “ . . . America will have to show our strength in the way that we end wars and prevent conflict [with a global swath of military bases]. We will have to be nimble and precise in our use of military power [not sloppy with that pinpoint bombing’s collateral damage of civilians, men, women and children]. Where al Qaeda and its allies attempt to establish a foothold -- whether in Somalia or Yemen or elsewhere [as surrogates of the CIA] -- they must be confronted with growing pressure and strong partnerships.” He just couldn’t resist the phony rhetoric.

He went on: “We will have to take away the tools of mass destruction . . .” Gee, where have I heard that one before? Could it be, Iraq? And there were no WMD there, nada. And we attacked it anyway. Hey, what the hell, we got all these soldiers, planes, guns, bombs, generals. We have to do something with them. So let’s shock and awe them. But remember, “true security will never come from an endless race for ever more destructive weapons -- true security will come from those who reject them.” Those who reject them are dead, like the citizens of Gaza, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Beirut, Mylai, Gulf I, and so on.

Yes, but “Our union was founded in resistance to oppression . . .” and 246 years of slavery. How is that forgotten? “We do not seek to occupy other nations.” Then why the ring-around-the-world-military-bases? Only to protect oil fields, pipelines, private plantations, and multi-national corporations whose needs and laws supersede those of our own nation? And maybe we’re not as innocent now “as when Roosevelt was president. Yet we are still heirs to a noble struggle for freedom.” That’s why we had all those killer armies left behind in Europe post WW II, Operation Gladio, to make sure freedom reigned, and any progressive movement to help the people not the elites was doomed to destruction. C’mon, man, you’re yanking my chain, talking to me like a 3-year old.

And by the way, is this story by noted Washington investigative reporter Wayne Madsen true: New Details on Obama’s CIA front employer. It reads, “WMR has obtained additional details on Business International Corporation (BIC), the CIA front company where President Obama spent a year working after graduating from Columbia University in 1983.

“BIC used journalists as non-official cover (NOC) agents around the world. The firm published weekly and fortnightly newsletters for business executives, including Business International, Business Europe, Business Latin America, and Business Asia.

“On February 24, 2009, WMR reported: ‘For one year, Obama worked as a researcher in BIC’s financial services division where he wrote for two BIC publications, Financing Foreign Operations and Business International Money Report, a weekly newsletter.

“An informed source has told WMR that Obama’s tuition debt at Columbia was paid off by BIC. In addition, WMR has learned that when Obama lived in Indonesia with his mother and his adoptive father Lolo Soetoro, the 20-year-old Obama, who was known as ‘Barry Soetoro,’ traveled to Pakistan in 1981 and was hosted by the family of Muhammadmian Soomro, a Pakistani Sindhi who became acting president of Pakistan after the resignation of General Pervez Musharraf on August 18, 2008.

“WMR was told that the Obama/Soetoro trip to Pakistan, ostensibly to go ‘partridge hunting’ with the Soomros, related to unknown CIA business. The covert CIA program to assist the Afghan mujaheddin was already well underway at the time and Pakistan was the major base of operations for the CIA’s support . . . BIC had long been associated with CIA activities since being founded by Eldridge Haynes, a self-professed liberal Democrat. The BIC headquarters was located at the prestigious address of 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in Manhattan . . .

“Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, and his father, Barack Obama, Sr., met at the University of Hawaii in 1960 in a Russian-language class. At the time, the CIA and Britain’s MI-6 were concerned about Soviet penetration of Kenya’s independence movement. Kenya became independent of Britain in 1963.

“After marrying Indonesian national Lolo Soetoro, Dunham moved with Barack Obama, Jr., to Indonesia in 1966, just as the Suharto dictatorship was consolidating its hold on power, which included the massacre of some 1 million Indonesian Communists. Dunham left Indonesia in 1972, returning to Hawaii with her son. Dunham periodically made trips back to Indonesia, as well as to Pakistan, while working for the Ford Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the latter commonly used by the CIA for official cover agents.”

Hey, Barry! Is that where your affinity for double identities comes from? Of saying one thing and being another. I mean running statements like these on us: “It is easy to forget that when this war began, we were united [we were?]- bound together by the fresh memory of a horrific attack, and by the determination to defend our homeland and the values we hold dear. I refuse to accept the notion that we cannot summon that unity again.” We’ll summon it when you and Bush and Rahm and Cheney stop pushing the administration’s conspiracy theory on us that four airliners piloted by four novice pilots caused the WTC to fall in a pyroplastic tsunami and rise in an awful gray atomic cloud over New York City.

Or asking us to believe that Flight 93 fell down a rabbit hole in a Pennsylvania field when numerous eyewitnesses saw it hit by missiles shot from two F-16s, the same kind that couldn’t get to New York on time, or to the Pentagon, where no remains of a crashed 757 remained, simply a hole in the wall, most likely put there by a missile firing drone, so much like the ones that have been used in Pakistan to get at so-called terrorists but keep hitting innocent civilians.

In conclusion, dear heart, you got one thing right: “We are passing through a time of great trial.” And our republic won’t be brought down by double-talkers or their henchmen. Our freedom won’t be stolen if we have differing opinions. Our nation won’t die of greed, of Wall Streeters and their trillions in stolen bailouts, and by a run-away military. No sir, we, the people will go on, as you say. We will endure, but not you and the Trojan Horse you came in on. And god bless our misguided troops [they’re going to need it], god bless the United States of America [we’re going to need it]. And “all power to the people” as Huey Newton and the Black Panthers once shouted to the crowd surrounding them.