Free The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope by Amy Goodman, Denis Moynihan Page A

a lot of people.” Choi, also a proud Korean-American, continued, “Nobody ever polls the soldiers on whether we should go to war or not. Nobody ever says, ‘What do you think about your commander in chief being African-American?’”
It’s difficult to think of Dan Choi as lucky, since the West Point graduate wanted to make the military his career, but being honorably discharged, he gets to keep his benefits. He says that’s not true of many of his peers. “A lot of people have given up quite a hefty sum of benefits, including your medical benefits, your right to go to a VA hospital without paying, if your disability rating is like mine—I’m something like 50 percent disabled from my time in service—I stood to lose all of that as well as scholarship moneys, GI bill and a home loan through the VA programs.”
At the Netroots Nation conference, Democratic leaders tried to convince their progressive base that the Democratic Party truly did represent change. When Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took the stage, the moderator handed him Lt. Choi’s West Point ring and said Choi wanted him to keep it. Choi then joined Reid on the stage. Holding the ring, Reid asked Choi, speaking of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, “When we get it passed, you’ll take it back, right?” Choi responded, “I sure will, but I’m going to hold you accountable.”

Obama’s Wars: A Tragedy in Three Acts

Act III
The War on the Public Treasury

June 30, 2010

We Can’t Afford War
“General Petraeus is a military man constantly at war with the facts,” began the MoveOn.org attack ad against Gen. David Petraeus back in 2007, after he had delivered a report to Congress on the status of the war in Iraq. George W. Bush was president, and MoveOn was accusing Petraeus of “cooking the books for the White House.” The campaign asked “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?” on a full-page ad in the Washington Post . MoveOn took tremendous heat for the campaign, but stood its ground.
Three years later, Barack Obama is president, Petraeus has become his man in Afghanistan, and MoveOn pulls the critical Web content. Why? Because Bush’s first war, Afghanistan, has become Obama’s war, a quagmire. The U.S. will eventually negotiate its withdrawal from Afghanistan. The only difference between now and then will be the number of dead, on all sides, and the amount of (borrowed) money that will be spent.
Petraeus’ confirmation to become the military commander in Afghanistan was never in question. He replaces Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who resigned shortly after his macho criticisms of his civilian leadership became public in a recent Rolling Stone magazine article.
The statistics for Afghanistan, Obama’s Vietnam, are surging. June, with at least 100 U.S. deaths, is the highest number reported since the invasion in 2001. 2010 is on pace to be the year with the highest U.S. fatalities. Similar fates have befallen soldiers from the other, so-called coalition countries. Petraeus is becoming commander not only of the U.S. military in Afghanistan, but of all forces, as the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is run by NATO.
U.S. troops, expected to rise to 98,000 this year, far outnumber those from other nations. Public and political support in many of those countries is waning.
Journalist Michael Hastings, who wrote the Rolling Stone piece, was in Paris with McChrystal to profile him. What didn’t get as much attention was Hastings’ description of why McChrystal was there:
“He’s in France to sell his new war strategy to our NATO allies—to keep up the fiction, in essence, that we actually have allies. Since McChrystal took over a year ago, the Afghan war has become the exclusive property of the United States. Opposition to the war has already toppled the Dutch government, forced the resignation of Germany’s president and sparked both Canada and the Netherlands to announce the withdrawal of their 4,500 troops. McChrystal is