Now that the decision has been publicly announced, we are left to ponder the ramifications for Afghanistan, the United States, and our tarnished, deeply confused, hero in the Oval Office, who will travel to Oslo, Norway in a few days to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.  If he maintains his current trajectory, he will end up giving peaceniks a bad name.

Such irony.

The president’s decision will inevitably produce a rise in the number of Afghans being killed as a result of the war in their star-crossed nation. Furthermore, events associated with the troop increase will motivate more young men and women in the region to join the fight against the foreign invaders. For reasons that should not be that difficult to comprehend, the troop increase will also have the counterproductive impact of undermining morale among Afghan police and military units, who will have to bear the stigma of helping foreigners kill their relatives. The net result is that the people of Afghanistan are headed for much harder times.

They deserve better.

The president’s decision provides a different, but no less momentous, set of problems for U.S. citizens.  More of us will experience dismemberment and violent death, more families will be destroyed, more money that we really don’t have will be spent, we will be less safe, and our tattered stature in the world will continue its precipitous decline.

As far as the president is concerned, it pains me to say it, but the raw, unavoidable truth is that last night Barack Obama threw his presidency under the proverbial bus. Several factors are responsible: hubris, insufficient understanding of history and culture, personal insecurities, insufficient common sense, and imperial fantasies of the sort that have run erstwhile great powers to ground on more occasions than need to be specifically addressed here.

However this unnecessary, violent travesty works out over the tortured years immediately ahead, from this point forward President Barack Obama will be a wounded duck; a gifted, talented man, who was swept into office before he was ready for the job by the buoyant, joyous dreams of a generation hungering for change. All is not lost. But we need acknowledge that last night our hero came up tragically short. My heart is heavy today.

We deserve better.

Revolutionaries the world over compulsively study, and in minute detail, every significant movement dedicated to rapid change that has taken place over the past couple centuries. Particular attention is devoted to the struggles waged in Russia, India, China, Cuba, South Africa and Algeria. They also consistently examine smaller, less familiar struggles waged by organizations such as the Irish Republican Army, Shining Path, the Sandanistas, Tupamaros and Mau Mau.

This list is neither balanced, nor complete. But it doesn’t need to be. The key point to be understood is that the groups the U.S. and its allies are currently confronting in Afghanistan are prepared to do serious battle. As a matter of fact, it is probably true that many of the participants have been waiting and hoping for a battle such as this for a long time. Moreover, on the basis of lessons learned, I assume they are pretty much convinced that time and strategic circumstances are on their side.

Here are some of the reasons this is the case. Until now, two kinds of settings have been identified as essential for military parity, and possible success, when fighting armies of the sort currently deployed in Afghanistan by the United States and its allies. The first is a battle arena providing wide, dense remote swaths of triple deck jungle cover of the sort that exists in Viet Nam. The second is large cities with dense populations. Baghdad’s Sadr City comes to mind.

When used properly, triple deck jungle nullifies the strategic advantage of superior air power. The U.S. Government’s use of napalm, and other herbicides, during the Viet Nam conflict was not sufficient to the task of eliminating the advantages provided by such cover. Napalm notwithstanding, the “Ho Chi Minh Trail” remained intact, and functional, at least to the extent that those who depended on it were never left without viable opportunities to effectively conduct punishing military assaults unseen from the air.

The strategic military advantages that large cities with dense populations provide for irregular armies are relatively obvious. In order to defeat such armies, opponents must dismount their armored vehicles go forth into crowded neighborhood along paths and winding lanes too narrow for motorized vehicles larger than motorcycles.  This is necessary because attacking urban targets with carpet bombing is no longer acceptable, and any nation which might be foolish enough to pursue such a massively destructive approach to war will be universally condemned.  This was not the case where Hiroshima and Nagasaki were concerned.

But we are no longer living in the kind of lawless world that existed during World War II.  Wars must be fought in accordance with legally prescribed norms, and those who significantly violate them are subject to prosecution.  Thus, those who engage in war against irregular opponents of the sort in Afghanistan are forced to resort to chasing them through neighborhoods on foot.  This is a difficult task in and of itself.  But it is complicated in setting such as Afghanistan because the people  support local forces in ways that provide them incalculable advantages. This is what Mao Zedong was referring to when he asserted that “we (his soldiers) are fish, and the people are the sea.”

The chances that Afghanistan’s common people are going to withdraw support from the “fish” among them, and support the U.S. and its allies, are slim to none. Moreover, Afghanistan’s terrain provides another strategic military advantage to the “fish.”  This is due to the fact that much of the fighting must take place in remote areas at extremely high altitudes. There are few roads in many of the areas where the most intense fighting is taking place, and those that exist are commonly mined with explosive devices.  This is due in part to the fact that the remotely detonated roadside bombs that have proven effective against the U.S. and its allies in Iraq are now being used with devastating effectiveness in Afghanistan.

Given the situation, the U.S. and its allies are being forced to rely—to a great, and probably crippling extent–on helicopters to transport troops and supplies to critically important battle stations. But helicopters are particularly unsuited to fly at high altitudes because of the thin air. Those who have been closely watching the evolving battle in Afghanistan during recent weeks are aware of the growing number of allied helicopter crashes. Official assurances that the helicopters are not being shot down by hostile forces are obviously meant to convey confidence and resolve.

That’s understandable. But the brutal truth of the matter is that however confident and determined the U.S, and its allies prove to be, Afghanistan’s high altitude battle sites will remain critically dangerous for helicopters. I am certain that the leaders of Russia’s military forces understand this. But there is little evidence that the people in Washington, D.C. who are mulling over the possibility of sending another 40,000 troops to Afghanistan possess such understanding. This is highly unfortunate. Before he makes an enormous error that will severely cripple his presidency through its conclusion, President Barack Obama needs to understand what those who he seeks to defeat already know: more troops equal more targets.

It is time for the U.S. and its allies to begin the process of radically reducing their military presence in Afghanistan. New strategies, tactics and objectives are in order. Without them, failure is pretty much certain.

The firestorm of political controversy engendered by President Obama’s release of four Bush administration torture memos is not likely to subside any time soon. Moreover, there is every good reason to assume that the intensity of debate about torture, and other abuses commonly perpetrated abroad in numerous instances by U.S. personnel during the Bush era, will increase with the Obama administration’s upcoming release of incriminating photograph of some of those abuses.

I am devoting particularly close attention to those who are doing their level best to deter criticism of the Bush administration’s extensive torture program. My monitoring of this group, and the rapidly evolving drama engendered by their illegal activities includes close observation of the increasingly bizarre behavior of Dick Chaney. The former Vice President probably ought to be spending his free time searching for a highly competent attorney, because his participation in sanctioning various modes of torture are almost certainly going to result in his needing one.

The torturers, and their supporters, are arguing as best they can that waterboarding, and other such barbaric attacks on helpless prisoners, somehow protected the U.S. from another 9-11-style attack. Interrogators closely associated with the so-called high value prisoners subjected to the extreme modes of abuse approved by White House principals reject these allegations out of hand. But the experience, and professional opinions, of such experts seem to be having little or no impact on Chaney and company, who are also conspicuously dismissing the commentary of the experienced FBI experts who contend that torture is counter-productive.

Many of the torture defenders, including former White House, CIA, NSC, and Pentagon higher-ups who oversaw the abusive interrogations, are desperately trying to undercut the growing public clamor for investigations and prosecutions. Their tense, but largely illogical, commentary on the matter is understandable. If the clamor is not squelched, many of them may well end up in prison doing hard time for engaging in crimes against humanity.

I am paying particularly close attention to the torture defenders because their tortured efforts to defend the indefensible provide important insights into the manner in which U.S. leaders have abandoned legality, ethics, and morality in their efforts to maintain and expand the American empire. All this is extremely important, and by the time final verdicts are rendered in courts of law, and the court of public opinion, we will have a good sense of the extent to which legality, ethics, and morality remain viable components of the U.S. system of government.

Like everyone else, I am closely watching every move President-elect Barack Obama makes in preparation for taking office next week. And even though I am generally impressed by the intelligent, organized manner in which he has put together his cabinet and team of advisers, some aspects of his performance are puzzling, if not disappointing.

Others have spoken about the problems associated with his selection of Rick Warren to participate in his inaugural ceremony far better than I ever could. Nonetheless, I consider it necessary and appropriate to add my name to the list of those who are disappointed by Obama’ s decision to honor the homophobic minister by providing him such a high profile role in his inauguration.

Obama deserves credit for the leadership he is displaying regarding the nation’s evolving financial crisis. In contrast to President Bush, who seems to have lost interest in the job months ago, Obama has emerged as a reassuring focal point for the effort to shore of the economy, and get as many people as possible back to work in meaningful jobs.

Unfortunately, his leadership in areas that touch on the structure, operations and geopolitical objectives of the U.S. Empire are far less reassuring. He is already temporizing regarding how long it will take for him to close down the Guantanamo Bay prison, where hundreds of men have been held for years without being properly processed in accordance with domestic and international laws. In addition, he has declined to comment on the so-called “secret prisons” being run by the Bush administration in Europe and other sections of the world.

Obama’s recent waffling regarding the possibility of hearings and prosecutions for Bush administration officials involved in torture and extraordinary renditions is an additional source of concern. His waffling regarding such matters suggests that he may possess less courage and determination than is required of a President unalterably committed to law and order.

I am also concerned that Obama is apparently going to substantially increase the number of U.S. troops fighting in the Afghanistan quagmire. I understand why he feels the need to project strength and determination. I also understand that the U.S., and its increasingly reluctant European allies, are currently losing in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, in order to reverse the course of the war, Obama apparently believes a George W. Bush-style “surge” will enable the U.S. to snatch some semblance of victory from the impending jaws of defeat.

But sending tens of thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan will not ensure victory. And there are many good reasons to believe this course of action will ensure failure on a larger scale than the one currently facing the U.S. in that severely ravaged, war torn nation.

Obama’s inability to see this is a bad sign. And it probably portends other kinds of geo-strategic myopia that may well end up undermining his presidency in much the same manner as was George W. Bush’s in the wake of his inability to find nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after his devastatingly destructive assault.

My gravest concern regarding Obama’s vision, courage, and capacity to provide distinguished leadership, is the evasive manner in which he is responding to the current war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. I strongly suspect that the record will eventually confirm that Israel’s leaders consulted with the Obama team before launching their deadly assault. I also strongly suspect they received the same sort of nod and a wink green light from Obama’s team that they have been accorded by the Bush administration during the past eight years.

Given this, I am not surprised that Israel announced a ceasefire approximately 48 hours before Obama is to be sworn into office. They have done what they claim they needed to do. Obama can claim he was not President at the time, and bears no responsibility for their actions. This shady, and generally dishonorable, line of defense is commonly referred to in Washington, D.C. as “plausible deniability.”

None of this serves the best interests of Israel or the United States. George W. Bush never understood this, and that is one of the many reasons why he is leaving office universally perceived as an abject failure, and quite probably a criminal guilty of crimes against humanity. Obama should take note.

Winning office via the use of great speeches and inspiring promises is the easy part of the game in which he is engaged. Governing in a legal, balanced and courageous manner in something else. I remain hopeful that the lion-like determination Obama displayed on the campaign trail was not transitory. But I worry, on the basis of his recent performance, that he may turn out to be too timid to exercise the strong, principled, leadership we need.