Wash, Rinse, Repeat

War! War! War! Yeah!

Digby excoriates Chuck Todd, mainstream media stooge boy, piping us what we should think about Afghanistan as he claims he's just an innocent reporter.

I mean, haven't we seen this before?

Senior military officials emphasized Monday that McChrystal's conclusion that the U.S. effort in Afghanistan "will likely result in failure" without an urgent infusion of troops has been endorsed by the uniformed leadership. That includes Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen and Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command and architect of the troop "surge" strategy widely seen as helping U.S. forces turn the corner in Iraq.

And the conventional knowledge, reports The Post, from an "observer":

Obama's decision is complicated by a deepening domestic political divide and no guarantee of success whichever option he chooses. One observer, characterizing the president's dilemma at its most extreme, said: "He can send more troops and it will be a disaster and he will destroy the Democratic Party. Or he can send no more troops and it will be a disaster and the Republicans will say he lost the war."

It's all a game to the political elite of this country. Glenn Greenwald, on our perpetual state of war, points out that America is blind to its barbarism.

It's hard to overstate how aberrational -- one might say "rogue" -- the U.S. is when it comes to war. No other country sits around debating, as a routine and permanent feature of its political discussions, whether this country or that one should be bombed next, or for how many more years conquered targets should be occupied.

Greenwald quotes James Madison:

"Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded. . . . No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

Afghanistan looks to be Iraq's uglier twin. This famously-nicknamed "Graveyard of Empires" is likely to be a colossal flesh would for the U.S. Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, the British, the Soviets, now the Americans. It'd be fuckin' poetic if it weren't so sad.