As for Obama, while deliberating whether to escalate the war in Afghanistan, he allowed himself to be blindsided by the self-serving leak of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's recommendation for more troops, a policy also pushed by Gen. David Petraeus and one that Obama ultimately bowed to.
President Eisenhower's warning about the military-industrial complex and the need for commanders-in-chief who actually understood and knew how to resist the Pentagon's clarion calls have never been more germane.
In addition to inheriting two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Obama inherited the so-called war on terror, particularly the psychology of that war, which promised a never-ending struggle against faceless Muslim insurgents and Islamic fundamentalists around the world.
This psychology has led to a decade of wireless wiretapping, the abrogation of habeas corpus, torture and abuse, and an atmosphere of fear and anxiety, which have combined to make us less secure.
With a justice system that defers to the national security state, a compliant Congress all but dysfunctional, and a corporate media abandoning its watchdog role, there has been little consistent criticism of the illegal excesses of the national security state.
In the wake of 9/11, Bush brandished a belief in the necessity of American hegemony and turned increasingly to the Pentagon to enforce this global "full-spectrum dominance."
By the time of Obama's election in 2008, the United States was alienated from much of the world and the new President faced a difficult choice: either chart a dramatically new (and surely harrowing) course or accept a subservient place within the entrenched military-industrial complex.
Originally posted at:http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/070610c.html
Melvin A. Goodman, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University, spent 42 years with the CIA, the National War College, and the U.S. Army. His latest book is Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.
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