"it's time to take the obama t-shirts off"

yes, it's that time...time for my soapbox. perhaps some of you enjoy this, but i probably enjoy it more. i truly do think it's important to have discussions about these things so that we can pressure our leaders, who are supposed to represent us, to take action as we hope they would.

well, as i suspected, obama isn't all he sold himself to be. watch this bill moyer's interview with jeremy scahill. he wrote that infamous book blackwater. it's a fascinating episode. here's a couple exerpts from the conversation:

"Well, I think what we're seeing, under President Barack Obama, is sort of old wine in a new bottle. Obama is sending one message to the world, but the reality on the ground, particularly when it comes to private military contractors, is that the status quo remains from the Bush era. Right now there are 250 thousand contractors fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's about 50 percent of the total US fighting force. Which is very similar to what it was under Bush. In Iraq, President Obama has 130 thousand contractors. And we just saw a 23 percent increase in the number of armed contractors in Iraq. In Afghanistan there's been a 29 percent increase in armed contractors. So the radical privatization of war continues unabated under Barack Obama."
"Well, I mean, we have two parallel realities here. We have the speeches of President Obama. I'm not questioning his sincerity. And then you have the sort of official punditry that's allowed access to the corporate media. And they have one debate. On the ground though, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, you hear the stories of the people that are forced to live on the other side of the barrel of the gun that is U.S. foreign policy. And you get a very different sense. If the United States, as President Obama says, doesn't want a permanent presence in Afghanistan, why allocate a billion dollars to build this fortress like embassy, similar to the one in Baghdad, in Islamabad, Pakistan? Another one in Peshawar. Having an increase in mercenary forces. Expanding the US military presence there."
interesting? the status quo continues. boo. boo. triple boo.
indeed, it is time to take off the obama t-shirts and remove the bumper stickers. it's time to put pressure on our president to end our military and empirical presence in the middle east.
no war is a "good" war.