By Susan Jones, Senior Editor
Film-maker Michael Moore |
(CNSNews.com) – Even before he outlines his strategy on Afghanistan Tuesday night, President Barack Obama is taking flak from his fellow liberals on his reported decision to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
On Monday, in an open letter to President Obama, liberal film-maker Michael Moore asks Obama if he really wants to become the “new war president.” Moore tells Obama, “It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do.”
In fact, Moore writes that Obama should have fired Gen. Stanley McChrystal when the general went public with his call for up to 40,000 additional U.S. troops. “Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in’ hate these generals,” Moore said.
Gen. McChrystal’s request for additional troops came in a confidential assessment that was leaked to the Washington Post in September. McChrystal later spoke to the CBS program “60 Minutes” about the progress of war. He called for “a dramatic change in how we operate.”
In agreeing to the general’s request to send more troops to Afghanistan, President Obama will “destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you,” Moore writes. He says the “multitude of young people” who helped elect Obama president will become “disillusioned cynics” when they realize that “all politicians are alike.”
“I simply can’t believe you’re about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn’t so,” Moore wrote.
President Obama, in a prime-time speech to be delivered at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point Tuesday night, is expected to announce he is sending 30,000 to 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan, bringing the total number to around 100,000. He’s also expected to lay out a clear exit strategy for the troops, including a renewed focus on training Afghan forces to fight for their own country.
In fact, Obama campaigned on a promise to end the Iraq war and to shift resources – including more U.S. troops — to Afghanistan, which he described as the central front in the war on terror.
But Moore, in his letter, tells President Obama “it doesn’t have to be this way.”
“You still have a few hours to listen to your heart, and your own clear thinking. You know that nothing good can come from sending more troops halfway around the world to a place neither you nor they understand, to achieve an objective that neither you nor they understand, in a country that does not want us there. You can feel it in your bones.”
Moore says he knows — and Obama knows — that fewer than 100 al-Qaeda members remain in Afghanistan: “A hundred thousand troops trying to crush a hundred guys living in caves? Are you serious? Have you drunk Bush’s Kool-Aid? I refuse to believe it.”
Moore says Obama’s decision to expand the war for the sake of ending it will be his legacy — and return the nation to “the hands of the haters,” or Republicans.
“Your corporate backers are going to abandon you as soon as it is clear you are a one-term president and that the nation will be safely back in the hands of the usual idiots who do their bidding. That could be Wednesday morning,” Moore warned.
“We the people still love you. We the people still have a sliver of hope. But we the people can’t take it anymore. We can’t take your caving in, over and over, when we elected you by a big, wide margin of millions to get in there and get the job done. What part of ‘landslide victory’ don’t you understand?”
Moore asks Obama to consider what Martin Luther King, Jr. would do – and what his own grandmother would do: They would not “send more poor people to kill other poor people who pose no threat to them, that’s what they’d do. Not spend billions and trillions to wage war while American children are sleeping on the streets and standing in bread lines.”
‘Stop the madness’
“When we elected you we didn’t expect miracles,” Moore writes. “We didn’t even expect much change. But we expected some. We thought you would stop the madness. Stop the killing. Stop the insane idea that men with guns can reorganize a nation that doesn’t even function as a nation and never, ever has.”
Moore tells Obama to “stop, stop, stop” for the sake of Americans’ lives and for the sake of his own presidency.
“Tonight we still have hope. Tomorrow, we shall see. The ball is in your court. You DON’T have to do this. You can be a profile in courage. You can be your mother’s son. We’re counting on you.”
