Before we get started, I’ll state my position: I’m of two minds on the Afghan War.  On the one hand, I don’t want to abandon the Aghan people and potentially recreate a safe haven for Al-Quaeda.  On the other hand, I’m not sure throwing more troops at the problem is going to help.  I’m also aware that we are—once again—doing the rest of the world’s work for them.  Nations that won’t lift a finger to help us will condemn us if Afghanistan falls into chaos.  I’m not sure there is a good option but I’m cautiously optimistic that an Iraq-esque surge—not just more troops but a change in strategy—could stabilize the situation enough for us to leave.  I’m also realistic enough to accept that making a deal with the less-repugnant factions of the Taliban may be necessary.

Moore’s position is more stark: he wants out, plain and simple.  While it provides him with a certain clarity, it also causes him to steamroll over inconvenient realities while huffing deep from a 55-gallon sized bag of stupid.

Do you really want to be the new “war president”? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple.

True enough.  That’s why it’s taken a long time to decide this.  By the end of his first year, Obama will own the wars, the economy, Gitmo, everything.  The “blame Bush” days will be—well, not over, since they’ll never be over—but lack an audience.  Obama knows the public will hold him responsible for what happens, which means he has to weigh his options, not instantly comply with liberal demands.

And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do—destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they’ve always heard is true—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.

First of all, there are far “worse possible things” that Obama could do.  Running up massive debts comes to mind.  Smacking young idealists with the harsh reality how politics actually works—with compromise and debate—would not even make my list of the top 100 worst things Obama could do.  I’d actually placed it on a list of good things, slightly behind “64. Try not to bow to foreign royalty.”

Second, what was your first hint that Obama was just another politician, Michael?  When Obama rigged the auto bailout, the stimulus and healthcare to favor your special interests, those were matters of principle.  But the second he does something you don’t like, suddenly he’s “another politician”.  What special interests would he be catering to in continuing the war?  The “industrial military complex” that opposed him in 2008?  The Republicans who regard him as slightly to the left of Lenin? Rush Limbaugh?

Third, did you fucking pay attention during the election?  Obama ran on this policy.  He promised to put more troops into Afghanistan.  This is not breaking a campaign promise—it’s fulfilling one.

It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That’s the way General Washington insisted it must be. That’s what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. “You’re fired!,” said Truman, and that was that.

We are a civilian-run government.  But it’s the job of the generals to figure out how to carry out the mission.  I don’t like McChrystal taking the squabble public, but his job is to tell Obama what is needed to do the mission.  It is Obama’s job to decide whether to accept or ignore that advice.

Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in’ hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).

Yes, we hate those damned generals.  We hated George Washington, U.S. Grant and Dwight Eisenhower so much that we elected them President.  We hated Robert E. Lee, George Patton, Douglas MacArthur, George Marshall and Norman Schwarzkopf so much they were revered around the nation.  And Colin Powell remains one of the most respected men in America who supported Obama in the election (that being the “seeking redemption” Mike references).

As an aside, any reading of the history of the Iraq War—I just read the outstanding The Dark Side—will tell you that Powell was fed bad information by the Bush Administration and his State Department thought we were going into Iraq woefully underprepared.  Of all the possible nefarious figures in the Iraq War, Powell would place very low—and well below the “no blood for oil” shriekers like Moore who derailed the pre-war conversation with conspiracy theories about why we were going.

But I digress.

So now you feel backed into a corner. 30 years ago this past Thursday (Thanksgiving) the Soviet generals had a cool idea—“Let’s invade Afghanistan!” Well, that turned out to be the final nail in the USSR coffin.

What a minute.  Is Mike suddenly saying the Reagan was right to support the Mujahideen?  Is he acknowledging the aggression of the Evil Empire?  Am I dreaming?  If so, why am I dreaming about fisking Michael Moore instead of my dreaming about naked ... uh ... art?

Mike goes into a long ramble about the history of Aghan invasions that demonstrates, clearly and definitively, that he knows how to work Wikipedia.  While these comparison are important, they are all example of nations attempting to conquer Afghanistan and turn it into part of their Empire.  What we are doing is a little different.  It’s hard to call it Empire expansion when our intention is to set up a permanent independent government and then get the hell out.

With our economic collapse still in full swing and our precious young men and women being sacrificed on the altar of arrogance and greed, the breakdown of this great civilization we call America will head, full throttle, into oblivion if you become the “war president.”

Wait.  Isn’t the economic crisis solved?

Empires never think the end is near, until the end is here. Empires think that more evil will force the heathens to toe the line—and yet it never works. The heathens usually tear them to shreds.

Patently ridiculous and ignorant.  I doubt that the Native Americans would think they tore us to shreds.  Nor would the vast swathes of people conquered by the British Empire, the French Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Persian Empire ...

I have long thought that the most apt historical comparison to our own civilization is the Roman Empire (if nothing else, to steal a line from Eddie Izzard, I’m looking forward to the orgies and vomitariums). Any reading of Gibbon will reveal that expanding their Empire was never their problem.  Failing to defend it was.  Allowing the barbarians to storm the gates was.  Draw your own conclusions.

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.

Really?  They don’t want us there?  It’s hard to tell.  The opinion of the Aghan people is notoriously difficult to gauge.  As recently as February, they wanted us there.  The turning tide of opinion is not over whether Americans should be there, but whether we can accomplish the mission or not.

Maybe we can’t finish off the Taliban and create a stable government.  But the debate is a lot more subtle and complex than “they don’t want us there”.  And Obama has a whole State Department designed to figure this out so that he doesn’t have to “feel it in his bones”.  He can make judgements based on fact.

I know you know that there are LESS than a hundred al-Qaeda left 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.

Well, we aren’t fighting AQ anymore, Mike. We’re fighting the Taliban.  Try to keep up.

Also, part of the reason there are so few fighters is because of our invasion.  When this started, there were thousands.  Most of them are dead or captured and the rest are in Pakistan.  Our concern now is preventing the Taliban from retaking the country, imposing radical Islam and allowing Al-Queda a safe haven in which to rebuild.  Now maybe that’s not doable.  But this has become a far more complex situation than “Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?”

Choose carefully, Mr. President. 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.

Corporate backers?  I thought Obama was elected by a groundswell from “the peepul”.  I do share Moore’s fear of what might happen if someone else gets into power.  Why they might even engage in a $6.5 trillion boondoggle involving huge bribes to drug companies, doctors and insurance companies.

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?

Caving in?  On what?  Michael defines any difference between his wishes and Obama’s decisions as “caving in”.  This happens because Moore thinks his own opinions are Absolute Truth and any deviation from them is due to selfishness, cowardice or evil.  It never occurs to him that Obama might have an opinion of his own or that governing a fairly conservative country involves some compromise.  If Obama were truly going to “cave in” to the “haters”, he would have just accepted McChrystal’s recommendations months ago.

You would still be the victim of their incessant venom on hate radio and television because no matter what you do, you can’t change the one thing about yourself that sends them over the edge.

I’m guessing the “one thing” is his skin color.

What would Martin Luther King, Jr. do? What would your grandmother do?  Not spend billions and trillions to wage war while American children are sleeping on the streets and standing in bread lines.

Oh, Jesus Christ.  Has there been an actual explosion of homelessness and bread lines?  Are there zillions of invisible Hoovervilles all over the nation?  If so, then the situation has only gotten worse in the last ten months.  Who bears the blame for that, Michael?  The “haters”, the “crazies”, the “idiots”?  Or maybe the fools in charge?  At least a little bit?

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. Stop, stop, stop! For the sake of the lives of young Americans and Afghan civilians, stop. For the sake of your presidency, hope, and the future of our nation, stop. For God’s sake, stop.

If he does, Michael, will you be willing to take credit for any chaos that follows?  Or will you own up if the Taliban returns to power?  If terror attacks start being launched from a failed state, will you accept this as the price of withdrawal?

There are always tradeoffs.  You want to make this simple—that all we have to do is “stop the killing” and everything will be butterflies and rainbows as it was in your hilariously rosy vision of pre-war Iraq.  But it’s not like that.  We don’t have any good options.  Even if we admit it was a mistake to invade Afghanistan—and I don’t—that decision can not be undone.  Leaving now is not the same as un-invading the country.  We have to deal with the situation we have now, not the one we had in 2001 and certainly not the one that exists only in your imagination.

Are you willing to accept the price—short- and long-term—of bringing they boys home?  Are you willing to oppose efforts to intervene in other horror spots like Darfur?  I’m something an isolationist myself but I accept that this means looking away from suffering that we could prevent.  Do you?