Wretchard –

You wrote: “Actually, I’m less worried about Barack Obama than the forces which gave rise to him.”

Which is spot on, but you and I differ in the degree to which the elites are overtly allied against the people, and the nations they represent. Secretary of Energy Chu believes the American people are unruly teenagers and that the Government must tell them what to do. What the elites want is an end to nation states, and global rule by a global aristocracy. Thus elites like Tom Friedman or Van Jones or Barack Obama feel more solidarity and kinship to say, Pakistan’s Zardari or Ahmadinejad or Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro or Vladimir Putin, than they do their own people.

Obama, and the people around him, are not stupid. They WANT TO LOSE IN AFGHANISTAN. Glen Greenwald for example said “But none of us should forget that it was a political strategy, not a serious foreign policy.” Hope and Change is incompatible with anything BUT surrender in Afghanistan, to Bin Laden and the Taliban.

Obama’s dream, which is shared broadly by the elites, is that America will be hit hard, by a mass casualty terror attack, so that people around the globe will “feel sorry for us” (the feminized, Munchausen syndrome) and the nation can have a dictatorship of PC/Multiculturalism imposed on it. Outlawing criticism of Islam, non-Muslim worship, etc. To have the entire United States having a fashionable, Jimmy Choo pair of high heels stepping on the human face, forever. Inflicting a defeat in Afghanistan and victory by bin Laden is critical to having America nuked with no nukes to retaliate.

Obama is getting rid of nukes so America has no choice but to surrender.

Of course, the elites are incapable of understanding most Americans. Quite likely Obama would be impeached and convicted, elites would see their institutions destroyed and themselves in jail, and a rapid re-armament program created to basically, wipe out most Muslims. Out of fear — the great driver for total war.

You are quite right Washington is broken — the Elites simply have too much power and money to be forced into any backing down from their overt plans to turn America into Finland. America will be forced to suffer millions of war dead, and in turn wipe out most of the Muslim world. There just is no other way, with elites having so much power and in basic sympathy with America’s enemies.