Pull Harder

It wasn't applied evenly, and Bahrain and Syria have not been interfered with by the international community, but Libya could help people in a region with so many grievances against us to dispelling the myths we are only interested in bullying and being conquerers. It can display that our foreign policy can be about helping people to achieve freedom and to have a say in their own futures and destinies. That ethos of our nation we have claimed can exist again in more than talk.

As long as we don't use it as an excuse to snatch oil from a vulnerable country we can dispel the idea that is all we are about and allow free Libyans to decide who they will deal with and how things will proceed regarding the oil on their land and all else concerning their future. As long as we don't do that. But President Obama promised he would never do that and that it would never happen on his watch let's hope this is the turning point for that also.

Let's hope the promise of President Obama so many voted for in 2008 will show something of what America wished for by voting him in and as yet has seen scant few returns on. Let's hope this will show the world we had faith in him for a reason. Perhaps he will show some of that potential by not allowing oil companies incorporated in foreign countries, utilizing loopholes to get out of US taxes and that want the American middle-class to die and foot the bill for providing security for their attempts at grabbing oil from other countries, to pimp us and our military. There is nothing stopping them from attaining it through their own business acumen.

Many of our military leaders initially whined and complained about the lack of American “interests” there (as if they were unaware of the oil) and that the ethos of freedom and liberty weren't reasons weren’t why the American military went to war. They said it took away from the goals in Afghanistan – which in the end it did not, obviously. As such it has proven our military has been stuck in the mindset of being attack dogs for large corporations also. For so long Americans have been sold on the idea these were “our” companies and so when they were in other places like the Middle East dealing in oil or say East Asia dealing in cheap labor, we felt they needed to be protected.

This is a free market system and them doing business wherever they like is as it should be. And their providing coverage for their own tail feathers is also as it should be. These aren't 'our' companies. They have been using us on our dime and haven't been hiring American workers, have been skipping out on US taxes and many have incorporated in other countries. They aren't our companies any more than the average American's shirt is partly owned by EXXON/ Mobil or Chevron.

Yet the old Cold Warriors got into this mindset where they were 'ours' and the job of the military was no longer to defend our shores but to go to this country and that and sit there acting as private security for these large companies. But as we were to learn in recent years, the corporations in question were skipping out on taxes en masse and sometimes paying none while getting back millions. Others were incorporating overseas and so weren't even technically American. What they did do was still contribute huge amounts to campaign coffers on both sides. Surely that will come out soon.

What it also showed was that the idea that a military goal could be reached without reliance upon the clumsy methods of sending in lumbering planes and steel elephants to wreak havoc on nations time after time was now a real option. It showed that by having a smart president in the White House that took some time to consider things, conflicts could be carried out on a multitude of levels. We didn't always need to be engaged to the same extent. The foreign policy regarding Iraq, the whole conflict being premised on a 'mistake' notwithstanding, was in many ways the old way – that of the previous administration. A 'shucks lets just send in some folk' approach as opposed to more carefully considered approach with minimal involvement proved that when some presidents said they were there for freedom, they meant it – so far (fingers crossed).

Thus it too put on display we don't need to hang around forcing other people to do what we want and seek freedom the way we think they should go about it any more than any nation did to us at the dawn of the United States of America. We can go in, achieve what we set out to and then leave them to find their own way forward. We can let them be in control and don't have to control people sitting on them as though they were children. As long as we don't start trying to muscle the emerging Libya on behalf of wealthy people - that view average Libyans the same way they view average American's - we will have people just waiting to do business sans puppets and prolonged 'make sure they understand' battles.

So like in Libya and the success there, we can just get out of the mess we inherited in Afghanistan. A war that should have been prosecuted in so smart a way and the goal of which has finally been met. Afghanistan was won under the leadership of President Obama, yet we plan to stay there for years. Hopefully he will develop the confidence in himself through this to see he doesn't have to prolong the bombing of old people and children there.

Hopefully he will have the confidence in his own ideas regarding America's foreign policy to pull harder for the men and women dying on the battlefields for three years after the war has been won. We just don't have the money or the credit to build them. We do have a crumbling nation back home with children losing the battle in education, streets losing the battle to be free of illegal guns and families losing the battle to be make payments that would keep a roof over their heads and keep them from having to sleep in minivans if they're lucky or under bridges under vinyl tarps if they aren't.

Hopefully President Obama will give us all a present the way he gave Libya one. Perhaps now he'll feel confident enough to bring our troops home taking a burden we cannot afford and are charging on credit with a downgraded rating, away from us. We deserve a break. Pull harder for us President Obama, be the man in the poster we hoped you would. Be the man the Nobel Peace Committee pulled for. Please, pull harder for Americans.

To read about my inspiration for this article go to www.lawsuitagainstuconn.com.