What will President Obama announce on Tuesday?

Germany's top soldier has just resigned over a coverup of the killing of Afghan civilians. (That country is number three in the war, after the US and Britain.) Resistance to the war is growing in Germany just as it is here.

So what will President Obama announce at West Point on Tuesday?

He ordered up 20,000 more troops for Afghanistan in March. The frightening rumor is that he will now send 34,000 more, eight years into the war.

As of this morning, the US military death toll is Afghanistan is 927. Other military coalition deaths now number 601.

Besides the costs in lives and injury, each troop costs $1 million a year. (That of course while Americans die every day for lack of health insurance.)

In the meantime, how many Americans know that the Al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan is now 100 or less? How many know that Al Qaeda is physically operating in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and Algeria--and worldwide via the internet? How many know the depth of the corruption of the Karzai government? How many know that Afghanistan's Pashtuns fiercely drove out Alexander the Great 23 centuries ago and in modern times the British and the Soviets?

President Kennedy stood up to the Pentagon on Russia in Cuba and on Vietnam. President Obama can do the same and get us out, even though it could cost him a second term. We can only hope he will be as strong as Kennedy was.

A church in reverse

I will never forget the joy and hope I felt during the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965 -- I was ordained in 1964.) The first tangible results of the council were felt just before Christmas 1964 when parts of the Mass went from Latin to the people's own languages around the world.

But for decades now there has been a huge effort toward restoration of the "good old days." Many would have us return to distancing ourselves from people of other religions or opposing religious liberty or taking a fundamentalist approach to the bible. Already one US bishop is celebrating Mass in his cathedral with his back to the people.

The US bishops are about to make final decisions this week on changing the words of the Mass. Unless protesting Bishop Donald Trautman of Erie, Pa., is successful in blocking the draft, some strange and antiquated language will soon land on us. Because the Vatican wants the Mass to be a strict translation from Latin (which Jesus surely did not speak), we will be celebrating Mass with archaic words and some really bad grammar. Here are some of the words: consubstantial, ineffable, incarnate, inviolate, oblation, ignominy. precursor, suffused and unvanquished. Even the simple "cup" of the Last Supper is to be called "this precious chalice."

Vatican II called on us to be a "church in the modern world," But the higher-ups who want transcendency above everythng else seem to be winning. It is a sad time.

Two congressional lunatics

Last Friday the right-wingnuts of the Republican party hit rock bottom. At a so-called "press conference" organized by House Republican leaders, queen of the lunatics Michele Marie Bachman of Minnesota presided over a pathetic teabag-style rally. Right behind her ladyship stood her equally crazy lady-in-waiting, Virginia Foxx of North Carolina. Their disgusting standard, held high in the crowd, had a photo of a pile of Holocaust victims' bodies with the words "National Socialist HealthCare: Dachau, Germany - 1945."

Sadly, even Minority Leader John Boehner took part in this idiotic outrage, as did Minority Whip Eric Cantor and lots of other Republican Reps.

On Fox "News" they said 20 to 45 thousand people showed up. Someone on J. Gordon Liddy's program said 1,000,000 The local police counted 4,000.

If anyone reading this does not know who Bachman and Foxx are, read on.

Bachman has said that Barack Obama "may have anti-American views."

Another Bachman doozy: “The big thing we are working on now is the global warming hoax. It’s all voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax,"

And there's this: "Any of you who have members of your family that are in the lifestyle – we have a member of our family that is. This is not funny. It’s a very sad life. It’s part of Satan, I think, to say this is gay. It’s anything but gay.”

Then there is Virginia Foxx.

Foxx has said that Democratic health reform would mean that seniors would be "put to death by their government."

She claims that "there are no Americans who don't have health care."

And this: Healthcare reform is a greater threat to the US than "any terrorist right now in any country."

Foxx said that Matthew Shepard's murder was a hoax. (In 1998, two young gay-haters tied Shepard to a fence in a remote area, tortured him, smashed his head with a pistol and left him hanging there to die.)

Actual members of the Congress of these United States.

Absolute rock bottom.

Afghanistan

It is 12:40 Sunday morning and I just saw the breaking news on the BBC's site that Abdullah Abdullah has dropped out of the second round of the Afghan election.

President Karzai refused Abdullah's demand to get rid of the election officials in charge of the first round. There is no doubt that hundreds of thousands of votes in that round were fakes.

So now it is certain that we will have more of Hamid Karzai. He has been president of Afghanistan for the last seven years, and he stands atop a mountain of corruption. It is clear that his brother is a high level drug dealer (who also happens to be a paid employee of the CIA.)

We have got to pressure President Obama and Congress to pull back from the edge of the volcano and avoid another Vietnam.

More and more people will bring that pressure if they listen to Matthew Hoh, the senior diplomat who has quit the State Department over Afghanistan.

Hoh wrote in his resignation letter: "I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan. I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."

Just look at the history. Afghanistan's Pashtuns have been living on that same land for millennia. 2,300 years ago, they almost killed Alexander the Great. The British Empire was driven out. The Soviet Empire was driven out.

The Taliban already control over 50% of Afghanistan (which has 35,000 villages.) Everyone knows about the Taliban's religious fanaticism. What many don't realize is that President Karzai is willing to accommodate that fanaticism. He signed a law that the UN said legalized rape within marriage and mandated a husband's permission for his wife to leave home even to see a doctor. (He reversed himself under international pressure.)

The country is a humungous drug factory. According to the UN, its opium market is worth $65 billion. It supplies 15 million addicts and kills 100,000 of them every year.

Early this year, CBS reported that Afghan families average about $350 a year. About one third of that goes to bribes -- to get ID papers, to get by checkpoints, to get electricity, etc.

We hear that we have to send tens of thousands more troops to root out al-Qaida from Afghanistan. But President Obama's national security adviser Gen. James Jones has said that less than 100 al-Qaida remain there.

Which brings us back to Matthew Hoh. He says that sending more US troops into this civil war is only going to fuel the insurgency that is raging against the US occupation of Afghanistan. If enough people listen to Hoh and speak out, the tide of another senseless war will be turned.