Editorial: The Double Secret stimulus package

By Pablo Fanque

All This Is That National Affairs Editor

If President Obama learned anything from his study of history (and believe me, he did), he knows that for all the talk of the "First Hundred Days" and The New Deal, nothing FDR did fully turned the economy around until after that moment December 7, 1941, when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

From December 8th onward, boys flooded recruiting offices, a recalcitrant and isolationist Congress voted to spend massive $$$ on the war, and the U.S. cranked into full wartime production mode. Shuttered factories were re-opened, under-utilized plants went into 24/7 production mode, and virtually every single person in the country--save the feeble, lame, crazy, and elderly (and even some of them)--went to work, planted victory gardens, and bought into commodity, fuel, and tire rationing.

In the midst of a moribund war in Iraq, President Obama has ordered his first major deployment of U.S. combat troops. He has okayed 17,000 additional soldiers and Marines for Afghanistan in what he described as "an urgent bid to stabilize a deteriorating and neglected country. "

Is war the real, double secret Stimulus Package for which we have all been waiting? Already, the far left is screaming. I'm not quite sure why. Obama was clearly against the War in Iraq from the get-go. And yet, in general, he has behaved, more or less, like a Scoop Jackson or JFK "defense Democrat." And with the lure of kick-starting a sluggish economy, one has to wonder if 17,000 troops aren't just a drop in the bucket, and how long will it be before we see 100,000 troops in Afghanistan? Is Obama getting a fantastic twofer here: priming the pump AND keeping the world safe for democracy?

It's something to think about.

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