With the election of Barack Obama, opponents of U.S. intervention abroad were supposed to throw their hats in the air and cheer: The millennium had arrived!  The war in Iraq would end rather shortly, and the Bad Old Days of the Bush-Cheney-neocon Axis of Evil were coming to an end.

So why are we embarking on what promises to be a decades-long occupation of Afghanistan, and what, exactly, are we doing bombing civilians in Pakistan’s tribal areas?

The official rationale is that Al Qaeda has established base camps in the region and is “plotting attacks against the United States” from its “safe havens.”  Yet what sort of “haven” is required to plot an attack?  Do the terrorists really require the thousands of squares miles of Pakistan’s tribal region to plot and scheme?  The September 11 attacks were planned in apartments in Hamburg and on the Atlantic coast of Florida, where the hijackers lived for a time.  By this sort of presidential “logic,” we should be taking on the Germans and bombing the Sunshine State.

Obama’s justification for the war is that the Afghans, under the Taliban, hosted Osama bin Laden and his allies—eight years ago.  Yet Bin Laden is long gone, and he may not even be alive.  Moreover, the Taliban are out of power, and they aren’t a unitary group anyway.  Are we really going to occupy that country for the next decade or so, pouring billions into a war that defies both history and logic, in order to prevent the Taliban from reconstituting itself—and on the off chance that Bin Laden lingers still?

All of the arguments against the invasion and occupation of Iraq apply equally to Afghanistan—and to Pakistan.  Our presence creates yet more enemies and provides a training ground for jihadists who come from all over the Muslim world to fight the infidels.  Our actions are destabilizing the government of Pakistan, which has a precarious hold on power in any event, and alienating the people of Afghanistan, who simply want to be left alone.

If you thought the Bush years were bad, as far as U.S. meddling around the world was concerned, the Obama years promise to be even worse.  Our first African-American president shows every sign of getting us involved—militarily—in Africa, where the potential for do-gooding at gunpoint is virtually limitless.  Somalia is getting a huge shipload of weapons, and our allies in Uganda—not exactly a bastion of liberty—are praising this decision, along with the Ethiopians, long a U.S. favorite, while the Eritreans, the Sudanese, and other neighboring countries are murmuring nervously, and rising Islamic movements threaten retaliation.

On the Russian front—yes, there is a Russian front, sad to say—the news also is not good.  The Obamaites are determined to pursue the Bushian strategy of provocation and moralizing.  This includes the decision to base “antimissile” weapons systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, which are supposed to defend against the highly unlikely possibility of an Iranian attack on Warsaw and Prague, although the systems are pointed straight at Moscow.  Also on the Russian front, albeit in the Central Asian theater, we just bought ourselves a military base in Kyrgyzstan—or, rather, we re-bought it at the higher price demanded by the local gangster “government.”  We supposedly need it to transport supplies to our occupying army in Afghanistan—although as a buffer against Russian influence, it certainly serves a dual purpose.  (The Russians, by the way, have their own base in Kyrgyzstan, not too far from ours.  Those Kyrgyz are playing both sides of the street.)

Meanwhile, the Obamaites are feigning distress over Honduras and denouncing the coup that is being led by a graduate of our “School of the Americas,” which trained so many of the South American death squads of yesteryear.

Change?  Don’t make me laugh.