Obama, Afghanistan and the Politics of the Primrose Path

Yes, you just saw people slap five at the president catching a fail. While you can argue whether those sentiments were anti-American in nature—they were, in my opinion—you can't argue the fact that the elation stemmed from President Obama losing at something. Anything that can be perceived as knocking dude down a peg is a tremendous moral victory for those that hate his guts.

Scenes like this litter the American landscape as ranks close in a (horribly exaggerated and altogether fruitless) war for the American spirit. You're either with us or against us. Both sides are putting their heads in the sand they like best.

I find the closing of ranks on the left to be the most troubling. In an attempt to rally behind a president they support, there has been a decided effort to silence the voice of reasonable opposition and stifle the efforts of people asking reasonable questions like "What's the end game in Afghanistan?"

I saw Robert Greenwald's "Rethink Afghanistan" on Saturday and more fascinating than the question the documentary raised was the Q&A session after the screening. Greenwald and filmmaker Jeremy Scahill spent a good deal of time discussing the difficulty in making the film, namely replacing the financial support of a film that critiques and asks questions of the film's approach.

As far as documentaries go, "Rethink Afghanistan" was fairly tame. Not a whole lot of sensationalism; just a lot of reasonable "why" questions against the backdrop of the current situation in Afghanistan. To say Greenwald "went in" on Obama is a gross stretch. In fact, the Q&A was entirely more left-leaning in nature—and awesomely chuckle-inducing in scope.

But Greenwald's revelation about putting the film together wasn't funny. He was daring to ask questions of the President regarding a war that is costing billions and taking lives on both sides and he was told to go take a hike from people revered and despised for asking just those types of questions. Suddenly, a side that prides itself on logic and reason and discourse has reduced itself to zealotism, a zealotism that many of the same had derided the past eight years.

Have we reached a point where disagreement on a particular issue is grounds for treason?

—JONATHAN PITTS-WILEY