Our concern should be focused not only on corporate interests behind the push for escalation in Afghanistan; we should be concerned about the “shadow army.”

Seems like your comfort with this is a matter of degree. If you’re looking for some sense of an exit from a war well into its ninth year, maybe an indistinct target for that end will satisfy you. If you’re looking for a specific timetable, the speech probably won’t.

President Obama held a final war council meeting before the holidays last night, and it looked from the timing that it could be decisive. After the meeting, Robert Gibbs released a statement saying “After completing a rigorous final meeting, President Obama has the information he wants and needs to make his decision and he will announce that decision within days.”

That decision? Most accounts see an increase of 34,000 troops in the near term.

“If we have to pay for the healthcare bill, we should pay for the war as well,” Obey told ABC News in an interview, “by having a war surtax.”

For the last three months, we’ve all had the pleasure of reading posts on the Afghanistan war by Derrick Crowe.

Derrick has been writing regularly on the war, bringing to bear facts, video testimony, statistics, political insight, and thoughtful arguments to drive home the point that escalating the war in Afghanistan is the wrong policy. Derrick has been writing and researching so prolifically because he’s been on a three month fellowship, using funds provided out-of-pocket by the good folks over at Brave New Foundation and the editors here at The Seminal.

Yesterday, Derrick’s three month fellowship came to an end. Now we asking for your help to keep it going.