Obama is rejecting all Afghanistan military options presented to him by his national security team after months of consultation, and wants “revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government.”
Will someone tell our President this is not a term paper. You don’t get to move the paragraphs around, tweak the punctuation, and cut and paste until it reads just right.
Keep screwing around on this and there will be no Afghan government left to which we can turn over “responsibility.”
I hope these reports are wrong, but I suspect they are correct. Days have turned into weeks have turned into months since the military requested reinforcements. I gave Obama the benefit of the doubt on this issue, but it appears that the Dawdler-in-Chief is voting present again.
I should have known we were in for trouble when Obama outsourced Afghan policy to John Kerry.
Make a decision and be the Commander-in-Chief, damn it.
UPDATE: Jules Crittenden: Advance To The Rear!
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Related Posts:
Now They’re Just Starting to Ask Questions About Afghanistan?
Support Obama On Afghanistan
Kerry Against Afghan Surge But May Be For It
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Comments
Professor Jacobson,
The Obama Admin (and their syncophants at Newsweek) are reading books about VIETNAM to understand AFGHANISTAN.
And President Obama is smart? On my Blog and comments here, I mentioned all the Obama Admin had to do was read the Great game series by Peter Hopkirk. He actually writes about the History of……wait for it…….Afghanistan!
Wow!
These "best and the brightest" can't figure out the economy or to win the war they were bitchin' about for the past few years.
The Left did not want to fight in Iraq. They wanted Afgnanistan. To paraphrase Rep. Wilson: The Left lied. They didn't want any Republican President to fight Al-Queda, and now the LEFT does not want to fight Al-Queda and the taliban.
Feel safer yet?
well, uh, you did say he mourned nicely in Dover. That's gotta count for something? No?
Amen. He's got to make a decision, one way or the other, and stick with it. Sure, he needs to be concerned about the consequences of whatever action he chooses, but he also needs to recognize the consequences of inaction. As Rush once said (the band, not Mr. Limbaugh), "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."
In your post titled "100% Plus Taxation Key To Permanent Dem Majority" I made a long comment that included a description of George Soros vision for a New World Order. I had heard his comments in a live interview, but I just found what is essentially a transcript of the interview I heard here:
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/soros52
The real and present danger is not just to the American troops. This dithering and dawdling is dangerous for all countries who have troops in Afghanistan. Yet another Australian soldier has been injured in a roadside bomb blast.
Dawdler-in-Chief, that is a new one, but I was using Ditherer-in-chief for someone who is the epitome of the Peter Principle
He knows it's not a term paper-
If it was, Ayers would have written it by now.
Now I wish Rick Warren had asked him about Afghanistan. Maybe this is also above his pay grade.
Obama and his gang are so far out of their depth its terrifying. This is what happens when you hand your government over to leftover 60's radicals and malcontents. They don't know how to do anything productive, or make anything constructive work. They just know how to piss and moan and agitate.
Ideologically, these leftists are deer in the headlights right now. Just like in the Cold War, it isn't so much that they want the other guys to win as it is that they'd like to see us lose. But they don't want the stigma of having lost the war. So Obama is hemming and hawing, hoping the situation will fix itself before he has to make a decision that will invariably either offend his leftist values (sending more troops to fight a war he never really supported), or devastate him politically (letting Afghanistan go to hell in a hand basket after all of his election year talk about the absolute necessity for winning there).
He lacks the moral strength to lead.
Lets face it, the man can't make decisions.
All he can do is make campaign speeches.
Well, I don’t pretend that I have any inkling of whatever international military strategy might be warming on the stove among the White House commune, but I have been around a while and I do know (most of the time) when I’m being ‘had.’
Just a day or two ago we were all contemplating the AP ‘leak’ that the Commander-in-Chief was ready to send “close to 40,000” troops to Afghanistan. Remember that? Just a day or so ago. Red meat for the get-the-Taliban side. Whoops! Today’s ‘leak’ is that “all options are off the table” and we’re all going to sit on our hands for a while. Red meat for the defeat-us-now crowd.
Good work, Rahm! Chicago rules!
OBAMA VOTES PRESENT AGAIN
President Obama tells generals: "You have given me no solid information. I want to know exactly on what date we will succeed in the Afghan…oh all right, what week." [I made this up.]
Is Obama Abe Lincoln…or Abe Schtinken?
If anyone on the left talked about Bush the way you guys are talking about Obama, they would be called traitors, terrorists, communists, etc… But such are the double standards that the inhabitants of Fox Nation uses to judge.
Show a little respect for the President of the United States of America, who was duly elected in a near-landslide. If you can't show some basic respect, then maybe you should leave America and move to some authoritarian, right-wing state that suits your politics (like Singapore).
We actually have a President who does more than use a thick sharpie pen for comments (because Bush never really had much to say, but had to fill up the page with something), actually reads the policy briefings (unlike Bush, on August 6, 2001), thinks for himself and, most importantly, doesn't merely take whatever options some generals who might not understand politics that well give to him. Get used to it, and maybe, try to appreciate it, even if you don't agree with the policies.
And yes, Vietnam is a reasonable analogy for what is going on.
It's easy to criticize, but what are YOUR solutions?
Obama's not dithering on Afghanistan because he cannot come to a decision.No,his dithering is on purpose.Obama has already decided to pull out of Afghanistan,the only question's that remain are how and with whom to lay the blame for losing Afghanistan so that it doesn't land at his feet.Gen. McChrystal wouldn't play ball and be the scapegoat,the question now is will Karzai be a good scapegoat.
"If anyone on the left talked about Bush the way you guys are talking about Obama, they would be called traitors, terrorists, ….. etc"
Which, of course, are terms only properly used for addressing Tea Party attendees (but only when you aren't using the preferred obscene sex act reference to describe them).
"Show a little respect for the President of the United States of America…"
Yeah, 'cause the Left behaved so well in the Bush years.
"If you can't show some basic respect, then maybe you should leave America and move to some authoritarian, right-wing state that suits your politics (like Singapore)."
How about you guys just move to Cuba? Its only 90 miles away, has great weather, and they've already got socialized medicine.
You're right, this isn't a term paper. It's the decision-making process regarding the LONGEST WAR ever fought in American history. I would think you would want our President to make a well-reasoned decision after considering the potentially massive consequences of his decision. But no, chickenhawks like yourself simply DEMAND a decision right away, no matter what the consequences. Absolutely pathetic.
Although I can't say I'm surprised. Had Obama come to a decision immediately you would most assuredly be squawking about how his "rush to judgement" put American lives at risk.
Best comment from Balloon Juice:
"Yes, you do actually. This is a war of choice. Cheney diddled around there for 8 f-ing years. We have time to think about it. You write the strategy, you review it, and you make damned sure it “reads just right”. As in defines what the national security interests are and what the objectives are.
What the hell do these people have against having objectives when we are killing people and putting our own soldiers in harms way?"
@Barry – so what has Obama been doing for 10 months? And now he is relying on the former General (now Ambassador) who developed and praised the prior strategy.
Barry, did Buffoon Juice mention that
Obama announced he had approved a strategy for Afghanistan last March?
Exactly. I guess 'You write the strategy, you review it, and you make damned sure it “reads just right”' only applies to the second time around.
Ahhh… Professor!
This article definitely stuck a nerve among our progressive friends. Good shot!
In response, Armadillo even managed to raise the specter of The Evil One whom s/he airily disparages as an example why we should respect the current President. Actually, s/he asks what my (“YOUR”) solution might be so my answer is:
We should send sufficient military forces to annihilate the enemy with application of overwhelming force and violence. Kill them. Defeat them, And round up the survivors.
President Obama appointed a very qualified military expert to assess that very strategy and his recommendations have been available to the Chicago political strategists in the White House (and the general public) for weeks now. General McChrystal has the confidence of virtually every politician on both sides of the aisle. Everyone knows that the General knows what he’s talking about.
The real problem here is not the lack of a good strategy. The problem is that, despite the current President’s constant reminders to everyone that the war in Afghanistan is the right and necessary war to fight, the faint-hearts on the left want to give up. “We can’t win,” they will tell you. “No one can ever win in Afghanistan,” they will parrot. They pretend to be intellectually intelligent while they don’t really know anything about what might or might not be possible on the modern battlefield.
At the core of their conundrum, of course, is that Progressives don’t really want to fight and win any war, unless it’s against their archenemies, Fox News and anyone that opposes their enlightened worldview. They’d prefer to see the US lose as that is a convenient way to bolster their narrative of American as evil.
This is mindset nothing new. The liberals of Pennsylvania wanted badly to ignore the French and Indian bands massacring their fellow citizens just to the north of Philadelphia and refused to defend themselves out of principled objection to “war.” Only Benjamin Franklin’s intervention saved thousands of lives. The spineless Democratic Party wanted to cave to the Confederacy and let the southern states secede and preserve slavery – and almost succeeded electing George McClellan to do just that. Nevertheless, the same Democratic Party kept a brutal apartheid system n place in the southern states until Rosa Parks sat down one day in the wrong seat on a Birmingham bus. Liberals worldwide opposed saving the French in WWI. They were afraid to stand up Hitler before WWII. They sought victory for North Vietnam and chanted for our defeat in Vietnam – and they succeeded. Liberals quaked in their boots worrying about facing down the Soviets even as conservatives in their party held the line. They disparaged Reagan’s efforts to force an end to the Cold War and to this day maintain the illusion that the collapse of communism was some fluke of history. They, through Jimmy Carter, are responsible for the present government in Iran. And much more. All the while our liberal friends believe in their heart of hearts that they are morally and intellectually superior beings while conservatives and independents are racists and teabaggers. How totally dishonest!
President Obama IS dithering. But, giving credit where credit is due, he is not doing it out of altruism or a need to discover the correct strategy. He’s doing it for calculated political reasons. He needs to figure out exactly how to simultaneously satisfy the defeat-us-now progressives who run the Democratic Party in 2009 while hanging onto some fig leaf of honesty relative to all his apparently untrustworthy words on Afghanistan to the contrary.
Professor Jacobson:
to answer the question
So what has Obama been doing for 10 months, surely you are aware of the messes that Obama has had to deal with:
MESS #1 Republican deregulatory policies put this country in the worst economic shape since the Great Depression.
MESS #2 No or very limited healthcare for a substantial number of people in the greatest country on earth. NOTE TO COWBOY CURTIS- EVEN SINGAPORE HAS UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE!
MESS #3 Decline in American prestige from 8 years of BushCheney foreign policy arrogance
MESS #4 IRAQ (need I say more)
and then there is MESS #5- AFGANISTAN. To say that liberals don't want to fight wars is not true, the Afgan war had the support of most of the country. Unfortunately, we had a chance to get Al Queda, but blew it when we shifted manpower and materiel into Iraq.
Now, President Obama is left with advice all over the place, some generals say withdraw, some say increase. One thing is clear though, no (rational person) one is proposing what 2470144 is proposing, to "send sufficient military force to annihilate the enemy". What does that mean? Restart the draft? Create three more Blackwaters?? It's all macho talk and bluster and zero reality.
Thanks to the incompetence of the previous administration, President Obama is in a no-win situation.
Touché! Thank you, Armadillo for confirming you know not a thing about military strategy or tactics but quite a lot about left-wing vitriol. For your information, basic military strategy for any conventional military force anywhere on earth throughout all history is to apply maximum mass with violent aggression to kill, wound and defeat the enemy on the battlefield.
You silly person. What exactly do you think Marines, soldiers and airman are trying their level best to do every day in Afghanistan? Airlift Reece’s peanut butter cups to a bunch of college professors at Kandahar University? They are trying to KILL the enemy!
Now, see? But, it’s the “mass” or “overwhelming force” part that’s presently missing. That’s what the McChrystal report is all about. In order to defeat an unconventional (guerrilla force) we need to bring the sufficient manpower to bear. Too few troops spell defeat: that’s the message of the McChrystal report. You get it?
In your case, and I’ll have to admit you’re not alone, you do not even have a clue. That’s why you look to run away from your nation’s enemies. You can’t look them in the eye with clinched fists ready to go. But, you sure can talk sweetness and nice and kiss their butts.
That won’t save you, though. Just ask the ghosts of the Jews, gays and minorities long dead in Hitler’s gas chambers. Ask the Cambodians whose skulls are stacked in the killing fields. Ask the Rwandans whose bloated corpses lined the dirt roads of that nation. Or the Bosnian children whose mothers were forced to watch as the Serbs swung their small bodies against the wall to smash their heads. Ask the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who lie dead from Hussein’s bullets and gas long before any American soldier showed up. Ask the Afghan women, gays and non-Muslims stoned to death at the hands of the Taliban government. Ask the Somali Christians still hiding out starving out in the desert.
Well thank God you’ll probably never have to plead for your own life from some ruthless enemy killer because you live here protected because the military is somewhere else defending your freedom.
You’re nothing but a left-wing defeatist weenie.
Nothing quite like seeing a chickenhawk pussy like 270144 chide someone for their lack of military understanding. Especially when they didn't claim to have any.
If we need overwhelming force in Afghanistan, why didn't we use it in the first place? You know, when Osama Bin Laden, the fucker who caused 9/11, might have been captured? Oh, I forgot, the geniuses in the Bush Admin once again had different, and totally fucked up priorities, and invaded a completely different country.
Go get someone to change your pampers, and when they are wiping up your mess, peer into their eyes and try to understand what it is that we adults do: we always get stuck cleaning up after your shit. Over and over again. Limped dick pussies who are always willing to sacrifice someone else's kids to war. Fuck you and everything you stand for.
Let me see. 2470144 bitches about Bush's weak strategy in Iraq in his blogger profile, but seems to want more of the same. In the same profile he complains that, as an independent glibertarian, he dislikes the two major political parties for creating an "atmosphere of hostility and aggressive gang-like behavior" that "deeply hurts the United States." Um, shithead, have you read your own comments? Stooge.
Armadillo, I guess that takes it off my list. But, hey, it sounds right right up your alley. I'll even help you pack. Hell, I'll drive you to the airport. Cuba, Singapore, whatever third world hellhole whose medical system you seek to emulate.
Professor Jacobson:
According to this ABC report (as well as articles in other publications):
"Military sources have said that the first new troops won't arrive in Afganistan until January 2010"
In other words, because we are using all our troops to capacity, there is no point in rushing the decision. So, what's the point in criticizing the President assuming this is true?
207144 did clarify a little bit by citing the McChrystal report, but really does anyone logically think that a mere 40,000 troops is "sufficient force to annihilate the enemy"? From what I can tell from skimming the report, that's not even the approach he wants to take.
What we learned in Vietnam is that the hearts and minds of the people count. That may seem fuzzy-wuzzy to some of you out there, but that's reality. And that's part of what McChrystal is saying too. As far as I can tell, the dispute is about whether it is too late to win the hearts and minds of the people. Even if we had sent a million troops there, we would have lost- oops shouldn't use that word, not been successful.
Part of the problem is, once again, the choices that George Bush made. If you look at a lot of Bush's policy decisions, they were made on how he felt about a given leader (who can forget him "looking into the soul/heart of Putin!) rather than what was the best policy decision. Karzai spoke english, sounded good, so Bush chose him, even though my understanding is that there were better Afgan leaders out there. Unfortunately, now we are stuck with him and his crooked brother, more than a few of the Afgan people associate him with the USA, and that puts us in a difficult place.
Like I said, a mess that's a no win situation.
Note to Cowboy- Singapore is not a 3d world nation. In fact it looks a lot like Dallas, but has no cowboys. So, they need some! go visit, you might like it and you might want to stay a while! (hopefully, a long while!)