The speech is over. It was, in many ways, refreshing to see Barack Obama sounding presidential and accepting the mantel of commander in chief. Rather than apologize for our way of life, our democracy and our values, he praised America’s world leadership, and its longstanding commitment to fight tyranny. As he put it, “Since the days of Franklin Roosevelt, and the service and sacrifice of our grandparents, our country has borne a special burden in global affairs. We have spilled American blood in many countries on multiple continents. We have spent our revenue to help others rebuild from rubble and develop their own economies. We have joined with others to develop architecture of institutions – from the United Nations to NATO to the World Bank – that provide for the common security and prosperity of human beings.” And, he added, America has not only sought to “advance the frontiers of human liberty,” but has “not sought world domination.”
For the Left, who believes that the latter is indeed what America stands for, the speech was a ringing rebuke. (To get their take, read the editorials in The Nation, for example, or Michael Moore’s “Open Letter to President Barack Obama,” in which Moore says that if more troops are sent to Afghanistan, it means only that the president has abandoned his liberal base and given in to the haters. Or read The New York Times left-wing columnist Bob Herbert, who warned that sending in troops and making any commitment to a war in Afghanistan is a “tragic mistake.”)
With this speech, many on the left will abandon the president, treating him as a reincarnation of Lyndon B. Johnson at the time of escalation of the war in Vietnam. To these people, the president made it clear that he does not see Afghanistan as Vietnam, where today, as he put it, there is no popular insurgency supporting the Taliban.
Anticipating resistance, Obama started his speech with a review of why we initially went into Afghanistan. He told the nation that success there is vital to our national interest and that “our cause is just, our resolve unwavering.” In many ways, as some of the television pundits noticed, the speech sounded much like George W. Bush, who against some in his own party, made the decision to stick by the “surge” strategy in Iraq despite those who said the war was already hopeless and lost.
Weird speech. Of course the mandatory Bush bashing. Than, the sly suggestion that it was he who brought the Iraq war to a successful conclusion while never crediting the fact that it was because of Bush’s determination that Iraq is now a functioning, fledgling democracy rather than a totalitarian slave state. Followed by a muddled vision of the correct course in Afghanistan, all the time avoiding any talk of victory, or of crushing the enemy, and indicating that win or lose, we’re out in eighteen months. And finally, this babbling about the monetary costs of this endeavor. Laughable. He’s worried about tens of billions, when he’s flushed trillions down the crapper. So much for the new transparency. Whatever obama is, he’s not fit to be president. Not fit to command troops. Pathetic performance.
Obama’s speeches are just meaningless rhetoric, he’s a con-man, a fraud, a flim-flam man. His speeches are cleverly crafted to please his audience, appease his left-wing base & silence his critics, vague enough to mean anything you want them to mean. He’s a damn good liar, not a doubt about that particular skill. But, what you need to look at is what he DOESN’T say, at his misrepresentations, & later, at the how policy is actually implemented. This is no committment to win, there is no goal of victory. There is no connexion to a larger picture & much of what he says about Afghanistan is contradicted by his policies elsewhere, in other words, there is no consistent application of basic principles. Basically, what I’m saying is that this is all BS – he was pretty much forced into this decision against his will, he doesn’t have a clue about military strategy, & if he had the choice, he would cut & run ASAP.
Congratulations on responding to all the things in Obama’s speech which affirmed the values you mention. I stayed with Fox last night for all of O’Reilly and as much Hannity I could stand, and did not ear one talking head acknowledge the points in the first half of your essay.
Good grief, how about giving Obama a little credit for saying what he did? How would te Foxies responded had he said that we were coming home? Just as there was blatant BDS, there is blatant ODS, a last night’s coverage on Fox was Exibit A. I miss Brett Hume; he could not have let last night’s speech go by without giving Obama some props. Sometimes, Krauthammer does, but last night he was Mr Sourpuss.
Final question: did O’Reilly feel that he had to say that it was not the Gettysburg address because of the way Obama ended the speech, or did those remarks fly right by him? After all, they were at the end and his “Talking points” had to be written immediately, or more likely AS the speech was going on.
OK. I get it. The Taliban and Al Queda are a clear and present danger and threat to the United States and the world, really bad guys. A mortal threat to global survival. So we are going to commit three fourths of the troops requested, and informed our enemies that win, lose , or draw, we’re out of there in eighteen months. And he’s concerned about the costs? The few billions while he’s already run up a ten to twenty trillion dollar tab in his vaarious redistribute the wealth programs? Very inspiring performance. I am sure it was well received by our Islamofascist adversaries. Obama is a slender reed well suited for academia, but not up to the job of CIC.
And one more thing: Last night, Fox’s idea of fair and balanced was Karl Rove and Dennis Kucinich. Could anything be a more blatant example of how the middle majority got/gets ignored? Sometimes, O’Reilly can supply that; last night he didn’t.
How can he be sure that in such a short period of time the Afghan army will be fully trained and ready to replace our troops?
The simple answer to that question is that President Obama can’t do it. We have had eight (count them, eight) years for the people in Afghanistan to decide that it would be in their best interest to side with the United States rather than the Taliban. Where is the huge domestic support for the American and NATO forces? Why aren’t Afghans beating down the doors to join the Afghan Army to fight the Taliban? The Afghan people already know what life would be like under the Taliban. They know about the brutality, the fanatical religious rule, and the horrible way women and children are treated. I seem to remember that when we got into Afghanistan there was a large rebellion against the Taliban called “The Northern Alliance.” Well, where have these people gone? Why isn’t there this type of armed support against the Taliban? After all, the Afghan people know what’s in store for them if the Taliban return to power. An no one had to “train” or “equip” the Norhtern Alliance to fight the Taliban. So you’re telling me that any Taliban capable of holding an AK-47 isn’t going to rise up and fight these animals? Seems to me the Taliban has no trouble recruiting and maintaining its “volunteers.” And with little formal training and even less equipment, they seem to be doing just fine against one of the greatest armies in the world. My fellow Americans, Afghanistan is NOT Iraq. The people are very different, there is no infrastructure to speak of, there is no oil but lots of opium, and their mountain ranges would make even the most experienced mountain goat look for greener pastures. There is a reason major powers wanted to leave Afghanistan. There is nothing worth staying for. If all you want to do is fight al Qaeda and give the Taliban a hard time, you do NOT need 100,000 plus American troops stationed there. But if you plan on making Afghanistan some sort of democratic version of Iraq, forget it. It’s an illiterate tribal nation that is perfectly content to remain in the 13th Century. We should maintain a relatively small force somewhere in that country, just like we do at Guantanamo Bay in hostile Cuba, and then send the rest of our people home. We can make it perfectly clear to the Taliban that if they don’t let us keep this base, then we will do everything in our power to destroy them and their followers, no matter how long it will take. Believe me, if the Taliban know that they can win their war just by giving us a base from which to operate from, they will do it. They will make the deal. We will then have a forward base of operations from which to conduct raids against al Qaeda or the Taliban if they plot to attack the West. If the Taliban know what’s good for them, they will leave us alone and simply consolidate their hold on the country. We will co-exist with a brutal regime, just like we do now in Cuba. Seems to be working out well for us in Cuba, right? And, last time I checked, no American troops were dieing at Guantanamo Bay.
Anybody know the response to the speech from the enemy camp?
You are indulging in the fallacy of hope over reality again… here was nothing “Presidential” about vapid waste of time.
1. After the obligatory Bush bashing, The One essentially said: “Okay, I’ll send some troops but not as many, and I have a timer set on the whole deal… I am getting out before the 2012 election.”
2. Obummer took THREE!!! Months to decided on exactly NOTHING. He wasted three precious build up months that could have been spent going hammer and tongs after the bad guys, to mull over something for which the decision was a compromise down.
3. As has been said by many analysts… he has one foot out the door. He equivocated, and set a time stamp on the effort, of which his part will be minimal. Look for more idiotic limits on the troops via bureaucratic Rules of Engagement. Look for more Article 32 hearings and courts martial about punching out evil doers… Look for more law enforcement vs. War sorts of operations.
4. Most importantly, look for continual equivocation, dissembling, and Bush Bashing from the Obambi Regime.
5. As to style… Has anybody figured out that the Teleprompter Jesus just mechanically reads the jump scroll as it alternates from prompter screen to prompter screen? Disney animatronics do a more fluid job of reading their speeches to sleepy park crowds who are really only there to get cool for a few minutes.
This speech wasn’t Presidential. It was a bogie effort on the Putt-Putt course that defines this clownish, dangerous regime.
Besides… The One interrupted “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and that is totally and completely unforgivable.
r/The Mighty Fahvaag
Forgive me if this is slightly off-topic, but there is a “meme” that occured to me that I feel needs to get out there. I thought of this when it was mentioned that “In November, more Americans died at the hands of Islamic extremists in Texas than in Iraq.”
I thought Iraq had actually sunk into the sea and been declared a new ocean, for all the news that has come out of it…. essentially since the surge began to succeed. We all know why…. it was shaping up as a victory, it IS a victory now and has been for some time, and as long as Bush was in office, the MSM could not afford to talk about it.
And I guess they still can’t, as it remains “Bush’s War”, God forbid it could be a victorious one.
So we hear utter silence. But let us watch — Could it be that, oh, in about six months… a year-and-a-half into the Obama administration…. we will suddenly get a slew of stories talking up a genuine ‘VICTORY!!” in Iraq? Stories that will imply, if not baldly state, that such victory is all due to our wise and stately current CinC and his successful policy of “winning the war Bush lost in Iraq”?
Such stories would be so utterly shameless, so Orwellian, such an insult to the intelligence, such an utter and blatant inversion of the truth, that projectile vomiting would be an appropriate response to them. But does that mean they will not try to sell us on the idea?
I think the only question in many media maven’s minds would not be “is it true”, but rather “Can we get away with it, or is it just so shameless that it will backfire on us?” (Not, is it morally wrong to tell the lie, just, will it work for us in the end.)
Even I think such stories might be a bridge too far for the soldiers of The Narrative, but maybe they are obtuse and/or immoral enough to try.
Keep your eyes open for such stories, pre- 2010 elections. And be ready to pounce when they appear.
Of all the Pandora boxes Bush left behind for Obama, the Afgan situation is probably the most problematic. Most of my friends, including ones with military backgrounds and from military families, are just done with Iraq and Afghanistan and see any more involvement as a waste of good lives and time. And how many years ago now was 9/11? But Iraq was never more than an insanely stupid and disastrous sideshow that had nothing to do with 9/11 or the supposed war on terror — it was just a bizarre implementation of some brain dead PNAC policy done under the FUD of 9/11.
But as with health care reform, Obama has always been pretty clear, even if the media hasn’t been, about his intentions towards Afghanistan. While I personally have felt that health care reform should have waited until the economy was further along into recovery mode, I’m fully in agreement with Obama on Afghanistan — that’s always been the place where we should have focuses our energies. Besides giving aid, comfort and protection to Bin Laden (‘member him?) and al-Qaeda, it has turned out that the Afghan connection to Pakistan has been a lot more serious than what anyone knew during the Bush years. If a terrorist group was to get its hands on a nuke, it would mostly be via Pakistan.
Unfortunately, this badly mistaken grouping of Iraq with Afghanistan, along with the general burnout over several years now of war in that general area, had made support very weak. Whereas Bush could have blamed Canada and gotten support back in those post 9/11 days, it’s a very different situation now. So Obama’s plan of sending in the amount of troops the generals want, but setting a late 2011 drawdown date was probably the result of months of intense analysis and discussion — and it probably was no coincidence that it will approximately coincide with the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
How does Obama know the troops will all arrive in 6 months, complete the job of training the Afghans, and then start to leave in July 2011? BECAUSE that is the how it all worked out when the White House staffers entered everything into Microsoft Project! The problem in the past was that no one had spent time properly scheduling these wars. Obama figured out he could hold a series of meetings with his ‘war council’ stakeholders, get everyone’s time estimates (properly cutting out their *obvious* exaggerations), and just enter in all into a new Project file. Then it was simply a matter of scheduling the resources, identifying a few pesky critical path dependencies and time constraints, and then running the ‘leveling’ feature to come up with the “correct” schedule for the war. Jeez, why didn’t they do this earlier? But hey, now that we have the experienced, steady hand of Obama in charge we can rest assured this war – and maybe even healthcare and the trains – will run on time.
Ron, I’m somewhat cheered that for once Obama gave grudging to the virtues of liberty- but that doesn’t wipe away the military imbecility. After months of dithering, Obama decided to neither to fish nor cut bait. This is the same idiocy through which we lost Vietnam.
Believe it or not, I’m with BC here. First rule of military operations: go big or stay home.
Instead Obummer has elected to send fewer troops than the Army’s *minimal* option (40,000). And then added, moronically, a withdrawal date.
No wonder the Cadets had to be admonished not to boo.
Alas poor Barack! First he angers moderates with his bowing and apologizing and finally when he nearly gets something right, he alienates his anti-war base. Muddle on sir!
Ron, you are a bright man. And, like me…have strong tendencies toward compassion, conciliation. and finding the middle ground.
So, we generally find quite a bit of common ground. But you’ve been had. You are not alone. Being thrown a bone, after being starved for so long…it’s a very natural reaction to savor that bone, before one realizes all the meat has been previously stripped from it.
Think about this after time for calm reflection. What was REALLY said, what was unspoken, what was implied and what was meant.
A great way to do this, is to “fisk” the speech, minus the Shakespearean inflections, the grand gestures, the “method” speech presentation affectations.
1)A troop “deployment”…to be used “to control population centers”, sent over a period of six months, (essentially from January to July) to be returned within a year from that very July.
He isn’t sending in Al Qaeda smashers, he is hiring piano movers. Basically someone who can tune the instrument to play the correct notes and not leave a scratch on the furniture.
This isn’t troop deployment.
2)Bush did it. And…Bush didn’t do it. And Bush is going to have done it. When is the sell-by date on these weasel words? In baseball, there was a guy named Mario Mendoza, who had a lifetime batting average of .215, and now any player who isn’t hitting above .220 is said to be below the Mendoza line.
Is there a Mendacious Line? Do we ever reach a point where weasel words, alternately apologizing, bowing and scraping, and blameshifting …simply run out of utility and steam?
Look, I know how the far left grins and drools at every crude joke and throwaway line about Bush. It’s red meat for the vegetarians.
But, c’mon. At some point this stuff has got to get stale, even for the mindless lemmings in their gregorian chant echo chamber.
3)Speaking of meat…where’s the beef? Clara Peller offered more clear thought and direction on what was wanted, needed and sought. Are we rooting out Al Qaeda? Vaporizing the Taliban?
When one takes a seminal point of view that there is no terrorism, only street crime of varying degrees, then one sees no difference between the need for police action and military strategy.
If you live in a Utopian hall of mirrors, allies and enemies are nearly indistinguishable. They take on distorted shapes, sizes and appearances. Who is the enemy in that speech? Where, when and what is victory?
I heard a date for retreat. If I open a campaign with the design of my retreat, announce my retreat, and look to be hailed as a hero for trumpeting it…which soldier would you think would be most inspired …ours or theirs?
Take out the drama club performing arts from it and you are left with
In summary, “Bush did it, I inherited it, you deal with it”.
#3 Dwight:
“Good grief, how about giving Obama a little credit for saying what he did?”
Because a politician’s words are the most worthless things in the world, and what comes out of this particular politician’s mouth are even more worthless than most others.
Put all his “chin music” aside….what has he DONE?
He short-changed his hand-picked theater commander’s minimum request by 10,000 troops and imposed an 18 month timetable upon him to achieve what, in the Alleged Hawaiian’s mind, passes for “victory”.
Look how blatantly he has stuck it to the Moonbat cadre and broken it off sideways.
Still in Iraq, Guantanamo still open, PATRIOT still law of the land, Gays in the military still bound by DADT…the list of his actions falling short of his rhetoric is getting too long to ignore, even to such die-hard residents of the Left wing Sweat Lodge as Michael Moore.
Go back to first things…the birth certificate controversy. He has STILL not released his “Certificate of Live Birth”, but rather has tried to pass off the computer-generated abstract “Certification of Live Birth” as being the same thing, which it manifestly is not.
To my mind, he’s going through the minimum motions of a dog and pony show because he IS a politician, and like everyone else in DC, he sees the writing on the wall for the 2010 mid-terms: that his party is going to be hammered into the ground like a tent-peg in a Marine base camp.
His blather last night was nothing more than him making his case for an Obama Administration faced with a GOP Congressional majority.
You don’t get what you pay for with this President. 30,000 troops is NOT 40,000.
A “Certification of Live Birth” is NOT a “Certificate of Live Birth”. We cannot prevent a politician from telling us his lies, but we can avoid repeating his lies to ourselves and then believing them to be true.
Picking and choosing, eh?
yknow, i thought it was alright. keeping the speaker in mind. his speech can easily be read to mean that we are going to commit 30,000 troops and, since everything will not go as we hope in 18 months, they will not be leaving. the whole thing was wrapped in a telltale lawyerly haze whose purpose is precisely to leave open justification for later actions which seem utterly to contradict the sense the reader/audience gets on the first read. personally i think the speech gave reason for optimism in that it signifies that the US security establishment and probably even Obama himself recognizes the deep problems early withdrawal or the appearance of surrender would cause. At this point, i’ll take it. occasionally pragmatic leninists are forced to do something which fulfills the expectations of common sense, and this is one of those occasions. it makes no sense bleating about how obama isn’t curtis lemay. any 3 yr old can see that.
It isn’t ODS – it’s Obama Fatigue. Those on the left are tired of the delays of the implementation of their new world order. They want delivery already on what ‘they thought they heard during the campaign”.
On the right, we’re exhausted. Between the assault on our economy bookended by bank seizures, corporate takeovers, and the failed boondoggle TARP, the assault on our liberty in the form of cap and tax and health insurance ‘reform’, and the embarrassment of seeing Obama bow before other world leaders, except for the Queen, who he hates, we are tired.
So Dwight, buddy, we are sick of him. Nothing he says matters because he talks talks talks and when he does get around to acting, he stinks. We’ve gone Obama-Deaf as a nation.
It might save us yet.
Obama may have sounded more presidential, in this speech, but to the rest of the world, he came off as saying anything that will please his supporters.
So, now, they have less trust in what he says to them.
How is he going to apologize for this?
In many ways, his description of American values was a ringing rebuke to the left.
Shocking, wasn’t it ?
Weird speech. Too long. Obama seems very worried about the economy and the recessionn as he should be since his policies are going to bankrupt us. But to whine about tens of billions of dollars to fund the wa, while flushing trillions down the toilet seems just a tad disingenuous, no? And to state that this war is critical for our survival and global security and then indicate we’re out of there in eighteen months win, lose or draw (he never actually s uggested winnning did he?)sens an interesting message to the Afgans, not to mention the Taliban et al. I am sure that mullah Omar was relieved. They are very patient. Obama is no war president. Uninspiring. And of course ther was the usual Bush bashing.
So Obama’s plan of sending in the amount of troops the generals want…
Reportedly, the 75 page analysis that McChrystal sent asked for something like 90,000 troops, with 40,000 as the bottom line.
Also reportedly, McChrystal’s report lies isolated in some room with a lot of top secret rigamarole involved to go in and read it, which, reportedly
few congresscritters have availed themselves of, too busy orchestrating backroom “healthcare” strategies, I assume.
I was at least gratified that Obama gave marginal credence to the notion that the (AQ infested) Taliban are champing at the bit to re-establish themselves in Afghanistan, thereby refuting useless naysayers in Congress (like Russ Feingold) who say stuff like…our enemy is AQ, AQ is in Pakistan etc.
It’s like one big borderless region, really, with slaughtering Islamists intent on owning it all.
NOVA AMERICA OBAMAENSIS DELENDA EST!
#13 Dan – He’s not being pragmatic. He’s buying time. Yes, he left open the possibility of remaining (situation on the ground) longer, but he’ll eventually declare it “unwinnable”, and bring ‘em home. This is the Vietnam strategy. Give the Generals less than they require, declare it unwinnable, and retreat.
The important thing was his lack of a full-throated commitment. Morale will suffer amongst the troops. Discipline will falter. Incidents will happen. Our allies will rapidly abandon us. All this because we are not truly committed.
He’ll then blame it all on Bush. Been there too long. Fatigue set in. Bush should have won it when it was winnable. It was just too late. Not my fault. Blah, blah, blah.
The MSM will parrot this line. The Left won’t care about the loss. They just want us out. Afghanistan will fall to the Taliban. There will be mass slaughters. Still Bush’s fault.
Won’t help the Left in 2012. Employment will still be in the crapper. Debt will be out of control. 2010 will be 2006 redux, with the Pubs gaining. 2012 will be a replay of 2008, with the Pubs as beneficiaries, instead. History repeats itself, but this time, in very short order. All the dirges sung for the Pubs after 2008 will be sung for the Left in 2012.
#16 Carla – Yes, it did go on too long, and yes it was “weird,” although I can’t quite put my finger on what made it so weird. But something was off. Perhaps it’s my natural aversion to every word that ushers from his mouth, but it felt forced and fake. Sort of like “Okay, I’ll act like I totally support my own words, but I don’t. Not really.” It felt like an act.
I didn’t hear him mention President Bush by name, but the subtext was strongly “This is really all George Bush’s mess that I’m having to clean up once again!” George Bush’s ghost was brought out for a stern beating, and this is getting tiresome.
But for all his tough talk, you can see his heart is simply not in it. He’s doing what is expedient — perhaps what is expected. But there’s no leadership here.
I’ve heard presidents say they really dislike war when they’re sending out the troops, but until Obama, I’ve never heard a president say “I voted against this war” in a speech that’s supposed to rally the citizenry.
To tanstaafl: the total number will actually be much higher than 30,000, probably closer to 100,000, when it’s all said and done, thanks to not exactly widely known stuff like this. As I mentioned before on another thread where there was all this clueless whining about Obama supposedly dawdling over the final Afghan troop deployment numbers, he stepped up the war in Afghanistan almost immediately after he was sworn in.
Whether you guys want to believe it or not, he’s as serious about Afghanistan as he is about health care reform. That puts you in a little philosophical and political conundrum, don’t it?
Did anyone notice the angry, frozen stares and snoozing from the Cadets?
Talk about a yawner.
Whether you guys want to believe it or not, he’s as serious about Afghanistan as he is about health care reform.
You channel him, personally ?
Funny, on all counts, from healthcare to Afghanistan, I think he’s mainly “serious” about his own appearance, as in carrying the copy of GQ magazine last week to read about himself.
I think his pro-traditional American utterings last night may have been a function of his tanking poll numbers.
However, not completely without value if said words sent Medea Benjamin, Michael Moore, Georgie Soros et al. into a tailspin
(over and out)
Drew:
Obama-san always seems to speak out of his body. He’s a very eerie humanoid. Hes a living example of the Cartesian mind/body split. It was also of interest to hear him sort of claim credit for success in Iraq. His concerns about the costs to be accrued are ludicrous. Chris Matthews referred to the West Point venue for the speech as ‘the enemy camp’. That is a sterling examplel of the Left and teh Bampsters base. Disgusting. Chris Mathews should emigrate.
#20 BC – Perhaps you should re-read your own link. The 21K includes the support troops, per the correction at the top of the article.
Also, yes, it was after his swearing in, but it had been recommended before, and was less than was requested. He sent 3 additional brigades. The request was for 5, and 30K troops (including support).
During the campaign, he made many promises to expand the military, because too few were bearing the burden. He didn’t do it. Just another empty campaign promise. It is what he should have done with the stimulus money.
Military jobs ARE jobs. Out of work? Join the military. It would have decreased unemployment and increased manufacturing. (For Afghanistan, we need a LOT more helos and light armored vehicles.) He could have killed two birds with one stone. Think WWII.
Where was Obama’s so-called charisma? He looked angry & projected bitterness; furthermore, he did not look directly into the camera. What is Obama hiding? A person who will not look you in the eyes has something to hide. The Marxist masque is off given his anger & bitterness is just below the surface. He was flat as he wanted to have it both ways: Send troops in now, but release them in time for the 2012 campaign. As usual, President Obama looks out for himself as the US military are his pawns & cannon fodder for the terrorists. I don’t think Obama came off well at all. He showed us the real Obama underneath the carefully constructed masque.
obama did look a little off.it might have something to do with the fact that he is being forced by reality to implement plans he is against,like troop escalations in a war zone.
he also knew-well before hand the military and the right will be pissed because he short changed them.the left-of course would be furious about 30,000 more soldiers being deployed.
i have hopes that reality will further intrude into this administrations’ domestic plans as well.
“You have all the watches, but we have all the time.”
Barack Obama is inadvertently a friend of the Taliban. It is utterly foolish to announce an approximate date of withdrawal from the battlefield. Obama is caught between a rock and a hard place. He continues to support the war in Afghanistan merely to retain his moderate image. Obama cannot afford the political price of wholeheartedly and unambiguously embracing the leftist agenda. Obama has to occasionally throw a bone or two to the middle-of-the-road citizens to make it look good.
There’s a reason they call him “President Pantywaist.”
To Marc Malone: the correction upped the numbers by including special forces, and will indeed put number of US forces in Afghanistan at about 100,000 (it’s telling that I had to go to foreign news site for an actual count – the US news media and their worthless “coverage”….)
It’s pretty obvious that Obama knows where the real threat is, and didn’t waste any time walking the walk. Give him some credit — this has nothing to do with Bush’s brain dead foreign policy other than finally getting back on track away from that blood-filled, destructive and pointless detour to Iraq.
The Democratic Party’s lefties also place themselves in an awkward predicament by pretending to support the Afghan campaign during the 2008 presidential campaign. They did this only to con the middle-of-the-road voters into believing Obama was more macho than John McCain. Their heart was never in it. This is what we must worry about in the immediate future: the leftist community is going to relentlessly attack Hamid Karzai’s government. It will be deemed too corrupt to justify further American sacrifices.
BC – Setting aside the Iraq argument, and BTW, howz it feel to have to go elsewhere to get honest coverage of a President? Yeah, been there for about ten years now…
Given that your numbers are correct and that Obama has indeed stepped up from the start…. how come we don’t know this from the man’s own mouth? When Bush did these things, he wasn’t shy about letting you know about it, come what may.
The reason Obama has not talked about it very much at all is obvious. He may do national security, and command the troops, but his lack of enthusiasm for it is palpable, and the speech last night just reeks of domestic political calculations. And the human beings who make up the US military, and are exquisitely attuned to the nature of command, and who is good at it and who is not, see it in spades, make no mistake.
Every President has his core of people who just love him and whom he loves in return unabashedly. Maybe Obama’s are inner-city youth and college activists, I don’t know. But I damn sure know this: They ain’t the men and women of the US military. The disdain and lack of comprehension is mutual, and obvious.
‘But unless the commitment is there and the president stands fully behind it, his words alone will not be enough.’
Ron, where has this guy EVER lived up to this observation? Maybe in his pursuit of the presidency?
I enjoy reading you very much but this article is just a tad bit annoying. I listened @ prime time and was really eager to feel as evidently you did. But a problem developed after listening to Krathhammer and Stephen Hays – after which I listened again to the speech a couple of hours later. Fox was smart to give me the oppertunity to do so without surfing to do it.
At first I too wanted to see Obama give a presidential response. I wanted to leave dissent at the waters edge – and agree that all his deliberations were just that – deep thought given to finding the best answer for a difficult war we must win.
I didn’t want to be tempted to react like liberals did when they savaged Bush when Iraq became a disaster. So for certainly the first time in my life I wanted Obama to be righteous & dynamic & most of all show wise leadership.
And you know what? On the first time I was somewhat calm and ok with it. But after listening, as mentioned, to a few keen minds pick at it, I wasn’t so ok with it.
Then I listened again – and utimately I was peeved. Because I didn’t let the ceremony – where he was giving it – the fact he actaully LOOKED AT THE AUDIENCE FOR ONCE – all of the trimmings – I ignored that.
And then I found Stephen Hays in particular was right. It was a muddled and crappy speech – given the dramatic context – and the importance of the decision. In gods name how is it either appropriate guidence or inspiring leadership to mention Dover and Walter Reed to West Point cadets looking to their commandeer in chief for both – when about to lay their lives on the line for us?
And thats just one of a dozen Ron! To drudge up Gitmo yet again? And then veer off into yet another campagin speech about employment?
Are you kidding me? I had a half dozen serious cringe moments on the second viewing.
As I recall there was a very muted two times that his speaking was interrupted by spontaneous applause.
Yes you can attribute that to gravitas of the situation. But I found it spooky watching such a weak performance by a weak leader – and on second look that was what I also saw mirrored moreso in those cadets. I didn’t see inspiration or awe in those young people – but a more cautionary concern. Maybe it was gravitas – but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was the lonely feeling of devoted young men and women who know now that they head to defend us serving a president who doesn’t get it and isn’t up to it.
Not a good place to start.
I don’t believe they are either afraid nor underestimate the adversaries they may face. Like all before them they are gonna serve this president. But I can’t believe last night helped any.
Because the message I got was fiddle faddle half part this and half part that but is best summed up in a very shaky version of:
‘I don’t like war, and I really hate this one. I don’t really want to send you, but you know what, I gotta. No choice. So heres what I want you all to do. Make sure Pakistan doesn’t fall to a coup – what with their nukes and all – and build up as much roads and sewage and semblance of 20th century like infrastructure as you can in a year or so in Afganistan without getting yourself killed. Then I’ll do my best to get us all the hell out of there.’
And I do believe my view is much kinder than what some folks on the left had to say about Bush once Cheney’s famous qip about the insurgents was both premature and dead wrong.
By the way, just as a post-script. Our president claimed an impressive coilition. I don’t really agree with that either – since we are carring like 99% of the cost in blood and tresure.
How about this for a constructive suggestion. He and the state dept could act presidential in Trumans mode – and actually put together a profitable solution to how the Taliban funds itself – just by getting NATO allies alone to commit to 1% of their farm imports to subsidize replacing Opium production in Afganistan.
Ron that could be done – just like Truman did – using our farmers prodigious crop produtionc as a blunt instrument to fight Soviet agression – and EVERYONE – not just as American Farmers did under Truman – could profit.
Why not?
President Obama is so ignorant and stupid that he thinks that fighting a war is like playing a game, with time limits. Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not announce how long the U.S. would fight in World War II, he did not have any “exit” strategy except to win – by defeating Nazi German and Japan.
Meanwhile…
0bama is as narcissistic as ever.
It is difficult to imagine what was going through the minds of the cadets who were ordered to sit through this travesty. If it was meant to be inspiring, it was not. Excepet maybe to mullah Omar.
This is the big O’s way of moving toward the middle. Problem is, almost nobody is going to buy it. I think he wants to buy time internationally to concentrate on his domestic agenda of socializing us, and he just HATES alienating his lefty support this way.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,664753,00.html
Even people in other countries aren’t buying it. His credibility is zip, zilch, nada.
If Obama alienates the Left, he has nothing. Obama has to hold onto the remaining 19% of the nation since he’s alienated everyone else. He’s not doing a good job at all. He’s clearly drowning in the ocean. I hear Bruce is coming underneath him–just like when he met Chrissie Watkins. It’s not going to be pretty for the O.
To Andrew X: I don’t know about you, but pretty much all the people I know who are really, REALLY good at stuff, whether it’s music, science or business, tend also to be the ones least likely to boast or brag about it. Those who can do it, just do it — everyone else just talks about doing it.
Bruce reference:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF0FE2ubdQE&feature=related
bg – Oh, c’mon!
It’s not a matter of “boasting”, it’s a matter of acting like it is a life-and-death matter that is at the top of his agenda, where it should be. It’s a matter of presenting himself as though the mission, status and welfare of the soldiers and sailors under his command are of the highest priority, or at the very least an equal one with his domestic agenda. And at least an equal priority with the welfare of ‘The Big Me’, for that matter.
“Boasting”…. please.
Oops, that’s to BC, not bg.
#32 BC – I do give him credit, but these are the same things Bush was propounding, an increase in forces as Iraq winds down. This was set in motion by the renewed SoF agreement in Iraq. Bush would’ve sent all 5 requested brigades. McChrystal asked for 90K more troops with a minimum of 40K more. He got 30K. He shouldn’t've set a minimum. He then would’ve gotten 45K.
#41 BC – This is a copout. It’s not boasting to tell us he sent more than we thought. He’s our CinC. No stealth commanding. We should know as a matter of fact. If he’s committing more, he should tell us… but that would alienate his base. Can’t have any of that! CinC is part of the job, the most important part, so DO that part, however distasteful you might find it.
He’s playing a role (one that is way beyond him). He has never done anything BUT play the role–of POTUS. Recently, it has been getting through his arrogant, self-centered, adolescent, neurotic head that the audience is no longer cheering as loud. There aren’t as many people fainting. There is no one for him to rescue. The theater is falling silent. He is standing alone in the middle of the stage and is beginning to sweat. He understands that those who worshipped him aren’t worshipping as fervantly. He understands that those who were distrustful of him are now planning against him. It is dawning on him that those who hate him no longer fear him. They are laughing at him. So his only option is to dance faster and refuse to meet anyone’s eyes.
There are a LOT of groups that can be fooled by a fool. Particularly groups of people who are accustomed to fawning and eager to be liked.
There is one group that CAN’T be fooled by a fool. That would be a group of 18-22 year olds who have been busting their butts to prove that they are physically capable, mentally strong, intellectually successful, personally courageous (willing to die, willing to fight to live, willing to die to save their friends)…
Unfortunately for the empty suit, the group he was facing last night was made up of the 18-22 year olds. They don’t fear him. They don’t respect him. And they sure don’t want to have to have their military careers under his “rule”. If he really thought that somehow in a room full of those, proudly planning to take their place in the Long Gray Line…if he really thought that somehow he would “shine” (or even look capable)….that was a very, very, VERY big error in judgment on his part.
He is a fool. They, and their brothers and sisters in all the branches of the military, are our hope for national survival. They are our pride. God bless them.
I think my first cringe moment came when, in the middle of his speech on military action, he managed to blurt out “worst economic crisis since the great depression.” Wh-huh?!
Later I noticed just how often he inserted himself, rather awkwardly, into the speech. Listen for the number of times he says “I” . . . it gets kind of spooky after awhile.
And the subtext of the whole thing was “This is George Bush’s fault” anyway. As I mentioned above, I can’t ever remember a president stating “I voted against this war” as part of an effort to rally the troops.
To Marc Malone: No — Bush completely fumbled away the beatdown we initially gave the Taliban when they wouldn’t give up Bin Laden in order to execute that moronic PNAC regime change BS plan against Hussein.
And there is nothing “stealthy” about doing your job effectively and not going out of your way to call attention to it. Because hyperpartisan politics is the rule these days, to get anything done, you now need to do it quietly, which is what Obama is doing. He hasn’t been hiding anything — he’s just been taking advantage of how really awful our news media is these days in informing people of important stuff. The information is there if you look for it, but stuff like Tiger Woods’s domestic problems apparently are so much more interesting to the greater and more profitable mass market.
Well, I’ll grant you he’s been pretty damn “stealthy” about “doing his job effectively”. He’s about the only one on the planet with a radar able to see it.
That’s some top notch stealth, boy howdy!
Yes it IS ODS for most people here. One knows that is the case when he (or GWB) does the right thing (more or less) gives a good speech, and the opposition will give him no credit, because they despise him in general. Rational discussion therefore is pretty much out the window and it is all about political and personal reflexes. There are a few exceptions here and even more folks if properly pressed would shape up a little, but that is not that first, second, or third impulse.
It is part of our wierd political system that libs could never give credit to Nixon or GWB for a lot of the stuff they did that advanced things that libs believed in and you guys are doing it with Obama. The guy gives a speech where he affirms many things which you said he would never affirm AND sends 30,000.
Actually, I’m the idiot for trying to get people to be rational about politics. It’s more about primal appeal and hatreds, and I should just accept that. Sorry.
Where has General James Jones (“National Security Advisor”) been during all of this??
Does he still have a job??
“…and you guys are doing it with Obama.”
Nonsense. I believe I have a proven track record of playing fair. Many conservatives like Glenn Beck and I were ceaselessly criticized George W. Bush for his reckless government spending. A number of us even blame the Ronald Reagan administration for starting the “too big to fail” nonsense. The Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company bailout occurred in 1984 during his presidency. Bush 43 also waited to long to fire Don Regan and get serious about Iraq.
This piece is far too forgiving. Obama spoke without a soul, without conviction, and went out of his way to elevate Islam as one of the worlds greatest religions just one minute into his speech. Islam is at war with the west. We must defend ourselves. And our Commander in Chief feels compelled, at the outset of his speech, to praise Islam.
There has never been a reason to trust Obama and there still isn’t one.
Bush & Co. did not “take their eye off” Afghanistan or “get distracted” by Iraq. I can’t believe how short and selective people’s memories are. The Taliban were routed and some escaped into Pakistan, which we could not enter for obvious reasons – not least because there are 30 million Taliban-like barbarians who live there. Also the destabilization of Pakistan was a major concern, as it remains – the credibility of which fear was proven by the eventual *actual* destabilization of Musharraf’s regime (not without his help). Remember that the original destablizing thing was not the arrest of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court but the Taliban bombing campaigns and Red Mosque event. To these Musharraf reacted initially – or even before – by formally signing into existence the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan in 2006. What could we do, in Pakistan? Not much. We’re still not doing much. Yet the Taliban and Haqqani network and god knows who else operates out of *Pakistan.* Bush didn’t get distracted, neither he nor Obama can do anything about Pakistan without a strategic commitment of historic proportions – which, in order to succeed ultimately, would require Stalin-level genocide in the tribal belt. So snap out of it.
“bg – Oh, c’mon!
It’s not a matter of “boasting”, it’s a matter of acting like it is a life-and-death matter that is at the top of his agenda, where it should be. It’s a matter of presenting himself as though the mission, status and welfare of the soldiers and sailors under his command are of the highest priority, or at the very least an equal one with his domestic agenda. And at least an equal priority with the welfare of ‘The Big Me’, for that matter.
“Boasting”…. please.”
This statement proves that you do not know Obama. He is all about the publicity and the accolades. He has a strong disdain for our military. His priority is himself.
“And there is nothing “stealthy” about doing your job effectively and not going out of your way to call attention to it. Because hyperpartisan politics is the rule these days, to get anything done, you now need to do it quietly, which is what Obama is doing. He hasn’t been hiding anything — he’s just been taking advantage of how really awful our news media is these days in informing people of important stuff. The information is there if you look for it, but stuff like Tiger Woods’s domestic problems apparently are so much more interesting to the greater and more profitable mass market.”
Hyperpartisan? Obama cannot do anything without congressional approval so who is he going to hide it from, his wife?
“Barack Obama [has] never seen a TV camera or a teleprompter he didn’t lust
after. Come to think of it, it’s too bad that his administration isn’t a TV
show. If it were, we could at least hope it would be canceled after one season
instead of four.” –columnist Burt Prelutsky
The speech was imperfect. The six months of furrowed-brow pondering were inexcusable. Even considering pulling out after years of calling Afghanistan the “necessary war” is just ridiculous.
But yes, rational people can applaud the decision to send more troops (even if it is less than the amount requested). It’s the right decision. And he even spoke a little tough – you know, for a wishy-washy lefty.
The problem is VIRTUALLY EVERY SINGLE OTHER THING HE DID.
And there’s also his inherent lack of trustworthiness. The man has never hit one of his own deadlines. He has given birth to vast federal bills which don’t even manage to achieve a single element of the plans he laid out at their conception.
So when he tries to sound hawkish on foreign policy, frankly my response is just like the liberals who smiled through his pro-forma speeches about ‘defending marriage’. I know it’s an act, just like they do. The man doesn’t really stand for anything except building himself a legacy as a domestically transformative president, damn the cost.
“Rather than apologize for our way of life, our democracy and our values”
References please. And don’t play semantics with “apologize” and claim it just means “explain and defend”. Show me where obama actually said to the world that he was sorry about america’s way of life and values.
What next – “rather than kicking puppies”?
The saying: “You have the watches; we have the time” is an old saying in the Arabic world. Why have you stolen it for your purposes? Did YOU hear the supposed Taliban leader say this? You, I suspect, are a liar and a fake.
Another problem with President Obama, linked to his embarrassing ego-narcissism, is he thinks he can simply show up & grace us with his presence with a teleprompter speech then make everything better; Obama does indeed believe he has some kind of magic words. He does not. Besides the speech & constant campaigns, Obama must lead, must govern. However, Obama does not lead. He campaigns & gives lofty, vacuous rhetoric. President Obama demonstrates he is indeed an empty Marxist suit with absolutely no direction. Who is going to tell President Obama is an idiot? I like the irony considering the MSM did the same with President Bush. The thin-skinned Obama will just fall to pieces with this criticism.
62. AtheistConservative:
“The six months of furrowed-brow pondering were inexcusable.”
48. Marc Malone:
” . . . are the same things Bush was propounding, an increase in forces as Iraq winds down. This was set in motion by the renewed SoF agreement in Iraq. Bush would’ve sent all 5 requested brigades.”
Here you go. Scroll down to watch Gay Bailey Hutchison on this very topic:
http://crooksandliars.com/
Now, which six months are you talking about? Which Bush are you talking about? And why weren’t you talking it about it back then?
You people are all gut wind. And you’re obstructing America’s progress.
It was obvious from the ‘tepid’ responses of the Cadets that they do not think this policy is worth the paper its printed on.
They applauded, but lets be real here, grudgingly. They showed respect for the office. They were not rude. But there was no support, no enthusiasm in their responses.
They saw the July 2011 withdrawal comment for what it is….. a political calculation designed to try to win back some left wing support for his party just before the elections. If they pull out as of July 2011, its because Obama wants to try to salvage the election for his party. And no other reason.
President Obama, as Commander-in-Chief, refused to have a picture with the F-22:
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/12/03/obama-refused-to-be-photographed-with-f-22/
A good policy and an excellent speech. Obama looked every bit commander in chief and war time president, and so far he has done a great job, the best President I have seen since Reagan or Truman.
“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and the government when it deserves it” Mark Twain
….and none of the statist regimes of the past, republican or democrat deserve it
IdiotNowAndIdiotThen, perhaps if you tried reading something other than left-wing aggregator sites, you’d be more informed:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/10/from-the-fact-check-desk-did-mckiernans-troop-requests-just-sit-on-bush-white-house-desks.html
“The troop requests to which Gibbs referred were made by then-Gen. David McKiernan. McKiernan started off making individual requests for brigades, and that list kept growing.
Officials from that time say that demands in Iraq prevented the Bush administration from fulfilling the requests until just before Bush left office.”
The fact is that we didn’t have enough troops for both theaters. And generals/commanders in both theaters were making requests for the limited troops we had available. The Bush administration decided – correctly – that Iraq was the worse ‘hotspot’ and thus gave it priority.
How do we know this was the correct choice? Because we won. Because Bush had the guts to make the hard choices, even when his popularity was tanked and the Democrats (most of whom voted for the Iraq war and/or spent a decade hawking for it) were spending every single day screaming about how we should just surrender Iraq.
Obama, on the other hand, was given the gift of a pacified Iraq – something he has never acknowledged, just as he has never acknowledged that the surge there worked despite his frequent and loud proclamations that it wouldn’t. Obama then spent months without even meeting his Afghan commanders, and after meeting them and getting the troop request he spent more months with furrowed brow, pacing the ramparts, trying to figure out what move would have the smallest impact on his declining popularity.
And you know how Obama spent that year? Golfing. He golfed more times in his first nine months than Bush did in three years. Funny how you left-wing d-bags aren’t winging about that.
Just because I know trolls like you don’t bother reading sites that rebut your point, I’ll quote the balance:
“Throughout most of 2008, the Bush administration tried to get NATO countries to fill that gap, though they had to have known that would be a challenge. By the late summer, 2008 Bush administration officials realized NATO wasn’t going to come through.
In September 2008 that led the Pentagon to order 2,000 Marines to replace Marines sent to Afghanistan in January as a one-time deployment. At the same time, it also ordered in the first of the additional four combat brigades that McKiernan had requested. This unit of 3,700 soldiers would arrive in January, 2009 and had been originally scheduled to deploy to Iraq.
In December 2008, President Bush sent 2,800 troops to Afghanistan from an aviation brigade that McKiernan had also requested.
So as McKiernan’s outstanding requests for more forces accumulated throughout 2008 to roughly 30,000 soldiers, President Bush sent at least 6,800 troops – months and months after the requests had come in.
By March, President Obama had ordered 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan – which can be seen as roughly the outstanding balance of McKiernan’s original request.”
So Bush tried to get the other parts of the UN – you know, that wonderful, efficient organization that you lefties love, whose ‘seal of approval’ is so critical for changing an ‘illegal’ war into a ‘legal’ one – to stand up and make up the troop gap, and got nothing. Good thing Obama was able to sweet-talk … oh, wait, that’s right, he got nothing too.
Bush then filled the request as best he could, as quickly as he could. He didn’t dicker on the request, consider pulling out, issue pointless statements of eventual withdrawal. His office managed the request. Obama finished supplying the troops Bush had already slated for Afghanistan (Obama did this without even meeting his Afghan commanders). But Obama basically back-burnered Afghanistan for a year so he could try to ram through his massive domestic policies.
Deal with it. You backed and voted for a dithering moron whose only real interest is building a legacy for himself.
71 and 72 athiestmarionette:
Not a single thing you said refuted my claim. But your POV is clear . . .
“How do we know this was the correct choice? Because we won.” Really? Then why are we still there? That is just about the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Seriously. Hey, let’s spitball this hypothetical. Somebody stole my car. So I’m gonna get my revenge. But against who? I think I choose your wife. I think I’ll go up and punch her in the face. Knock her into next week. Obviously, she was the right person to punch. How do I know? Because I won.
(Now, this is your chance to avoid the point i just smacked you with and instead you can puff up your cyber machismo. Let’s hear it.)
“He golfed more times in his first nine months than Bush did in three years. ”
But Bush rode his bicycle more times in the first year of the war than Obama has in his whole life.
You really gotta start thinking first. Geez, it’s not that hard. Take some responsibility for your choice of ilk.
2. GETTING A TEACHER FOR A LITTLE WHILE TO TEACH THE BASICS MIGHT BE A SMART WAY TO GO.