Obama refuses to use the term “victory” because he is not committed to victory. What he wants is the “decent interval” that Henry Kissinger was looking for from the time that America pulled out of South Vietnam to the time the communists would take over. I sadly predict that Iraq will revert to a form of Baathism and that Afghanistan will be retaken by the Taliban. Obama is more interested in socializing America then anything else, and complicated foreign affairs which involve give and take and at times being clear cut and decisive action which might be unpopular, are a distraction to him.
by Charles Krauthammer
Many have charged that President Obama’s decision to begin withdrawing from Afghanistan 10 months from now is hampering our war effort. But now it’s official. In a stunning statement last week, Marine Corps Commandant James Conway admitted that the July 2011 date is “probably giving our enemy sustenance.”
A remarkably bold charge for an active military officer. It stops just short of suggesting aiding and abetting the enemy. Yet the observation is obvious: It is surely harder to prevail in a war that hinges on the allegiance of the locals when they hear the U.S. president talk of beginning a withdrawal that will ultimately leave them to the mercies of the Taliban.
How did Obama come to this decision? “Our Afghan policy was focused as much as anything on domestic politics,” an Obama adviser told the New York Times’ Peter Baker. “He would not risk losing the moderate to centrist Democrats in the middle of health insurance reform and he viewed that legislation as the make-or-break legislation for his administration.”
If this is true, then Obama’s military leadership can only be called scandalous. During the past week, 22 Americans were killed over a four-day period in Afghanistan. This is not a place about which decisions should be made in order to placate members of Congress, pass health care and thereby maintain a president’s political standing. This is a place about which a president should make decisions to best succeed in the military mission he himself has set out.
[...]
This was the stage for Obama to explain what follows the now-abolished Global War on Terror. Where does America stand on the spreading threats to stability, decency and U.S. interests from the Horn of Africa to the Hindu Kush?
On this, not a word. Instead, Obama made a strange and clumsy segue into a pep talk on the economy. Rebuilding it, he declared, “must be our central mission as a people, and my central responsibility as president.” This in a speech ostensibly about the two wars he is directing. He could not have made more clear where his priorities lie, and how much he sees foreign policy — war policy — as subordinate to his domestic ambitions.
Unfortunately, what for Obama is a distraction is life or death for U.S. troops now on patrol in Kandahar province. Some presidents may not like being wartime leaders. But they don’t get to decide. History does. Obama needs to accept the role. It’s not just the U.S. military, as Baker reports, that is “worried he is not fully invested in the cause.” Our allies, too, are experiencing doubt. And our enemies are drawing sustenance.
Read the rest: Our distracted commander-in-chief
Jonah Goldberg doing his best tongue-in-cheek, misses Bill Clinton. He actually makes some good points. Clinton, as opposed to Obama, was sensitive to the will of the American people while Obama frankly seems bored with the job.
There’s been a lot of talk about Bush nostalgia lately.
At Martha’s Vineyard, the Obama-bilia wasn’t moving like it was during the Obamas’ previous visit there. The big seller was a T-shirt depicting a smiling George W. Bush with the tagline “Miss Me Yet?”
In response to President Obama’s vacillating, lawyerly support for the Ground Zero mosque, Peter Beinart recently vented in the Daily Beast: “Words I never thought I’d write: I pine for George W. Bush.”
Well, I’d like to return the favor, a little. I’m suffering from a mild case of Bill Clinton nostalgia: I miss having a Democrat who could sell.
Clinton, a political prodigy of the first order, loved the human side of politics. He listened to the hoi polloi more than he listened to the Harvard faculty. It made him a less consequential but more democratic president.
Meanwhile, Obama’s “People of Earth, Stop Your Bickering” aloofness often makes him seem exasperated with the country he leads. He doesn’t seem to care what the people think. If voters disagree with him, that’s their mistake.
[...]
He’s gone straight from messiah to Michael Dukakis.
Read the rest: Why I miss Bubba
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