This talk about Obama dragging his feet at The Brass's request for more troops to fight in Afghanistan has left me somewhat perplexed.
I believe that when you send troops into a hostile environment, you are also morally obligated to provide them with all the means at your disposal to ensure as much men and equipment as they need, erroring on the side of excess.
So, I don't know what all the foot dragging going on is for. The bullshit excuse that Obama needs time to assess the situation before making a decision is just that: Bullshit!
There's no way that The President, with his dire lack of military and war knowledge, is in any way capable of making such an assessment. What he would do, if he's smart (and he's proven such is not the case), is assemble his war council and listen to them. They would, of course and most likely, defer to The Brass in the field who have the first hand knowledge of the situation as it currently sits.
Nope. Instead, I suspect he's assembling his political council, trying to find out how to have it both ways.
In the meantime, every soldier who gets killed will have a family who can conceivably blame that death on the lack of personnel nobody seems to disagree exists.
Once again, not very smart on the part of the Boy Wonder president.
I do have some skin in this game, as my brother is currently still deployed to the region. I would hate for something awful to happen to him. I would also be hard pressed not to blame the President for playing politics with his life when reinforcements for requested.
Obama needs to either begin a pullout from the war, or declare that he's in it to win it, and then actually tell us, in clear language (I know, that's difficult for him), just what "win it" means.
Because I don't think anybody really knows.
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4 comments:
What he would do, if he's smart (and he's proven such is not the case), is assemble his war council and listen to them. They would, of course and most likely, defer to The Brass in the field who have the first hand knowledge of the situation as it currently sits.
This was more or less Bush's approach to management of the wars, and I think it had mixed results, at best. After all, generals and admirals are politicians, too, and are hardly themselves monolithic in their assessment of the situation.
None of which is to say that Mr. Obama's (thusfar rather opaque) decision-making process is any better. I think you've cut to the core of the issue here:
"...and then actually tell us, in clear language (I know, that's difficult for him), just what "win it" means."
This was, again, the problem with both the Iraq and Afghan campaigns under Bush as well. An engagement without a clearly defined endgame tends to not end. See also: drugs, war on.
with Bush, the endgame was to establish a democracy.
i cautioned on that idea. and it looks like, at least on the karzai front, its a pipe dream.
Brian, I love you. You have all the caustic wit that comes with thought and intellectual clarity, with the brevity I lack. (I'm particularly appreciating the final sentence fragment ;). )
Gino, I'm not sure I'd go with "the endgame was," for Bush. Perhaps "the declared endgame was." But then I think Bush had an advantage over the current Pres, that he was slightly less politicly savvy/more trusting of "his" people, and often believed the messaging *he* received from his people--hence his believable delivery of highly questionable assertions. Obama thinks too much to have this easy style. We saw this with Clinton, too, before his personal reputation got blown to hell (for half the country) and he stopped believing he could attempt to keep everyone liking him all the time.
Luckily for the Middle East, lots of the ground troops and higher ups believed the "democracy" line, and so some progress in a democratic direction occurred *because* of their involvement and not despite it. But the people who engineered the aggression (the decisions to engage, where to engage, and how to engage) ... I'm not so much seeing those choices being "pro democracy," and so I won't give the Bush Administration the easy out of having an actual declared endgame.
>Obama needs to either begin a pullout from the war, or declare that he's in it to win it, and then actually tell us, in clear language (I know, that's difficult for him), just what "win it" means.
Because I don't think anybody really knows.<
But Gino, that would involve making a decision. The Messiah is too busy playing golf for such nonsense.
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