supporters who keyed on the language of ending the war might be forgiven if they thought that would mean bringing home all of the troops.
For years now Senator Obama has promised to bring home all the American combat troops from Iraq in 16 months, and to end the war in Iraq. Now that he’s been elected…well, he didn’t really mean “END” And he didn’t really mean bring home all the “combat troops” as much as just rename them as training, support, security, etc. Tens of thousands of American troops will remain in Iraq for years-at least until 2011, and perhaps indefinitely as there is no longer the promised Democratic TIMELINE FOR WITHDRAWAL from Iraq.
I think this is important, and so do the hundreds of millions of people around the world who opposed Pres Bush’s effort to train the Iraqi security forces, to secure Iraq, to fight Al Queda in Iraq, to leave Iraq only when it’s secure enough to prevent the need for a 3rd invasion, and who demanded a TIMELINE FOR WITHDRAWAL from President Bush. Those hundreds of millions of people around the world saw HOPE and CHANGE in the face of Pres-elect Obama. Instead, Americans are literally getting the Bush plan for Iraq run by Pres-elect Obama.
Does this matter? Nope. The left is as silent as Muslim community after a jihadi bombing. They don’t care. One would do well to wonder, however, if the silence & support for the Bush policy under Pres Obama is yet more evidence that opposition to the war in Iraq was more about opposing Pres Bush than it was about patriotic dissent against a war? 2 Men put out the same policy w the same excuses, but one is opposed, and the other fully supported. There can be no other conclusion than the opposition is against the man not the issue.
Methinks CODEPINK will be protesting the Inauguration [NOT!]
Author of “Reparations and America’s 2nd Civil War
Reparations and America’s 2nd Civil War: Malensek, Scott: 9798864028674: Amazon.com: Books
He is setting a speed record for broken campaign promises. I hear moonbat heads exploding. Too funny.
Hard Right, I think they’ll follow the 2006 example:
-FIRST claim that he hasn’t taken office yet rather than face the reality
-SECOND in Jan, claim he’s JUST taken office, and needs time
-THIRD by March when he’s faced his first foreign policy crisis, and had the first deaths on his watch, they’ll blame Bush
-FOURTH, despair, apathy, frustration, and then (this is new…) with no Republicans to blame for actions that happen “on their [Dems] watch”…they’ll turn on the DNC.
MSM will lead the way.
Me, I’m rethinking that entire ‘Barack Obama commemorative plate’ thing. It might be a good idea after all. If his approval falls as reality sets in, then such trinkets really would become as rare as claimed. ‘Course, it could be just as valuable as the “Gerald Ford commemorative plates,’ but it’d still be cool to put behind my desk so everyone who got PWND by the DNC could be reminded of it.
Clearing the deck — Not even in office, no promises left to keep.
All the effort can now be focused on Obammunism.
This is what is known as spin.
Here’s what’s really going on:
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-gates3-2008dec03,0,900244.story
Now, note that the timelines were “settled.” US troops are largely out of the combat zones by June 30, 2009 and out completely by the end of 2011. This is much closer to Obama’s positions elaborated during the campaign than to McCain’s positions and also to Bush’s positions for much of 2008. Bottom line is that the Iraqis want the US out of their country and the US is getting out of their country, with firm timetables for withdrawal.
But the larger issue is this: Obama is a very shrewd, pragmatic politician. He’s going to make the Left very angry with him, as he moves as far to the Right as he can go. But the Left won’t desert him — where else will they go? As if they are going to vote for Sarah Palin in 2012. And Obama is currently running 70% approval ratings, which is pretty much everyone in the country, save for the 30% (as exemplified by the FA principals) who’d vote for an armadillo before they’d vote for a Democrat.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
Not a surprise really. Hard to see how this conflict can be lost now.
Let’s wait and see what goes on in Afghanistan and Paki after the inauguration.
Lots of GOOD stuff to keep an eye on…
Pakistan v India
Kooky Resurgent Soviet Union err… Russia
Iran v Israel
Our close neighbors in Venezuela and Cuba.
Plenty of time to judge Obama’s mettle.
Good times… Good times…
Larry, I saw Markos Moulitas of Daily Kos had a column in The Hill today. He ranted away about how the idea that the US is a Center-right nation is absurd, and in the same article he contradicted himself by claiming that the right’s portrayal of Obama as a far left guy was essentially a disgusting lie, but later Markos claimed that Obama ran a progressive-left platform. Arianna Huffington was on The Daily Show and had similar denials coupled with the appropriate amount of scapegoating [BDS/Bush Derangement Syndrome: it’s all Bush’s fault]. Point is that the leftnuts are already in denial and disarray. When the media gets bored with the balls and Inauguration hype…they’re gonna need something to fill their 24hr cable shows and empty newspapers space. That’s gonna be ranting about Obama’s broken promises-first excuses, then blame, then reality check, and finally apathy and indignation towards the DNC.
It’s truly Shakespearean the way it comes around.
First of all, every candidate says things during the campaign that if elected they cannot produce. McCain would have been in the same position. Campaign rhetoric from either side has to be taken with a grain of salt. It has always been that way, it will always be that way.
That said, Obama on many issues is showing great flexibility on his part, a trait he seems to have that sadly our former president either lacked or only possessed in small quantities. Some times things change, some times you discover conditions you did not know about before hand. I would much rather have a president willing to learn, grow, and make the needed changes rather than like the past admin that took years to correct the errors in its Iraq policies.
On many fronts Obama is showing great promise. His selections of people for his administration show a desire to govern from the center where he can reach the majority of the American people. I would suggest people give him time, at least UNTIL he IS IN OFFICE before condemning him.
We need to pull together. It is sink or swim time, boys and girls.
Scott, I agree totally that Markos Moulitas and Arianna Huffington are leftnuts and that they will be disappointed with the way that Obama governs. But they will not abandon Obama, as they have nowhere else to go. They’ll just grumble about it. – LW/HB
RBH, you’ve got it in the wrong order. You went 2, 3, 1.
McCain never promised to END the war in Iraq the way Obama and Democrats have.
If you’re gonna use the theme that Obama is inheriting a mess, then it cuts just as deep or more as President Bush inherited a recession, the Cole, the war w Al Queda, Iraq, and more.
No, Obama and Democrats promised to end the war-PERIOD. They blew that off in 07, and now that they’ve got the ball…we’re supposed to support the indefinite war (yes Larry, I say indefinite because the timetable that we have now is no more firm than the timetable we had in 2004 under UN1483 of May2003).
Pull together? Ok. Great idea. Are Democrats going to support the continuance of the Bush Admin war strategy and timetable? Yes? WOW! Better late than never I guess.
2 men, same policy, different parties. One was opposed, the other not=opposition was about the man not the policy.
“First of all, every candidate says things during the campaign that if elected they cannot produce. McCain would have been in the same position”
Are you sure, or are you simply making excuses for mumbles and stumbles. More OOOh, AAAh’s in 10 minutes without a teleprompter than GWB make in 8 years. Face it, Hussein is the least knowledgable (aka dumbest about the country and world) person the U.S. could have selected as POTUS. BWAHAHAHAHAHA
I’d argue that it is the policy and not the man. Lyndon Johnson’s war policies were attacked by fellow Democrats and not nearly so much by Republicans. If Al Gore had been elected in 2000 and followed the Bush policies on Iraq, I am dead certain that the hue and cry against the war would have been just as great and would have emanated largely from Democrats.
There is no statement that Obama has made, to date, which indicates he will not adhere to the negotiated timetable, if not withdraw sooner, as preferred by the Iraqis themselves. If it gets strung out longer than that (i.e. if it turns out to be “indefinite”) then let’s revisit the issue. Until then, I think a fair evaluation of what Obama is agreeing to (i.e. withdrawal from combat zones by June, 2009 and out completely by 2011, as pre-negotiated by the Bush administration) indicates a pragmatic compromise — which is, again, much closer to his campaign positions than to those of McCain or the prior positions of George W Bush.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
I don’t care if it’s campaign rhetoric or not, Obama made promises and people voted for him because of these promises, he should keep them! I understand the liberal illuminati made Obama out to be a hero who could save the world or something like that, fine, he won’t do that. But at least keep your word or try to.
Larry, Obama is just a great manipulator and a liar. Whatever he says has no meaning. This guy is completely lost and doesn’t know where he is going. One day it is this way, the next day it is the other way around. By saying “No” and “Yes” on every subject, he believes that people will not be able to point out his flaw or blame him. To the people who will blame him for his “no”, he will point out that he said “yes” and vice-versa. For me, it is very clear: HE IS GOING NOWHERE and he is the biggest flip-flopper of all times.
Hey, the way I see it, for the next 16 months this gives me all the reason in the world to pound every gutless, hate-filled, anti-military extremist into the ground by getting in their face and asking them over and over again “your messiah obomber PROMISED to end the war in 16 months; WHY are my brothers and sisters STILL there?????????????????????????????????”
And I’ll be loving EVERY moment of it!!!!
Thanks for your service Paul.
Larry, do you think when Barack Obama is sworn in that Keith Olberman will stop his daily, “It’s been 1XXX days since President Bush declared Mission Accomplished”?
If yes, why?
If no, why?
Ditto on Scott’s thanks for serving Paul. There’s plenty us old, crusty, hard-nosed, “gunslinging” vets hanging out in these parts, as well as, those like ChrisG still in & doing their part in giving this world a hearty kick in the butt as needed. Glad to hear from ya’.
RBH Said:
That said, Obama on many issues is showing great flexibility on his part, a trait he seems to have that sadly our former president either lacked or only possessed in small quantities. Some times things change, some times you discover conditions you did not know about before hand. I would much rather have a president willing to learn, grow, and make the needed changes rather than like the past admin that took years to correct the errors in its Iraq policies.
What you call “flexibility”, I call bald-faced lies. Sen Obama knew he could not fulfill half of the promises he made and he was not willing to admit any mistakes. I call that pandering and yes all politicians do it, but none to the degree that Pres-Elect Obama has done.
While I disagreed with our President on many issues, I am very grateful that he had the fortitude to stick it out in Iraq. And you do not acknowledge that he DID make changes in Iraq that changed the course of the war – the surge, fired Rumsfeld, promoted Petraeus. When things were darkest in Iraq in 2005 & 2006, it would have been morally wrong for the US military to pull out after we ousted their government – we would have left them with a civil war.
I know of one other recent POTUS who displayed the flexibility that you admire in Obama. In 1993 when our Blackhawks were shot down over Mogudishu, Somolia, Pres. Clinton felt the pressure (from the left? from the polls?) to withdraw our troop. His flexibility to change whichever way the wind blows helped to emboldened our enemies – they felt America was weak: punch the US in the nose (figuratively) and they will run. Pres Bush changed that narrative when he had the guts to keep our troops in Iraq.
Obama has the chance to prove to those that would do us harm that he too has the same intestinal fortitude by building up Afghanistan and sticking it out until the job is done.
Uh, Larry…
Okay, yeah. Chicago politicians like the Mafioso bosses that originally kept them in office and paid them to look the other way were very shrewd throughout the last 80 years, as are their progeny of today. So… I’m waiting on pins & needles, yet with no sensations up either leg, to hear about how Obama’s shrewdness and pragmatism made any iota of difference in this SOFA decision which was pretty much the same thing we were looking at from the Bush admin BEFORE Obama won the general election. Please tell, what were his essential contributions to this that is making it work? 2011 is not an immediate end, nor does it fall within his 16 months scenario. Yet he is perfectly fine with this “Bush policy” now. When it was untenable and outrageous before.
I hope you don’t mind if, we hold off conceding to give him credit until he has actually done something to earn it. Meanwhile, we’re waiting to be impressed and astounded.
The only true thing you have said in this thread delusional Larry is–“This is what is known as spin.”
However, that applies to what you have said about obama in your attempts to defend him. He made promises he had no intention of keeping. He said only what people wanted to hear which is part of the reason he won.
Obama moving to the right. Ha! You must smoke to good stuff to believe that.
The opposition wasn’t to the ‘man’ but to the party. If a repub proposes something the media and the dem party (redundant i know) will oppose it and fan opposition to it. If a dem proposes the exact same thing, it will be miraculous, genius, the best thing since sliced bread. But there’s no bias, none at all, just objective reporting, etc.
eaglewingz08: DING-DING-DING!!! Bullseye….though Larry (always with the good posts) comes in a close second by reiterating that Obama is just a shrewd politician-not a leftist. Larry’d have won if he recognized that Democratic party opposition was just a political marketing ploy to oppose President Bush and take power. Ironiically, Democratic leaders themselves admitted this years ago (multiple links available on req).
Better luck next time Larry. Keep trying-you’re allllllllmost there!
I wish Gates had declined the offer to stay. They’ll use him to continue blaming Republicans when things go south.
Not everyone’s a partisan freak like you Hard Right. Gates has served in some form for every American President since Johnson.
Larry W.,
You said, “…withdrawal from combat zones by June, 2009 and out completely by 2011….”
“Combat zones”? The world is a “combat zone”! Mumbai, Madrid, London, NYC, Bali, etc. Where did you get the “combat zones” qualifier for the Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq?
The bottom line is that we are at war with violent Islamic fundamentalists (have been for decades) and we can choose to fight them on our terms, as we have been doing in Iraq, or be subjected to them in the places previously listed above. What you cannot do is think you’ve ended the war by running from it.
Here’s the difference between an ideologue and a pragmatist:
Obama campaigned on a 16 month withdrawal timetable, at a time when President Bush opposed any timetable at all, and when John McCain also opposed a timetable and spoke of maintaining bases indefinitely, as we have in Germany and South Korea.
Near the very end of the campaign, the Bush administration capitulated to demands by the Iraqis that we get out, lock, stock, and barrel, with a firm timetable. They haggled over the dates: finally the end of 2011 was agreed upon, but with the important proviso that the US be out of the Iraqi metropolitan areas by June, 2009.
Now, faced with these facts, Obama could have repudiated the agreements before he was even sworn in. But, realistically speaking, the overwhelming majority of US casualties have come from missions within the cities or in supply missions to support troops within the cities. Also, Obama wanted to keep Gates on board for a prolonged transition period, which most people consider to be a wise move. So he says, look, getting out of the cities in 6 months is a pretty good deal for us, and, hopefully we can get out entirely well before the end of 2011, and we are definitely NOT going to have permanent bases there, which was an original dream of the neoconservative strategists who conceived the idea of the Iraq War and which was also central to McCain’s thinking. So he had a choice between rigid ideology or pragmatic wisdom, and he chose the latter.
Obama’s approval ratings have gone up substantially since his election, precisely because people think that he’s doing the right things.
My main “theme” in discussing Obama hasn’t been so much to defend him (which I am, however, happy to do, based on his performance to date) as it has been to challenge the preconceived notion that Obama is some sort of crusading socialist ideologue who is going to partner with Pelosi and Reid to destroy capitalism as we know it and hand over the keys to Washington DC to Islamic Jihad. These are not his goals. His goals are to make pragmatic decisions in the national interest and to co-opt the political center and to push the Republicans into an extreme right corner, where the only reliable Republicans left will be the social conservatives and the anti-immigrants and the racists, who collectively make up the core of the most loyal GOP base.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
Larry, I’m afraid you’re incorrect. Obama campaigned on a 16-month removal of “combat brigades” not a 16month timetable to end the war. You’re also wrong in that Pres Bush opposed any sort of timetable. There have been several timetables since the plan for post-war Iraq was first put together by Ambassador Barbara Bodine in 2002, BUT these timetables were extremely vague and always left the exact same kind of caveat/wiggle room that Sen Obama included in what you describe as a timetable. I believe even in the pre-war testimony to Congress, DoD officials told Congress (as well as on Meet The Press where I believe VP Cheney did so as well) that they all expected the war to go very quickly and take only months. Enemy action changed that estimate. In 2003, just prior to the invasion, Gen Garner put forth an extremely vague timetable for success that (I’d have to check the PBS pdf) was in the neighborhood of 2yrs. In 2004, the White House put out it’s plan for Iraq that pushed the timetable back another 18months. in 2006, at the urging of the ISG, Congress, voters, and Gen Petraeus, Pres Bush put out yet another plan for Iraq calling for 6 more months of combat, then a reassessment followed by force drawdowns (which actually started Sept 17, 2007 I believe). Since then, Gen P has come back to DC and given the changing conditions on the ground and in the region changed the timetable several times until finally the Status of Forces agreement was agreed upon, and recently accepted. In fact, Pres Bush’s various “plans for Iraq” have been extremely more detailed than those of both Sen Obama and Sen Biden’s combined (both of which add up to a whopping 8 pages vs Pres Bush’s hundreds of pages). So no, Sen Obama did not campaign on a firm timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, and certainly not one that was more firm than Pres Bush’s. In fact, only after security was established via operations that Sen Obama opposed, did not believe in, and cannot firmly say were successful was the Status of Forces agreement even possible to pen out a withdrawal.
Make no mistake about it, opposition to the war in Iraq was fueled by Democratic Party leaders for the benefit of the Democratic Party at the expense of supporting the Commander in Chief and the efforts of troops in battle. I’ve worded that carefully, so before anyone goes off…please re-read and make sure you see clearly what I’ve just said before wigging out.
btw, I’m not sold on the idea that Obama’s a crusading socialist in league with a cabal of Reid/Pelosi etc. I believe-perhaps more strongly than Larry-that he’s just a politician who will say and do anything to get power which includes NOT saying and NOT doing anything to hold on to power. His interest is not progressive as the left likes to dream, but rather just to get power, play Martin Sheen in The West Wing, and not screw anything up. What he has never seemed to grasp is that in senior positions, inaction has as many results as action; even bad actions.
Excellent point Scott. We learned that to be true under Clinton.
Look folks, Conservatives are actually hoping that we are wrong about obama and that he will prove to be a centrist, but considering his past, considering his associations and current cabinet picks, we don’t think we are. Time will tell.
From the AP yesterday:
“Obama told reporters in Chicago that he still thinks 16 months is the “right time frame” for removing U.S. combat troops from Iraq.
He said the top priority is making sure troops are safe during that transition, and that the Iraqi people are well served as their government takes on more security responsibilities.
He also said the U.S. needs to “remain vigilant” in making sure terrorist elements in Iraq don’t become strengthened by a U.S. pullout.”
I don’t see what the LIE is…
Larry… INRE your comment:
Funny… that’s what was said about we conservatives that were less than thrilled with McCain. Turns out that “nowhere else to go” is a “stay home”, or “teach ’em a lesson by voting for the other guy” voting experiment. And with both the 2006 and 2008 elections, I think we know the results of that.
For now, your “govern from the center” analogy is correct. However Obama would be a fool to do anything but this early in the game. And remember, he’s not even POTUS, fer heaven’s sake…. technically, he’s named names that haven’t been confirmed. So far that “governing” is premature as he hasn’t “governed”… just promised. He’s done virtually nothing but hold the media spotlight so far.
As for promises? Considering his choices, you can’t take Obama’s promises for much either. For my side… that makes me happy. I doubt a MoveOn.org or CodePink member would agree.
The defining moment will be a year or two from now. Will he cut Hillary loose because he planned all along to thwart her elective career in the Senate, and leave her strapped with huge debt for any competitive 2012 run? How many of the “centrists” will he cut loose mid term?
How about the progressive/socialist spending? Bush/Bernanke/Paulson – with the unholy alliance with the progressive Dems in Congress – have done a heck of a job already with the bailout mentality. Will Obama thrust the costs of universal health care and re’design our energy system on the backs of the US citizen mid term?