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Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by! September 1, 2009 The Obama DoctrineBy Greyhawk"Now you have narco drug lords who are helping to finance the Taliban, so we've got to get the job done [in Afghanistan], and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there. It means that we have enough civilian support, agricultural specialists, people who are engineers, people who are building schools and so forth to help the Afghani government do a better job of delivering on behalf of its people." - Senator Barack Obama, August, 2007 The world has spun a couple of laps around the sun since the Illinois Senator and would-be Democrat presidential candidate responded to a question in New Hampshire about moving troops out of Iraq, so more than a few folks are probably willing to claim they're too hot and dizzy to remember what he said. Now is the time for an Afghanistan debate, many of those suffering from the most severe form of amnesia insist. Well, this being America it's always time for a debate somewhere. For instance, way back in September and October of 2008 that same Senator debated Senator John McCain on all sorts of topics - including Afghanistan. Lot's of folks listened to what they said, and voted accordingly. Certainly many spoke out against Obama's clear and well-stated plan for Afghanistan at the time, no doubt just as forcefully as they had against his statement from the year previously. (Just because I don't remember them doesn't mean they didn't.) And certainly a majority of Americans did not vote for him - though a majority of voters did, and that's what matters. And clearly Afghanistan mattered to candidate Obama. If asked about Iraq, he mentioned Afghanistan; when asked about Russia, he mentioned Afghanistan. The resulting debate transcripts are thus full of references to Afghanistan. But take them all out and put them in topical order and the result is a coherent narrative that clearly states the candidate's position - his identification of the problem we face and his plan to fix it. What follows is candidate Obama's position on Afghanistan, culled from the two debate appearances linked above, with the statements re-ordered in a more cohesive and narrative form. I've added nothing beyond brief bracketed words for clarity, and for good form I've repeated the opening points as the close - common practice for a persuasive essay. The rest: 100% pure Obama, distilled to its Afghan essence, the foundation of the official policy of the United States of America. Enjoy.
And that's that. Iraq, of course, is less an issue now (Though we've still got an awful lot of troops there. What's up with that?) so that impediment to an Afghanistan increase is shrinking daily. (I'll be shocked, shocked I tell you, if all the Brigades scheduled for Iraq this fall actually go to Iraq.) No doubt there's at least one thing somewhere in the above quotes that will cause most people - even the President's most ardent supporters - to wince. (Alice Walker, for example, thought he shouldn't be so mean to Osama bin Laden.) Some word choices might have led them to wish he hadn't said that, or hope it didn't mean what it sounded like. Still others may have had a strong, negative reaction to each and every word. I'm curious, however - does anyone have a good counter-argument from back then, when it mattered? Those initial "two or three brigades" have been delivered as promised, more will indeed be available from Iraq, but suddenly I'm starting to see many of the President's above points assailed today. I'm sure there were folks actually arguing against them when it mattered. Can anybody point me to a few? Posted by Greyhawk / September 1, 2009 4:15 PM | Permalink 4 TrackBacksTrackBack URL: http://www.mudvillegazette.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/16595 ...with a C-, at best. Not good news for the President: "A majority of independent voters disapprove of how Barack Obama's handling his job as president, according to a new national poll." The Party faithful, however, remain faithful:According to the p... Read More This is big: the day following President Obama's appearance on five Sunday news talk shows, in which he expressed his concerns over "mission creep" in Afghanistan, Bob Woodward publishes a declassified copy of General McChrystal's commander's assessmen... Read More Rajiv Chandrasekaran's effort not to lambaste "some" civilians involved in planning America's Af/Pak adventure earlier this year is commendable - but the story is still there. "With the costs now clearer, some officials at the National Security Council... Read More Click here at 8PM Eastern to watch the speech live, without commercial interruption or talking head nonsense. A video player will open in a popup window. We'll be live-blogging throughout. And since the speech will be in a separate window you can refre... Read More 4 CommentsLeave a comment |
March 17, 2010Dawn Patrol 03/17/2010 [Mrs Greyhawk]
Welcome to the Dawn Patrol, our daily roundup of information on the War on Terror and other topics - from the MilBlogs and various sources around the world. If you're a blogger, you can join the conversation. If you link to any of these stories, add a link to the Dawn Patrol too and your trackback will be added to the list. Hat Tips to the Dawn Patrol are greatly appreciated.Refresh for updates.
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AFGHANISTANSuicide attackers killed in Afghanistan -- [CNN] US kills 8 terrorists in 2 new airstrikes in North Waziristan -- [LWJ - Bill Roggio] S.N.A.B.U. = Situation Normal All BAF-fed Up -- [Afghanistan My Last Tour - in Afghanistan] Post Office Doesn't Like Me -- [Afghanistan My Last Tour - in Afghanistan] Danger Room Explainer: Outsourced Intel in Afghanistan -- [Danger Room] IRAQIraq Votes - Part VI -- [MEMRI] Mission Accomplished: Astroturfing Baghdad -- [Danger Room]
U.S. AND OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLDAllies everywhere feeling snubbed by President Obama -- [Washington Post] Chahar-Shanbeh Souri -- [Planet Iran]
WAR ON TERROR /TERRORISMIf bin Laden is found, he'll be killed, Holder says -- [AP] ACLU files lawsuit for information on US Predator program -- [Threat Matrix] SUPPORTING THE TROOPSArmy Suicides Grow, but This Soldier Was Saved -- [Politics Daily] Silver Star Winner Reprimanded for Afghan Battle -- [ABC]
MILITARYArrrrrrmy Training, SIR! -- [This Ain't Hell] WELCOME HOMEBushrod honors were not misplaced -- [Fredericksburg.com] They're Coming Home! -- [KBND]
THE MEDIA/CULTUREIt's just some ribbon. -- [From my Position...]
POLITICSGE and Ronald Reagan: The Mutual Gift That Keeps On Giving -- [Politics Daily] Petraeus Testifies About DADT
The Petraeus briefing: Biden's embarrassment is not the whole story -- [Foreign Policy Blog] HUMOR/SATIRE
Iraq, Afghanistan, War, Terrorism, Military, Politics, Media, MilBlogs, dawn patrol Mudville
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The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him. They prefer to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.
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Yeah, but I don't think everyone believed him, or they didn't pay attention, or they thought he is just being a politician and will change his mind, or the facts on the ground might change, and so would he....I can think of a million things that people might tell themselves to make the above an inconvenient fact :)
Or, perhaps, they voted for him for different reasons than his candidate position on Afghanistan. I didn't vote for him, so I can only hope he makes the case, because it's his job to do so. If this is his doctrine, it's his job to quell or answer the critics. Bush did a poor job of this at times, and it hurt the war effort.
A candidate making campaign promises about doctrine, and a President speaking out about a current war, are two different things.
the smart money says that Ear Leader is going to cut and run, just as soon as he can find a way to hang the responsibility on someone else.
he's never stood for a single thing in his entire worthless existence, and he's certainly not going to start now.
I think it's called triangulation. Democrats aren't known for being strong on things like war and national security and during the campaign Obama needed to convince enough Americans that he wouldn't be weak. But he also needed to stay away from the Iraq War, he had to be against that particular conflict. So he used Afghanistan, projecting an intention to fight and win the war there decisively, just the way a GOP candidate would (and as McCain did). He needed to convince enough independents and squishy Republicans that he wouldn't be Jimmy Carter but he wouldn't be George W. Bush either.
And he did start out staying true to most of what he said. He agreed to increase troops, he went around and begged the NATO countries for more resources, he's continued the Predator strikes and other stuff. But because so many people projected Messiah like powers onto him, I think a lot of them imagined that he would be able to win the Afghan war in a couple of months. He didn't spend enough time emphasizing how hard and difficult it was going to be, how long it would take. And now he's looking like a mere mortal and not an especially competent one at that. And we're all worried.
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post From the Front: 09/02/2009 News and Personal dispatches from the front and the home front.