Sunday, November 29, 2009
Do You Agree with President Obama's Reported Plan to Increase US Troops in Afghanistan?
All reports indicate that this Tuesday night when President Obama addresses the nation from West Point, he will announce an increase of some 30,000 troops to fight in Afghanistan. The progressive left appears to be opposed to this increase while Republican hawks say it's not enough. What do you think?
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I am prepared to be disappointed in President Obama's plan to send more American troops into a country famous for defeating occupying armies for centuries. But I will wait to hear what he has to say.
ReplyDeleteWithout security, nothing else really matters. I don't agree with Obama about much of anything; however, I do agree with his statement that "Afghanistan is a war of necessity." I also believe in the Powell doctrine where we need overwhelming force to win or in this case, to successfully occupy the country. And I think we will need to occupy the country for years to come to keep it from being a future threat to us much as we occupied post-war Germany, Japan and South Korea and in some respects we continue to do so.
ReplyDeleteAt this point, I am taking a wait and see position. I like Obama a lot and I helped in his campaign for President. However, I will be looking for him to explain exactly why we need to not only stay in Afghanistan but send more troops. I know that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld really screwed this up but by sending more troops, this becomes Obama's war. I wish him and or country well.
ReplyDeleteWhy are Democrats are bailing on this? During the 2008 campaign, nearly all leading Democrats said that Afghanistan was the "good war" which they would focus on, once in office. Over and over throughout the campaign, Obama said that "Bush took his eye off the ball and did not catch Osama bin Laden".
ReplyDeleteIf the Democratic base didn't support this, then why did candidates promise it? Answer: Democratic voters and candidates were playing a complex game. Nearly all of them hated the war in Iraq and wanted to pull Americans out of that country. But they were afraid to appear soft on national security, so they declared that the smaller conflict in Afghanistan was one they could support. Many of them didn't really support this war, but for political expediency they supported candidates who said they did. They knew they had to do this to get their candidate elected. Thus the Democratic party signed on to a good war-bad war strategy.
Now, with Democrats in charge of the entire U.S. government and George Bush nowhere to be found, Pelosi and others in her party are suddenly very, very worried about U.S. escalation in Afghanistan. "There is serious unrest in our caucus," the speaker said recently. There is so much unrest that Democrats who show little concern about the tripling of already-large budget deficits say they're worried about the rising cost of the war.
It is in this atmosphere that Obama makes his speech tonight. He had to make certain promises to get elected. Unlike some of his supporters, he has to remember those promises now that he is in office. So he is sending more troops. But he still can't tell the truth about so many Democratic pledges to support the war in Afghanistan: He didn't mean it.
Democratic voters supported Obama on Afghanistan because they believed he didn't mean what he said. We are seeing a similar situation in the gay community who is not happy with Obama because they think he said he was against gay marriage only to get elected and they didn't think he really meant it.
I support Obama for following through on what he SAID even though I don't think his heart is in it and I don't believe he really wants to be in Afghanistan at all.
Now that we have heard what President Obama actually had to say on this issue, we don't have to speculate about it. Please comment on the latest question posted above.
ReplyDeleteAnd one personal note to anonymous. I disagree with your apparent view that Democrats are a monolithic group where we can all be addressed as if we had no differing opinions and as a group where you can make claims regarding our psychology as if we were an unthinking herd.
Did not mean to imply Democrats are a monolithic group. Clearly most "blue dogs" support both the Iraq war and the war in Afghanistan. And certainly Democrats are not an "unthinking herd". It is quite clever and requires complex thinking on multiple levels and through layers of nuance to decide to support a candidate because somehow you "know" that your candidate doesn't "really" mean what he is saying during the campaign.
ReplyDelete