Afghanistan

Here’s my two cents on this issue, in case any of you were sitting around with baited breath, wondering where I stand.

If the POTUS actually takes advice from VP Biden, then, in my humble opinion, a) Obama truly is a stupendous, craven idiot, and b) we’re fucked. Joe Biden is an idiot and most of what spews forth from his pie hole should make reasonable men and women blanch.

National Security Advisor James Jones is covering his ass and his boss’s ass by criticizing McChrystal over the weekend. The quote attributed to him “Ideally, it’s better for military advice to come up through the chain of command” completely ignores the fact that McChrystal’s report was delivered weeks ago, but the White House has pushed it back and kept it tied up at the Pentagon. At least Bush had the decency to meet face to face with Petraeus when he “delivered” his report. Obama would do well to stop listening to his advisers, who are more concerned with politics and Obama’s popularity in the polls, then actually winning in AF.

Michael Yon, who I respect, speaks highly of SecDef Gates, so I’ve come to listen to what Gates has to say. When he says that advisers need to speak “candidly but privately” on strategy, hopefully that’s what happened on Air Force One when Obama and McChrystal spoke last weekend.

Why can the Obama’s jet over to Europe to try to get the Olympics for us, but he can’t get his ass over to AF to see what’s going on over there? Why, during the last week, was there more emphasis place on getting an over-priced sporting event for the US, when our men and women are dying in foreign lands and 300,000 +/- people lost their jobs in September? At least Clinton understood “it’s the economy, stupid”. I guess Obama’s too nuanced to boil anything down to such simplistic terms.

I really like this statistic that people are so fond of tossing around now “..violence levels up to 60 percent from a year ago”. Did anyone happen to adjust for the fact that we have about twice as many people in country now as we did last year? Or the fact that we’ve been taking a more aggressive approach to the enemy, moving into enemy controlled areas and engaging them on their turf? Oh no, nobody would want to actually put that much though into what’s driving the numbers. It’s like turning up the heat in your house, and then complaining that it’s hotter inside. Duh. And you guys are supposed to be the scholars running the place now? Right.

On that same line of reasoning, did anyone take into account that, quite possibly, the enemy, knowing our plans, and our weak, yellow belly underside, has taken a more aggressive approach themselves this past summer? Trying to turn our own public opinion against us? Hmmm, did anyone think that though?

What I read about coming from the administration makes me want to puke. Here’s the difference between the two administrations. Obama is having “a series of meeting to consider options for the eight-year-old war, in the face of rising casualties and souring public opinion”. Two years ago, the public pressure on the White House was so much more intense than it is now, and you couldn’t find anyone that thought we should send more troops into Iraq. Except Bush and Petraeus. Bush had two options, cut & run, or double down and send in more troops.

As the saying goes “the rest is history”. What history is Obama going to write? And how will history view the differences between these two men, and who will eventually be viewed as the better leader and President?