They fail to report on some pretty significant drops in the poll….drops that if it had been swung the other way would of been in big bold letters:
Fifty-four percent of respondents to the latest CNN poll disapprove of Barack Obama’s performance on the economy, a 17-point swing in six weeks. That isn’t the worst of the poll, either; 57% now disapprove of Obama’s performance on health care, a 19-point swing in that same time.
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a 17-point reversal on the economy and a 19-point reversal on health care would be, well, news. One has to wonder why neither get mentioned in a report on the popularity of a president whose central issues are health care and the economy. The rapid disintegration of his popularity on these positions will have enormous implications for Obama’s ability to push his agenda through Congress in both arenas, and also on the midterm elections a year from now if this becomes a trend.
Rush said earlier that he doesn’t believe Obama really cares what happens in Afghanistan…only what the war can do for him, and now the dithering liberal is dithering some more. 10 months wasn’t enough you see:
Axelrod said Obama would announce a war strategy “within weeks.” A senior U.S. official told The Associated Press that Obama has still not yet decided what to do, and it remains unclear whether he will decide before he goes to Asia on Nov. 11.
WALLACE: Let’s talk about a couple of the big issues the president is dealing with now — first of all, Afghanistan. You suggest that he is taking all of this time to decide what to do in Afghanistan to keep his left-wing base on board for health care reform.
RUSH: Well, it’s partly that, but I also don’t think he cares much about it. I think once…
WALLACE: Well, come on.
RUSH: No, I — no, see, this is — I know this is going to sound controversial, but I don’t think he cares that — if he — Chris, if he cared about — we’ve got soldiers and their families worrying about what we’re going to do. The general on the ground said we need some more troops.
The policy that he implemented in March he now doesn’t like and is trying to figure out how best to make everybody happy here politically on his side of the aisle and also for his image. Democrats have a tendency to be seen as weak on defense, so he’s battling with that.
But again, if he cared about victory — remember, he said about Afghanistan victory is not something he’s comfortable with, the concept. It reminds him of the Japanese surrendering on the USS Missouri. It made him very uncomfortable.
He wants to manage this rather than achieve victory. He says these things. I don’t know if people actually listen and have them register when he does. Read the rest of this entry »
This is the moment….when Senator John Kerry, who served in Vietnam and currently chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Monday that he opposes sending more troops unless conditions on the ground improve in Afghanistan. I’d say that’s the basic gist of it. I think James Dobbins states it very well:
James Dobbins, who served as a special envoy to Afghanistan during the Bush administration and is now at the Rand Corp., said that Kerry had made many “sensible” points in the speech but that he found the conclusion unsatisfactory.
“The argument seems to be that we’re not going to send more troops until we start winning — which seems to me to be an inversion of the usual sequence,” he said.
“I will never rush the solemn decision of sending you into harm’s way. I won’t risk your lives unless it is absolutely necessary,” Obama said to loud applause. “And if it is necessary, we will back you up to the hilt.”
The problem I have with this, is that we already have troops in theater in “harm’s way”, in what he claimed as a “war of necessity”; and his top general whom he had chosen is requesting reinforcements. And the dithering Democrat appears to want to vote “present”.
Two Democrats buck Rep. Towns, call for Countrywide probe
-Ask a Dem what caused the Great Recession, and they’ll tell you the DNC talking points (presented by NYT, DailyKOS, and MSNBC): Bush tax cuts for the wealthy investors and business leaders who create jobs, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They’ll ignore the entire Countrywide, homeloans, AIG mess, but….not all Dems will. They all know the reality, and some want it fixed. Read the rest of this entry »
Sure, left wingers can come up with talking points, and soundbites, but over the past few weeks I’ve noticed that there are 10 core questions that most on the far left cannot seem to answer with any substance. Pass em on, try em out, and enjoy the mindfreak.
If all the world hated America because of George W Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq….then why was America attacked on Sept 11, 2001; 2yrs before that invasion?
Why has Al Queda been trying to exterminate every American for the past 17yrs?
Did you want Bush to fail in Iraq, or did you want America to succeed?
Given that Osama left Afghanistan in 2001, and Al Queda was largely destroyed in Afghanistan in 2002, how did the Bush Administration “take its eye off the ball [Afghanistan] by invading Iraq” in 2003?
And he answers the “blame Bush” theme still so prevalent in the Obama Administration!
On CNN’s State of the Union program on Sunday (transcript), White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was questioned about the Obama Administration’s indeciviseness in Afghanistan. Attempting to change the subject, Rahm fell back on the standard “blame Bush” defense suggesting that Afghanistan was just another mess that they had to clean up.
You have literally got into a situation, is there another way you can do this? And the president is asking the questions that have never been asked on the civilian side, the political side, the military side, and the strategic side. What is the impact on the region? What can the Afghan government do or not do? Where are we on the police training? Who would be better doing the police training? Could that be something the Europeans do? Should we take the military side? Those are the questions that have not been asked. And before you commit troops, which is — not irreversible, but puts you down a certain path — before you make that decision, there’s a set of questions that have to have answers that have never been asked. And it’s clear after eight years of war, that’s basically starting from the beginning, and those questions never got asked.
And what I find interesting and just intriguing from this debate in Washington, is that a lot of people who all of a sudden say, this is now the epicenter of the war on terror, you must do this now, immediately approve what the general said — where, before, it never even got on the radar screen for them. That — everything was always about Iraq.
Amazing. As if no one will realize what a pack of lies that is.
I’m not sure what the bigger story is here… that the troops are feeling less than confident in their new Commander in Chief, or that this story is being reported in the New York Times.
A number of active duty and retired senior officers say there is concern that the president is moving too slowly, is revisiting a war strategy he announced in March and is unduly influenced by political advisers in the Situation Room.
“The thunderstorm is there and it’s kind of brewing and it’s unstable and the lightning hasn’t struck, and hopefully it won’t,” said Nathaniel C. Fick, a former Marine Corps infantry officer who briefed Mr. Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign and is now the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security, a military research institution in Washington. “I think it can probably be contained and avoided, but people are aware of the volatile brew.”
Last week the national commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Thomas J. Tradewell Sr., gave voice to the concerns of those in the military when he issued a terse statement criticizing Mr. Obama’s review of Afghan war strategy.
“The extremists are sensing weakness and indecision within the U.S. government, which plays into their hands,” said Mr. Tradewell’s statement on behalf of his group, which represents 1.5 million former soldiers.
A member of the Pakistani Taliban offers prayer as his his gun lies in front him at a mosque in the Buner district, northwest of Islamabad, April 23, 2009.
REUTERS/Stringer
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Militants dressed in police uniforms simultaneously attacked three law enforcement agencies in Lahore on Thursday morning, the fifth major attack in Pakistan in the last 10 days.
A defused mortar head is planted during a mine and unexploded ordnances awareness class for school boys in Qarabagh district about 40 km (25 miles) north of Kabul November 20, 2007.
REUTERS/Ahmad Masood
It fundamentally harms the long-term cause of global peace if America permits itself to move through history in a remorseless, irresponsible cycle wherein a Bush-type leader launches reckless wars and an Obama-type leader yanks our troops out. No matter how much we want our troops home, it is immoral to throw a country into chaos and then walk away simply because we grow weary of that chaos.
Counterinsurgency — the broad, innovative, flexible portfolio of tactics aimed at keeping civilians safe and earning their trust and cooperation — offers the best hope I’ve seen for attempting to make things right in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, foreign fighters, emboldened by America’s self-doubt and leadership dithering, are pouring into Afghanistan with a surge of their own, to push the perceived Taliban momentum. By ratcheting up the violence, they hope to influence Washington and American public perception to their favor.
U.S. Army Spc. Zackery Cely provides security from a tower at Forward Operating Base Lane in the Zabul province of Afghanistan Oct. 5, 2009. Cely is from Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment. (DoD photo by Spc. Tia P. Sokimson, U.S. Army)
Last weekend, two military outposts came under siege, resulting in the deaths of 8 U.S. soldiers, 7 Afghan soldiers.
Part of General McChrystal’s plan, however, is the withdrawal of U.S. forces from such remote outposts to concentrate upon population centers where the people are the prize. A counterterrorism campaign as opposed to counterinsurgency, runs the risk of alienating the Afghan people back into the abusive arms of the Taliban:
Another Taliban member says they benefited from American violence and the abuses of the Kabul government:
The Afghan Taliban were weak and disorganized. But slowly the situation began to change. American operations that harassed villagers, bombings that killed civilians, and Karzai’s corrupt police were alienating villagers and turning them in our favor. Soon we didn’t have to hide so much on our raids. We came openly. When they saw us, villagers started preparing green tea and food for us. The tables were turning. Karzai’s police and officials mostly hid in their district compounds like prisoners.
So the Taliban’s loss of 100 militants to take over outposts we were going to be leaving anyway, is a great victory only in their brain-addled minds.
Thomas Ricks posts an account- the most detailed one we have thus far- by retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey of last weekend’s battle in Nuristan:
Here are the facts, without revealing sensitive information. I feel compelled to write this because I heard some very fine, brave Americans foght for their very lives Saturday, 03 OCT 09. They fought magnificently. Read the rest of this entry »
An Afghan woman carries a girl while standing in line at a polling station in Herat, western Afghanistan, August 20, 2009.
REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi
“To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many transformative figures that have been honored by this prize. Me and women who have inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.”
-President Obama, from his gracious (yes it was) Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech October 9, 2009
How about not feeling worthy of standing above those “transformative figures” who haven’t been honored by the peace prize? Who are the ones who stand in the shadow of “The One we’ve been waiting for”?
A record 205 nominations (72 individuals and 33 organizations) were made for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. And President Barack Hussein Obama beat them all. Notable among these? Dr. Sima Samar:
here in Afghanistan the big story is about the nominee who didn’t win the prize. That would be Dr. Sima Samar, an incredibly courageous Afghan woman who has risked her life for much of the past decade, treating women and girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Read the rest of this entry »
Adiba, 17, of Kabul, showed her support for Afghan presidential candidate Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai at the bidding of her teacher as he met with women from the Malal group at his home in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 12, 2009. Although she planned to vote on Aug. 20, she had not decided which candidate would get her vote.
Nikki Kahn-THE WASHINGTON POST
This is indeed the dawning of the Age of Barack Hussein Obama….mmm…mmm….mm:
The anti-war group Code Pink, which rose to prominence with high-profile protests against the Iraq and Afghanistan wars over the past seven years, is softening its stance against the war in Afghanistan over concerns that a troop withdrawal could harm women’s rights in the country.
“We would leave with the same parameters of an exit strategy but we might perhaps be more flexible about a timeline,” Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin told the Christian Science Monitor. “That’s where we have opened ourselves … to some other possibilities. We have been feeling a sense of fear of the people of the return of the Taliban. So many people are saying that, ‘If the US troops left the country, would collapse. We’d go into civil war.’ A palpable sense of fear that is making us start to reconsider that.”
The apparent shift in policy comes in the wake of a week-long trip to Afghanistan by Code Pink members, where activists were surprised to find a lot of support among women’s rights activists for maintaining the US and NATO presence in the country.
They are just now awakening to this fact? Where were their brains at for the previous 8 years? Angelina Jolie “got it“, in regards to safeguarding Iraq on humanitarian grounds. Why couldn’t they?
Was opposition to the war all about political opposition to President Bush and not about promotion of peace and human rights (let alone democracy)? Read the rest of this entry »
With talks of “exit strategy” and “narrower focus”, it’s like the nation with the greatest military on the planet is throwing in the white towel of surrender to these thuggish clowns:
Taliban fighters ride on their motor bikes in an undisclosed location in the south of Afghanistan May 13, 2008.
REUTERS/Stringer
Obama’s developing strategy on the Taliban will “not tolerate their return to power,” the senior official said in an interview with The Associated Press. But the U.S. would fight only to keep the Taliban from retaking control of Afghanistan’s central government — something it is now far from being capable of — and from giving renewed sanctuary in Afghanistan to al-Qaida, the official said…
Bowing to the reality that the Taliban is too ingrained in Afghanistan’s culture to be entirely defeated, the administration is prepared, as it has been for some time, to accept some Taliban role in parts of Afghanistan, the official said. That could mean paving the way for Taliban members willing to renounce violence to participate in a central government — though there has been little receptiveness to this among the Taliban. It might even mean ceding some regions of the country to the Taliban…
Obama kept returning to one question for his advisers: Who is our adversary, the official said.
Should we be drawing a distinction between al Qaeda and other Islamic terror groups? Between al Qaeda and the Taliban? ALLAHPUNDIT also links to an excellent piece by Thomas Joscelyn & BIll Roggio:
A U.S Marine from Delta Company of 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion patrols near the town of Khan Neshin in Rig district of Helmand province, southern Afghanistan September 8, 2009.
REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic (AFGHANISTAN CONFLICT MILITARY IMAGES OF THE DAY)
