You are all mad at the President for doing exactly what he campaigned on.

Hyper_Eye

(429 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Tue Dec-01-09 07:37 PM
Original message

You are all mad at the President for doing exactly what he campaigned on.

He always said he would draw down in Iraq and focus attention on Afghanistan. This isn't a big surprise. We knew he would do it.

I won't say that the President has stuck to everything he said he would do during the campaign. He obviously let lobbyists into his administration and the influence of big business and the banking industry is clearly visible in his administration every time Geithner shows his face. He has not ended "don't ask don't tell" and Gitmo will still be operational come January. In these areas he has not kept to his campaign promises. It shouldn't surprise us that he would go back on some of his campaign promises because he showed us his willingness to do that as soon as the primary ended and he turned down public campaign financing. But he has done exactly what I expected and what everyone else should have expected when it comes to these wars. Iraq is practically irrelevant now and our involvement lessens all the time. Attention is on Afghanistan after it was completely ignored for 8 damn years. The President was willing to tell the people of Afghanistan that we are not willing to give blood and treasure to them without any end in sight. I don't know what is right in Afghanistan. It is an incredibly complex issue. I don't think I could have sent more troops and I don't feel good about the decision. I can't act like the President has deceived us though because he never did on this issue. People can put pressure on him from the left and from the right and everyone wants to be an armchair quarterback but this was his decision in the end and he will receive all the credit or blame when it is over. I think he is a very intelligent President and I hope he is doing the right thing.

At least he didn't allow public and political pressure push him to make a decision before he had time to hear all the options and put as much thought as possible into it. The last President didn't think about these things. He just acted. We had a President who didn't believe in critical thought or situational analysis. He shot from the hip and then tried to minimize the consequences with rhetoric. Should we so quickly forget? We had an 8 year disaster and this President is cleaning it up. Imagine where we would be in Afghanistan if we hadn't gone to Iraq. Barack Obama didn't start either of these wars and I am sure he would rather be doing a lot of other things but these wars exist whether the American people are aware of it or not. Barack Obama is taking charge and he will own Afghanistan. The last President barely acknowledged the existence of Afghanistan. He was the one that said about Bin Laden, "So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him." Oh how great the progress we have made.

This was a tough decision. It is tough for me not to be upset about the continuation of this war. At least there could be an end in sight. If we reach election day 2012 and the wars are over I will gladly mark the box for Barack Obama. His decision here was so much more thoughtful than anything Bush ever did and so many things are better and getting better. We will have health care reform. Gitmo will be closed. Terrorist criminals will have been prosecuted and providers of medical marijuana will be free of fear of the same. Our markets will be healthy and people will have jobs. These are just some of the things we wouldn't have if Barack Obama weren't President. I support this President and I support a plan to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.