Some presidents may not like being wartime leaders. But they don’t get to decide; history does.
Many have charged that President Obama’s decision to begin withdrawing from Afghanistan ten months from now is hampering our war effort. But now it’s official. In a stunning statement last week, Marine Corps commandant Gen. James Conway admitted that the July 2011 date is “probably giving our enemy sustenance.”
A remarkably bold charge for an active military officer. It stops just short of suggesting aiding and abetting the enemy. Yet the observation is obvious: It is surely harder to prevail in a war that hinges on the allegiance of the locals when they hear the U.S. president talk of beginning a withdrawal that will ultimately leave them to the mercies of the Taliban.
How did Obama come to this decision? “Our Afghan policy was focused as much as anything on domestic politics,” an Obama adviser at the time told Peter Baker of the New York Times. “He would not risk losing the moderate to centrist Democrats in the middle of health insurance reform and he viewed that legislation as the make-or-break legislation for his administration.”
If this is true, then Obama’s military leadership can only be called scandalous. During the past week, 22 Americans were killed over a four-day period in Afghanistan. This is not a place about which decisions should be made in order to placate congressmen, pass health-care reform, and thereby maintain a president’s political standing. This is a place about which a president should make decisions to best succeed in the military mission he himself has set out.
If this is true, then Obama’s military leadership can only be called scandalous. During the past week, 22 Americans were killed over a four-day period in Afghanistan. This is not a place about which decisions should be made in order to placate congressmen, pass health-care reform, and thereby maintain a president’s political standing. This is a place about which a president should make decisions to best succeed in the military mission he himself has set out….
Unfortunately, what for Obama is a distraction is life or death for U.S. troops now on patrol in Kandahar province. Some presidents may not like being wartime leaders. But they don’t get to decide. History does. Obama needs to accept the role. It’s not just the U.S. military, as Baker reports, that is “worried he is not fully invested in the cause.” Our allies, too, are experiencing doubt. And our enemies are drawing sustenance.
[ Our dangerous Politician-In-Chief is not only guilty of ignorance but also malfeasance. Our warriors know it and, worse yet, our enemies know it. And worst of all, our warriors’ families live with it. – JS ]
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