Recently, President Obama’s advisors have decided that it’s easier to blame the Bush Administration than support our troops. This weekend they leveled a charge that cannot go unanswered. The President’s chief of staff claimed that the Bush Administration hadn’t asked any tough questions about Afghanistan, and he complained that the Obama Administration had to start from scratch to put together a strategy.
In the fall of 2008, fully aware of the need to meet new challenges being posed by the Taliban, we dug into every aspect of Afghanistan policy, assembling a team that repeatedly went into the country, reviewing options and recommendations, and briefing President-elect Obama’s team. They asked us not to announce our findings publicly, and we agreed, giving them the benefit of our work and the benefit of the doubt. The new strategy they embraced in March, with a focus on counterinsurgency and an increase in the numbers of troops, bears a striking resemblance to the strategy we passed to them. They made a decision – a good one, I think – and sent a commander into the field to implement it. [emphasis mine]
Now they seem to be pulling back and blaming others for their failure to implement the strategy they embraced. It’s time for President Obama to do what it takes to win a war he has repeatedly and rightly called a war of necessity.
So goes the speech that former Vice President Dick Cheney gave to the Center for Security Policy the evening of October 21, 2009.
So Obama’s campaign asked for the Bush administration to hold off on announcing a major strategy for a major war – the “right war” according to Obama at the time. And the Bush administration did as requested, likely in the hopes that Obama would review the strategy before election day and if elected – be ready to run with it or something like it as soon as he took office.
Obama spoke often enough about Afghanistan being "the right and necessary war" during his endless campaign that it must have seemed the right thing for the Bush administration to do.
And what did they get for their honorable actions? Obama and his minions starting their pattern of pointing fingers and placing the blame on anyone but themselves.
This current administration has done nothing but this since January. The fact is that Obama owns the White House for the next 4 years and it’s time for him to put on his big boy pants and take responsibility for his office, his administration and his decisions (or lack thereof).
Right now I’m all about taking responsibility for yourself and not blaming others for your own failures.
What Obama is doing is called projection and it’s the actions of a coward.
Obama is a coward – he can’t accept responsibility for the office he’s been trying to get to since he was in kindergarten. He seems more interested in glad-handing with the Europeans, preaching about mutual love and understanding than in running his own country. As I’ve said before, he is our candidate-in-chief.
His Congress hasn’t accomplished anything since the Democrats took over in 2006 – except for TAARP (which I’m not sure I’d put at the top of my resume). Since he took office Congress hasn’t passed one meaningful piece of legislation, unless you want to include Pork – which I don’t because it’s the worst nightmare rammed down the throat of the American people. It will be second only to Cap and Trade, should that travesty find it’s way to a law book.
Oh yes, and that multi-trillion dollar public health option – lest we forget that Congress has been chewing on that for months now, with no resolution. Which may not be a bad thing for the American people, but it shows how useless Congress really is.
Naturally, the White House had to respond to Cheney's speech. What is this - a playground at a nursery school?
Whine whine whine. It’s what goes with dinner at the White House – every damn day.
"What Vice President Cheney calls dithering, President Obama calls his solemn responsibility to the men and women in uniform," Gibbs said Thursday. "I think we've all seen what happens when somebody doesn't take that responsibility seriously."
Mr. Gibbs, in case you didn’t notice – Mr. Cheney is a former Vice President. Your Vice President is Joe Biden. Your President is Barack Obama. Mr. Cheney gave this speech in a private forum, not a public one. Why do you feel compelled repeatedly to defend your president from statements made in speeches by private citizens? That Mr. Cheney has intimate knowledge of the White House for the preceding 8 years is not in dispute; the fact that he has first-hand knowledge of what transpired during those 8 years is also not in dispute.
And he’s not there anymore. What has transpired since January 20, 2009 is a host of lackadaisical responses to requests for a new strategy in Afghanistan. While Obama was grandstanding in Europe, misusing his position through pandering to the Olympic Committee for the impossible task of getting the Olympics to Chicago, General McChrystal waited for a response to a strategy and troop level request that was over a month old. While Obama fiddled with his Olympic dreams, 40 American soldiers were killed in Afghanistan. Obama deigned to give the General 25 minutes on Air Force One as he jetted his way to international humiliation, then opted to castigate him in public for the General’s own public statements about his frustration with this administration and its lack of action in Afghanistan.
And still … nothing. So is this how Obama and his administration illustrate his “solemn responsibility to the men and women in uniform”? I wonder how our warriors – men and women whom Obama doesn’t have the right to be in the same room with, doesn’t have the right to breathe the same air - feel about the solemnity of a man who is just a pretender.
But I digress from the really important news of the day – Michelle Obama does the hula hoop. Seriously.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at 06:48PM ;)
The Obama administration is introducing a new kind of math to the general public. Did you know that 1+1=14,330? No? ;)
;)
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