The Waiting Game - At Grave Expense

Rome is burning and Caesar continues to fiddle … with the lives of our warriors.

President Barack Obama is nearing a decision to send more than 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan next year, but he may not announce it until after he consults with key allies and completes a trip to Asia later this month…

“Later this month” means after November 19.  After which there is a meeting with our NATO allies on November 23 – which is supposedly when Obama will unveil his long-awaited Afghanistan strategy and look for NATO’s approval of the use of our own troops.

Americans represent nearly 2/3 of the total number of troops in Afghanistan.  I understand NATO is made up of our allies, but since when do we allow the minority to dictate the strategy of the majority?  This isn’t about who pays for dinner or being fair or politically correct.

This is about the lives of American men and women.  Each of whom possess more character in a single eyelash than Obama could ever claim in 10 lifetimes.

And … what happens right after that NATO meeting?  Our nation’s holiday – Thanksgiving – and you know the prevaricator-in-chief will further postpone a decision on Afghanistan in favor of eating turkey at the White House.

The 30,000 troops Obama will purportedly recommend are 50,000 less than requested by General McChrystal – back in July.  By the time Obama makes a decision he will have had the report from the ground for nearly 5 months.  5 months where Obama played more golf that President Bush did in over 2 years, where he made a public spectacle of himself regarding the Olympics, where he appeared in numerous press conferences about … well about anything he felt like talking about that held the spotlight on him.

And in those 5 months, 155 of our warriors gave their lives in service to their country – more than half of the 286 total to date in 2009.  A fact that Obama can only honor with a photo op. Where every opportunity to potentially do the right thing is consistently viewed thru the lens of politics:

Administration officials also want time to launch a public relations offensive to convince an increasingly skeptical public and a wary Democratic Congress — which must agree to fund the administration's plan — that the war, now in its ninth year and inflicting rising casualties, is one of "necessity," as Obama said earlier this year.

"This is not going to be an easy sell, especially with the fight over health care and the (Democratic) party's losses" of the governors' mansions in New Jersey and Virginia last week, said one official. [emphasis mine]

Yeah, those Democrat losses mean so much to our warriors on the ground.  I bet they all huddled around a campfire, bemoaning those losses as tracer fire echoed overhead.  I bet those warriors were more concerned about the outcome of the New Jersey governor’s race than about the IEDs blowing up in front of them.

Seeing how Obama is treating his “war of necessity” should be a sobering call to the rest of the country; it’s the perfect illustration of how he will deal with issues as president - if it’s not about him it’s not important.

Comments

[Michelle]

I seriously doubt that Obama's inability to decide on what to do next has much anything to do with the view of your allies in Afghanistan. More likely it's just another excuse to put off making a decision ... and we all know that not making a decision is a decision, in and of itself.