Spookymufu wrote:I wish it hadnt taken him 4mo to make the decision but thats Obama, he needs everyone's approval before he makes a decision.
That is just a ridiculous statement. Approval? From who? Most liberals don't like his decision. Taking time in making the decision only gave Republican hacks a talking point to use in their mud-slinging. Implying that a deliberative process was somehow a crass political calculation is petty partisanship at its worst.
There is no truly good option, only a series of bad ones. He had to weigh the consequences, and I'll tell you, I'm glad we have a president who makes the big decisions by a process more complex than a coin toss.
Spookymufu wrote:I didnt like him giving dates of military extraction, we all know the bad guys are listening so we'll have to see how that goes, hopefully he has a plan to prevent the Taliban from just waiting us out.
I remember the same argument being made against setting a timetable for withdraw from Iraq. The fact is, it doesn't matter what we tell the "bad guys" about when we're leaving. The point is what we're telling the "good guys" who we're supposed to be training to defend themselves.
It's like this. "Look, we're gonna help you. We're gonna help you set up your government, and help train your army to defend yourselves against the insurgents. But we won't be here forever. On such and such a date, we're out of here, so no more d!cking around. Get yourselves sorted, or get killed and overthrown." If the Afghani government thinks they'll have the U.S. Army to defend them as long as they want, why would they ever bother organizing and equipping their own army?
Spookymufu wrote:His far left base are probably going ape sh*t tho because he didnt flat out say he was pulling all troops home
You don't get much further left than me, but I'll be quite honest with you.... I don't know how I feel about it. I was part of the 80% who supported W. when he went in back in November of 2001. That's a big part of the reason I opposed the war in Iraq; it was a diversion from the war where the guys who attacked us on 9/11 actually were. I got so sick of pointing out to Republicans I debated that there was no Al Qaeda in Iraq before we invaded. I got sick of pointing out that not a single one of the hijackers was Iraqi. I got sick of pointing out that, even as they were dragging Saddam Hussein from his spider hole, the guy who actually murdered 3,000 Americans was still roaming free in the hills of Afghanistan, the land of the forgotten war. And I fully agreed with Obama during the 2008 campaign when he said, over and over, that if elected he intended to send more troops into Afghanistan to finish the job. My problem is that I'm less and less clear what the job actually is, and if it even can be finished. I don't know if it is too late to turn around the failures in that country due to our under-resourcing it for six years. I don't know if establishing a stable government with a military capable of preventing the overthrow of the government is possible in Afghanistan, and if it is, what kind of totalitarian government might it morph into a decade from now, that might present a whole new threat? I don't know if expending more blood and treasure will actually yield a better result, or if it's doubling down on a bet that's already lost.
I do know this much.... Any lefty who voted for Obama who's going apesh!t over the decision hasn't been paying attention for the past two years. Whatever else you say, however else you feel about him or the decision, this is a campaign promise kept.