The president's speech tonight at the United States Military Academy seemed to be put together well and was very forceful. Unfortunately, it will of course not satisfy the republicans who want us to send our children to fight over there and it will not please the Progressives who want us to leave.
Following the president's speech, a variety of political guests were brought on the first was: republican Buck McKeon. He said among other things that 1.) the 30,000 soldiers being sent by the president was less than what General McChrystal had asked for and that 2.) the president in effect was making a mistake by setting time tables and that a draw down should be based upon conditions on the ground rather than, time tables.
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The second guest was senator Bernie Sanders. Senator Sanders said that although, he did not want the Taliban to re-establish themselves, he wanted to know 1.) where the rest of the world was. The senator stated that it would be just like Iraq in that America already had 70% of the foreign ground forces there. 2.) That the president didn't mention that the United States of America was in the worst recession since the Great Depression and that 3.) one in four children were or on or qualified for food stamps. 4.) When asked about the war tax that some of his democratic colleagues had been talking about he said that it was at least better than the former president George W. Bush who payed for the fighting by putting it on our children and grand children to pay for it in the future. 5.) The senator wasn't to hot about the war tax idea because he said that this huge obligation to pay for these occupations would come out of funds needed here in America for our own people, for example infra-structure etc. . And finally, senator Sanders said 6.) That it was no secret that the government of Afghanistan was corrupt and that it had no credibility with its own people.
A third guest was Bing West a retired marine who also was assistant secretary of defense under president Reagan. Mr. West commented that even though the president seemed to set a solid 18 month commitment time line for the first American troop withdrawals that combat advisors would still have to stay in Afghanistan a much longer time. Some other journalists followed and one made the comment that the president's plan sounded like the "Goldilocks plan" in that it went right down the middle of the road in addition to being "vague and neither to hot or cold." They further stated that this "down the middle" plan was ironically arguing against what the president was saying earlier in the speech in terms of going the long haul and sticking by the Afghanis.
It seemed these last two journalists were saying that president Obama was just trying to buy enough time to get out of Afghanistan later without looking bad. One of the two journalists believed that the president's speech tonight had probably bought him some time and thathat those who opposed the president's plan would not have enough votes to stop him even though 6 out of 10 democrats were for not the continued occupation of Afghanistan. They stated that what would really help president Obama garner support for his Afghanistan escalation would be two groups of democrats: 1.) The War hawk democrats and 2.) The "Gee" democrats who would say...Gee, I hope he's right.
Lastly, these two journalists were surprised that the president brought up the example of Vietnam because it was something his opponents had been using its example to argue for exiting out of Afghanistan. The president argued that Vietnam was different in that there was not a large alliance of nations to support the United States in that conflict while the occupation of Afghanistan had large international support and finally, he said unlike Vietnam, Afghanistan was actually used as a place from which our country was viciously attacked and that two plots of terrorism had just recently been foiled here in the U.S. that had been planned in the area of Afghanistan.
The question is...has the president bought time to stave off the critics of his policy, we will shortly find out.