Visual Source: Newseum
Ta-Nahisi Coates:
Whatever one thinks of the death penalty, the accounts of those who would seek to conceal the results of their theory should be closely checked. If only for that reason, the prospect of Governor Perry as commander in chief induces a chilling nostalgia. Indeed, choosing a leader of the free world from the ranks of those who sport a self-serving incuriosity is a habit, like crash landings and cock-fights, best cultivated in strict moderation.
Once a century should suffice.
NY Times editorial:
On Wednesday night, President Obama announced that American troops will soon begin to withdraw, but at a size and pace unlikely to satisfy many Americans.
He said that 10,000 of the 33,000 troops from the “surge” would come home before the end of this year, with the rest out by next summer. He vowed that reductions would continue “at a steady pace” after that, and that “the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security” by sometime in 2014.
We are not military planners, so we won’t play the too big/too small numbers game. Mr. Obama argued that the United States is starting the drawdown “from a position of strength” — that Al Qaeda has been pummeled and the Taliban have suffered serious losses — and that his goals are limited. “We won’t try to make Afghanistan a perfect place.” It was a particular relief to hear him say that “the tide of war is receding” in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
But he will need to do a lot more to explain why it is in this country’s strategic interest to stick things out for another three-plus years. And why his drawdown plan has a credible chance of leaving behind an Afghanistan that won’t implode as soon as American troops are gone.
WaPo:
As President Obama called Wednesday night for scaling down troop numbers in Afghanistan over the next year, differences over how to approach the conflict emerged among GOP presidential hopefuls, with some calling for a faster withdrawal and others arguing for a more conditions-based drawdown.
The contrast among 2012 Republican candidates reflects a change in the party’s hawkish orthodoxy, unease over spending and crumbling support for the war. The most recent poll shows that nearly three quarters of Americans believe a substantial number of troops should come home this summer.
The Hill:
President Obama's speech laying out the pace at which U.S. troops will leave Afghanistan was panned by Republican presidential candidates, who assailed Obama for either moving too quickly or too slowly.
Both former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney had more hawkish reactions to Obama's speech, which outlined a plan to remove 10,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year, and another 23,000 troops by next fall.
Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, a Republican running for president who served as Obama's ambassador to China, by contrast chided Obama for moving too slowly, joining with the likes of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), the libertarian-minded presidential candidate who's long called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
Eugene Robinson:
There was almost a pro-forma air to President Obama’s speech tonight.
He touched all the right bases — at times with specificity, at times with platitudes — but there was no sense, for me, that anything had fundamentally changed.
It was informative to learn that 10,000 U.S. troops will come home from Afghanistan this year and another 23,000 or so by the summer or fall of 2012. I am sure this announcement gives comfort and joy to the families of those young men and women who, fairly soon, will be homeward bound.
But that means nearly 70,000 troops will remain beyond next year — nearly twice as many as were in the country when Obama took office.
EJ Dionne:
Here are the key questions about Jon Huntsman’s presidential candidacy: Is he the American version of David Cameron? And is the Republican Party ready for a Cameron moment?
What does a British prime minister have to do with the 2012 Republican primaries? If Huntsman is lucky, quite a lot. The British Conservative Party chose Cameron as its leader in 2005 because it was sick of losing elections and realized it could no longer present itself as an old, cranky, right-wing party. Cameron was Mr. Nice, Mr. Modern, Mr. Moderate and Mr. New. And now he’s in power.
It might be good for the GOP, but in my view, Huntsman has no shot in this GOP primary season unless a completely different electorate than the one we expect shows up. It's one thing to trail in the polls, it's another thing to trail (yawn) Tim Pawlenty and Rick Santorum. Two out of three "serious" candidates are in the process of being rejected by GOP voters. Soon enough, when it's time to vote, we can stop pretending it's not true.
The Republican Party needs a Cameron-style correction, and the country needs a less doctrinaire, less extreme and less angry GOP. Huntsman is betting that enough people who vote in the primaries believe this, too.
EJ is right. The question, however, is whether the GOP is ready for that.
This is from Gallup. The more GOP voters get to know Huntsman (and 34% now know who he is) the less they like him. I don't see how that translates as a sudden surge of support, not with constant carping fromthe GOP noise machine:
Club for Growth was blunt in its assessment of Republican presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman Jr. As governor of Utah, Mr. Huntsman compiled a “spending record that is inexcusable,” the small-government group said Wednesday.