Unfortunately, the Americans in Afghanistan are too experienced and professional to allow themselves to be slaughtered en masse, and the Taliban just aren’t very good when they’re facing armed, alert soldiers. Blowing up little girls and old women at roadside fruit stands is more their speed. So the months dragged by, and Obama is still waiting for events to rescue him and give him a chance to look sober and rueful as he delivers his (no doubt much-rehearsed) speech announcing that America is slinking home in shame and defeat.

Might it not be at least possible to view this as something other than Obama dithering? I don’t think he’s dithering, or having any trouble making a decision. I doubt he even thinks it’s worth his time, which is why he bothers to have a meeting about it only every two months or so. I think he’s being deliberately insulting to the military and to this entire country, intending to show everyone involved, including our warriors, that he thinks the war, and they, are not worth spit–he’s doing one of his bird-flipping routines. I suspect he’s made his decision, and it’s that this country is going to lose, everywhere, all the time, in the most brazen way, and without him fretting over it.

I think that, when he hears he’s being compared to Hamlet, he laughs. I think that to compare him to Hamlet is to do Hamlet a disservice.

after all, how did mao take control?

In order to provide cover to BO for his continued dithering, isn’t it more than likely that BO or Emanuel or one of their genius advisors called the ambassador, told him to make a recommendation immediately as to whether additional troops are needed, AND TOLD HIM TO RECOMMEND THAT NO TROOPS BE SENT BECUASE OF THE CORRUPTION IN AFGHANISTAN. So, now it’s not the “necessary good war” but a war to create democracy in Afghanistan which is failing.

You can already hear that one in all the commentaries, as the whole “Afghanistan==just war” component of the anti-war rhetoric fades like a Cheshire cat, and Afghanistan is used in the same, identical context with Iraq — “wars in Iraq and Afghanistan”, making them equivalent and equally unsupported and unsupportable.

The media has become The Enemy of The State, in terms of the people, as opposed to the government.

As the apocryphal curse goes, “We indeed live in interesting times”. It would be interesting to see how the Chinese historians will write about it.

I bet the Taliban are shaking in their boots or sandals or whatever they wear on their feet.

Sadly, while it wouldn’t please us, and in the short term I think it would cause more carping, I think that would also be the better decision for those of us on the right (I assume that any “win” strategy is out of the cards for that statement – I feel fairly confident saying that right now).

Of the things I lament about Bush was his treatment of Afghanistan. The Lefts focus on the better fight in Iraq allowed him to just let Afghanistan slide. Iraq has always been “easy” in that it wasn’t a fight against the Iraqis but one against foreign fighters. The left also needed one of the fights to be “The Good One” sp they let it slide too (after all a truly anti-war person is insane so we need to have at least one supported). Really, even to this day the Dems have been herded to an extent that is comical on the whole thing.

Obama seems to be hoping that the same thing will occur for him, however it didn’t just “occur” for Bush. It wasn’t planned – like many of the so called “rope-a-dopes” it was simply taking advantage of the situation afforded to them. Obama seems to think simply being Him is enough.

Iraq is pretty much won so lets look at the earlier war (and also lets look at the Balkans – also a bad place left to fester by a president that was excellent at taking advantage of a situation) and decide what to do.

We have the foremost military experts on this type of war and one of the foremost civilian experts. They *all* say we can do one of three things: fight to win, turtle up (go the Bosnia route of protecting Kabul and let the rest go to hell – though I think none really like this option much), or leave. Those ideas were rejected this week.

Obama is going to own Afghanistan. Had he allowed the people who had such success in Iraq to rule he could have (even legitimately) let them own a failure. Now he is most likely in the position of owning any failure and having someone else own any success (much as Bush has done in Iraq for much the same reason – Petraeus owns Iraq and Bush really only gets credit for finally letting it happen against the opposition).

This interview with Couric (from 60 Minutes) clearly shows this man’s sterling character. He’s the real deal. This is what a man should be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixUbdeXCp0M