The Campaign and the Presidency

There is an ocean of difference between waging a campaign studded with promises of hope and change and delivering on those promises.

There were many commitments made to the American people during Obama’s candidacy.  In the race for the 2008 presidential prize, I zeroed in on the one which I felt 100% certain that he would not deliver on if elected:  His commitment to begin the drawdown of American troops from Afghanistan by July, 2011.

Don’t ask me about all of my reasons why, because I could write an interminable essay on it, but the single most important point of skepticism is that he was expressing an idealistic point of view upon which I felt certain that he simply would miss the mark. 

In his recent book, “Obama’s Wars,” Bob Woodward telegraphed President Obama’s intent to extend the Afghanistan timeline when he wrote that the president would reveal a new strategy by December 2010.  Right on schedule, Mr. Obama now says that we are there until at least 2014.

What Mr. Obama did not explain is just what the end game is and how much it will cost us in more lives and treasure.  

American soldiers are being undermined by the inept leadership of Afghanistan’s puppet President Hamid Karzai who cares more about his personal security and precarious political position.  

The man hunkers down in the capital city of Kabul, the only part of Afghanistan over which he holds any degree of control, thanks to American delivered protection.  He is unsafe in his own country and shuns travel to his subjects outside of Kabul for that reason.

In gratitude, Karzai hampers U.S. military operations by demanding rules of engagement for our troops which endanger their lives.

 Meanwhile, his counterpart over the border in Pakistan refuses to grant American requests to extend the strike zone of U.S. drones in that country.  This further endangers American lives and reduces the chances of neutering key Jihadist killers who may gravitate to undeclared safe havens in Pakistan.

While speaking of his Afghanistan timeline extension, Mr. Obama did not specify the billions more which will be wasted on nation building projects in both of those countries, as the U.S. tries to drain its own economic swamp where those dollars could be put to better use.  This country can’t do it all for everybody else, especially for the ungrateful.

OK!  I know.  This is not the cheeriest of messages just a few days before Thanksgiving.  I promise the next post will be lighter, but some things need saying.

Thanks for reading.  Have a good week and remember, stay engaged.

IN REMEMBRANCE:  Forty-seven years ago today in 1963, our young President John F. Kennedy was gunned down while on a campaign tour in Dallas, Texas.  Also on this day, C.S. Lewis, the famed author of The Chronicles of Narnia, passed away of natural causes.