“His plan comes up short. There’s not enough troops, not enough resources and not enough urgency. What President Bush and Senator McCain don’t understand is that the central front in the War on Terror is not in Iraq and never was. The central front is in Afghanistan and Pakistan where the terrorists who hit us on 9-11 are still plotting attacks seven years later.”
Senator Barack Obama
On the Bush war strategy
September 9, 2008
Video Flashback: Barack Obama scolded President Bush last year for not sending enough troops to Afghanistan:
Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said President Bush’s announcement that he’ll send more forces into Afghanistan is too slow and insufficient. (Sept. 9)
But, that was just campaign gibberish.
As President Obama continues to vote present on “the central front in the War on Terror” the state-run media prepares America for the likelihood that the radical in the White House may surrender Afghanistan to the Taliban and warlords before the job is finished.
The AP reported:
As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama denounced the war in Iraq and U.S. strategy there, vowing if elected to draw down troops and send them to Afghanistan to address the growing threat from al-Qaida and the Taliban.
“There is no military solution in Iraq,” Obama said.
Now, with mounting U.S. casualties in Afghanistan, waning public support for the war and a dire assessment of the situation on the ground by his commanding general, Obama may be forced to decide there is no military solution in Afghanistan, either.
“He really did make a strong point as a candidate about the significance of Afghanistan as the place to fight against terrorism, but it’s a lot easier said than done,” said Natalie Davis, a political science professor at Alabama’s Birmingham-Southern College. “You have a sense now that the current thinking among many around him is that this is a loser, that it really does resemble Vietnam.”
Campaign rhetoric is coming up against a tough reality for the president, who now must make a crucial decision about how to proceed in what he’s called a war of necessity.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that whatever course Obama chose would be consistent with his pledge during the campaign to treat Afghanistan as the central front in the war on terrorism.
“There isn’t a military solution alone to any of this,” Gibbs said, but rather “a series of solutions.”
It looks like that military solution worked just fine in Iraq.
Unfortunately, Obama may not have the constitution to push for a similar solution in Afghanistan.
Related… British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told Obama to quit voting present and send more troops to Afghanistan.
