First from Ralph Peters:
Our president is setting up our military to fail -- but he'll be able to claim that he gave the generals what they wanted. Failure will be their fault.
He's covering his strong-on-security flank, even as he plays to our white-flag wavers. His cynicism's worthy of a Saddam.
Obama's right about one thing, though: The Afghans "will ultimately be responsible for their own country." So why undercut them with an arbitrary timeline that doesn't begin to allow adequate time to expand and train sufficient Afghan forces? Does he really believe that young Afghans are going to line up to join the army and police knowing that we plan to abandon them in mid-2011?
Does the 2012 election ring a bell?
What messages did our president's bait-and-switch speech just send?
To our troops: Risk your lives for a mission I've written off.
To our allies: Race you to the exit ramp.
To the Taliban: Allah is merciful, your prayers will soon be answered.
To Afghan leaders: Get your stolen wealth out of the country.
To Pakistan: Renew your Taliban friendships now (and be nice to al Qaeda).
This isn't just stupid: It's immoral. No American president has ever espoused such a worthless, self-absorbed non-strategy for his own political gratification.
Second, over at American Thinker:
They say that the U.S. Military Academy at West Point was an odd venue for President Obama's Afghanistan speech. And indeed it was - after all, surrenders are usually offered to the enemy on the battlefield.
For that is exactly what the President proposed Tuesday night; surrender, abject and total.
And if that wasn't boon enough to our enemies, Obama offered them an extra token - before our announced withdrawal date of July 2011, he will generously offer them 30,000 more American soldiers to shoot at for the next year and a half. Surely target practice is all our soldiers will be, having been told in advance that they will be coming home scarcely before they can load their own weapons.
Obama's gall is nothing short of astounding: He dares to travel to a group of soldiers, to tell them to their face that he is sending them to fight and die in a battle that he has no intention of letting them win; that they will be pulled from the battle-field in time to placate his left-wing base for the 2012 election.
I've read a bunch of "I support the President's decision, but there are some problems" stuff from various politicians. The Democrats and fellow-travellers want us to surrender and leave(not all the Democrats, but far too many); and a bunch of Republicans don't want to be seen as 'unsupportive'. Well, crap on that.
He wasted a quarter of the vital year McChrystal wrote of in dithering and delaying.
He's sending less than half the number of troops originally requested.
He's putting constraints on their actions.
He's telling the enemy "We'll be gone by 'X' time."
Well, I'm NOT supportive of that crap. Either send enough troops, with orders to WIN, or pull them out. Period. This bastard is playing games with the troops lives to A: keep from offending his leftist base too much and B: try to keep from looking as weak on defense as he actually is. He doesn't have the balls to either say "Win" and take the heat, or pull them out and take THAT heat; he's too busy hoping for a second term to 're-make' the US with.
No, I'm not in a real good mood about this tonight.
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