Next Tuesday, President Obama will tell the nation why it’s important to send more American troops to Afghanistan.
If you ask me, that’s an impossible job.
I know it’s Thanksgiving, but not even Barack Obama, with all his oratorical skills, can sell this turkey.
What the President has to do is convince the American people, who see no threat from Afghanistan, that it’s not only necessary to continue a war that George Bush started eight years ago, it’s also important to expand it. By over 30,000 additional troops – at a cost of $30 billion a year.
Why? Because, Obama says, he wants to “finish the job.”
What job? Originally, Bush told us the “job” in Afghanistan was to topple the Taliban. We finished that job in one month. So why are we still there, eight years later? And what’s the new job?
Frankly, I don’t think there’s any way the President can sell this job to the American people. Americans are not afraid of Afghanistan. They’re tired of this war. And they certainly don’t want to spend any more money, or American lives, to pay for it.
Instead of trying to sell an expansion of George Bush’s war, Barack Obama should just abandon it – and get on with his own agenda.
That’s my parting shot for today.
Obama is watching the polls and listening to the criticisms from other world leaders. A majority of Americans now disapprove his handling of the war and lack of support of the military as CIC. Many world leaders and millions of Americans consider Obama indecisive, weak and naive. American support for a troop increase is up. Obama acknowledges we are going to be in Afghanistan for years to come. Obama has already spent trillions on stimulus, bailouts, TARP, etc. so 30 billion for Afghanistan doesn’t sound to bad does it? Give me 10 minutes at the Federal budget and I could come up with enough pork and waste and useless programs to fund the troops in Afghanistan for a decade.
We’ll know his reasoning and end-game in a few days. It should be interesting. Bush is gone. He kept the country safe for 7 years. Now it’s Obama’s war on terror and his responsibility for whatever happens. There’s no one else to blame or pass the buck to.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by MADNews101, Bill Press. Bill Press said: Today's Parting Shot: Finish What Job? http://bit.ly/8yNPYM [...]
We have a lot of decisions to work-out, but something we need to be aware of…the financial “ripple”, which can last 4-6 years. With that being said, whatever the Obama administration has and can come up with won’t be in affect until later. So, what the Bush administration has done has not even been “fixed” yet. This country will come out on top, but it is going to take some time.
M
I agree, there’s no real job to finish. We need to just pack up and bring those in uniform home. We didn’t have any business there in the first place. All this madness of a global war on terror seems quite manufactured to me the more I learn of it. Nothing changes though in time of war. Since the revolutionary war the wealthy have started the wars and the poor have fought and died in them. I’d be willing to bet that nothing less than a select few wealthy families since 1776 ever lost a close family member as a result of war.