Drink your Kool-Aid NC. Excuse me but the results are the same. We ACCOMPLISHED NOTHING (either under W or Obama) except waste lives and $$$. We left Vietnam the same way. I was there and yes Nixon said we left with honor but everyone knew it was the death warrant for South Vietnam. The same thing here when we leave the Taliban will take back over as everyone knows. My point sport is why spend another 10 years in wasted lives and $ for no result. Is that worth Obama's pledge?? Oh yes the war in Iraq was basically over by 2008 when Obama took over. Petreaus had done his work and Iraq was as stable as can be. Bush set the schedule and what would you and everyone else have said if we had changed the schedule of withdrawal? The president's word thenwas as meaningless as it was when he said "you can keep your insurance...".
I don't think Obama is nearly as bad as he is painted, he is a far cry better than the previous administration, I just think he had a golden opportunity in the first 2 years of his presidency to make some real progress and it was squandered. Which in a way is worse than the previous guy.
Winston, you like to make partisan points and then when someone refutes them you point the finger and call the other person a partisan. It's like the pot calling kettle black. I categorically disagree with your assertion that Obama's foreign policy doesn't more closely resemble Clinton, Bush 1 and Reagan. In fact, it is widely recognized in the International community how the US has returned to acting as a leader on the world stage, not just militarily but also diplomatically. Blame is to be laid where it is due, Winston. You cannot, on the one hand, admit that you disagreed with a lot of Bush's policies and then turn right around and say that we cannot blame those decisions as consequential to what we are living with today because that's just a god damned lie. Bush and Cheney made a host of piss poor decisions that have proved extremely costly to our country from starting a war of choice with Iraq that has cost us trillions of dollars and untold human treasure, lowered taxes so significantly that we could no longer afford to pay our bills, enacted massive new entitlements with medicare part D and their UN-response to Katrina. These are just the "high" points but this list could go on. You cannot fuck something up so massively and not expect that you are going to get the blame for those decisions. That's not the way the world works, Winston, and the sad thing is you know this. Obama has had his share of mistakes....they all do, but he is a vast improvement over Bush. You call it whining, I call it telling the truth.
His fault during the first two years was being naive enough to think the Republicans were going to play ball
Small Reminder: Osama Bin Laden and the other guys who planned the attacks on 9/11 and killed all those innocent Americans are dead now pal. Isn't that what we set out to do in the first place?
Using the same tactics as his predecessor. You can't talk a bunch of shit about about the previous guy when you use the same tactics. All Obama has done differently is put the wars on the books. And aplologize to a few people, mostly Saudis who can get fucked IMO. We are still throwing billions upon billions of dollars into a Sarlac pit.
NC you have twisted this around so much. Should I type slowly or only in caps so you can read and understand? am going to ask you one question. IT IS WORTH IT TO LEAVE OUR TROOPS IN HARMS WAY FOR 10 MORE YEARS WHEN AFTER THEY LEAVE THE TALIBAN TAKE OVER AND RETURN TO MEDIEVAL RULE???? Are you willing to look the families of those killed and wounded and tell them what they sacrificed for? Are you willing to pay the extra taxes to pay for Karzi and his ilk to get richer while the people of the US and Afghanistan suffer? Are you willing to waste the our treasure in lives and money for a campaign pledge? This is the sum of my first post and you have avoided answering. Try to answer yes or no and feel free to explain your reason if you can in a clear way without dredging the previous administration up.
He wasn't in Pakistan until the previous administration, in their infinite wisdom, tasked a tribal warlord with doing the down and dirty work in the caves of Tora Bora, rather than allowing the world's finest military to do their fucking jobs. We were also in Afghanistan because the Taliban government was allowing Al Queda safe passage in their country and allowing them to use their land as a launching ground for their terrorist activities. This was well known information at the time.
Actually not using the same tactics as his predecessor. In fact, the change in tactics proved deadly to the Al Queda leadership. Rather than using 100,000 man army to go and fight small, roving bands of terrorists, we started employing special forces groups coupled with drone strikes. That was not the case until 2009. Finally someone who understood history got it: the Roman empire fell, not because any standing army overtook Rome, but because they were repeatedly sacked by the Vandals, the Gauls, the Visigoths and the Vikings. Rome made the colossal error of sending out their big army to try and find these nomadic bands who kept sacking Rome but all it served to do was spread their forces too thin and led to more raids. Those nomadic bands had no interest in holding ground, no more than the terrorists of today do, but they understood what the terrorists understand now: beating us is more about crippling our economy from attacks, fear of attacks, etc. than it ever was about beating us on a battlefield and holding a surrender ceremony. Sound familiar? It does to me. We've apologized to no one. As a matter of fact the Saudis are more pissed at us than they have ever been because we are engaging Iran in direct talks, and frankly it's about time that we had leadership who weren't in bed with the Saudi's the way the Bush family is.
