On CNN's "State of the Union," we got some pushback to dick cheney's outrageous attacks on Obama.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said,
"To listen to Dick Cheney, who was the mastermind of the most failed decade of foreign policy that this country's had at least in my political lifetime, perhaps my whole lifetime, perhaps my parents' lifetime too, to listen to him when they talk about dithering... when their mistake was to attack Iraq and lose sight of Afghanistan... eight years of failure of [Hamid] Karzai, implicitly is eight years of failure and dithering by that administration."
Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) also called cheney's remarks "out of bounds" and said that cheney simpy lacked the credibility to be taken seriously on the issue.
Even Republican Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) got into the act. Although he had to preface it by wondering why Obama would "not follow the advice of all of his generals;" but he then went on to say, "I would never want to call my president dithering."
Apparently the senators have decided that cheney can't simply be ignored. It goes along with the administration's taking on FoxNews.
News for Senator Hatch. The president (and Congress, for that matter) are constitutionally charged with the responsibility for civilian control over major military decisions. There is a reason for that, and Obama is doing what he needs to do. Does anyone really seriously advance the idea that we should increase our committment in Afghanistan before we know who they are going to wind up with as their president?
Obama is not dithering. He is being wise, prudent, and responsible.
Ralph
Conservative George Will on "This Week with GS" said that maybe some dithering was in order before we went into Iraq, and so he is in favor "protracted, careful, deliberation."
ReplyDeleteIn fact, this is what we hoped for - someone who would think things through. We all thought of Afghanistan as "the good war" because it was at least undertaken legitimately. Now that we're free of the Warrior Creed that bombarded us from Washington for 7+ years, many of us are reconsidering things. As the fog clears, maybe we don't have a "good war" there either...
ReplyDeleteWhether is was a "good war" originally or not, it sure seems unwinnable now.
ReplyDelete