They remade the Brady Bunch, Charlie’s Angels, and The A-Team—why not replay the presidency of Jimmy Carter? The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund joined the chorus last week with a piece titled The Carter-Obama Comparisons Grow: “Mr. Carter himself heightening comparisons with his own presidency,” Fund wrote, “by publishing his White House diaries this week. ‘I overburdened Congress with an array of controversial and politically costly requests,’ he [President Carter] said on Monday. The parallels to Mr. Obama’s experience are clear.” Nowhere does the comparison seem more apt than issues …
President Obama’s wooden speech tonight, ostensibly focused on Iraq, actually gave short shrift to the war in Iraq and failed to convincingly articulate a vision of Iraq’s future, his own Iraq policy, or America’s role in the world. The President talked about ending the war, but not of victory. Apparently in a rush to put the war in the past, he gave little attention to why the war was fought, what was at stake, or how the war related to broader U.S. goals in the Middle East. Instead, Obama maintained …
It is not clear what the President meant when he said, “Ending the war was in our interest.” First, wars just don’t end. They are a win, a loss, or a draw. By implying that he simply “ended” the war by just following a plan – as if he were imposing a managerial solution over a public policy problem – Obama gave the American people a very a simplistic and wrongheaded notion of war. No plan survives contact with the enemy. Obama ought to understand this better than anyone. After …
Unfortunately, President Obama missed a valuable opportunity tonight to demonstrate that he is fully committed to success in Afghanistan. Instead he stubbornly reiterated his July 2011 withdrawal date. Obama rightly said Americans should not lose sight of what is at stake in Afghanistan and that the U.S. must prevent the country from again becoming a terrorist safe haven. But his subsequent declarations that U.S. forces will only be in place for a limited time and that “wars cannot go on forever” revealed his impatience with the current counterinsurgency strategy and …
It is understandable that the President wanted to mention the sorry state of the domestic economy in his address to the nation. More Americans are out of work now than when Obama took office. Recent economic news has not been good. Just as the President said, fixing the economy is indeed an “urgent” task.” But that does not mean he now has the luxury to neglect his most urgent task, the one assigned to him by the U.S. Constitution: to “Provide for the Common Defense.”
Tonight President Barack Obama will deliver a prime-time Oval Office address on Iraq. Acting as President of the United States, the leader of a country, not a movement, tonight would be a perfect time for Obama to give due credit to those commanders who made the current progress in Iraq possible. He should thank General Ray Odierno, who implemented the counterinsurgency strategy that led to the dramatic decrease in violence in Iraq, General David Petraeus, who oversaw all coalition forces in Iraq during the surge, and President George W. Bush, …
“Operation Iraqi Freedom ends on your watch!” exclaimed Col. John Norris of the the 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, as the final U.S. combat brigade crossed into Kuwait from Iraq early this morning. “Hooah!” his soldiers roared back. Norris later told The Washington Post: “They’re leaving as heroes. I want them to walk home with pride in their hearts.” By the end of August the United States will still have about 50,000 troops in six brigades in Iraq. These “advise and assist brigades” will be primarily tasked with training …
In the coming months, lots of people will be cranking up their computers and burning up the airwaves with commentary on the just-announced departure of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates sometime in 2011. Evaluating his legacy as SECDEF when he ultimately leaves next year will be important for the historical record, but the challenges his yet-to-be-named successor will face are more important. For instance, there’s little doubt that the war in Afghanistan will still be a major focus in 2011 — not to mention the challenge of managing the White …
Reporting on the July 16 car bombing in Ciudad Juarez led one journalist to evoke images of the battle against Islamist terrorist in Iraq and Afghanistan. The attack, seemingly lifted from an al-Qaeda playbook, demonstrated once again that the cartels are a step ahead of both an already guarded public and federal police, who have recently taken over command from the military of the battle against traffickers in Ciudad Juarez, a city across the border from El Paso, Texas. The proper analogy is not the Middle East or Afghanistan but …
This weekend, President Obama will skip Memorial Day services at Arlington National Cemetery, and instead he will take his family to Chicago for rest and relaxation. The gesture has rankled many on the right and caused the left to swing into full ‘defend Obama’ mode. However, the fact remains that during a time of war, it is extraordinary that the Commander in Chief of our Armed Forces would choose not to be at Arlington on this solemn occasion. First, it must be said that the president is not skipping out …
