Wednesday, May 28, 2014

The Imperial Post Sad About Obama's Retreats

++The Washington Post isn't happy with President Obama's plans for Afghanistan. They even commissioned two former ambassadors to write an op-ed to lament the global perception of weakness our withdrawal will cause. The Post laments President Obama ending the war in Iraq,not sending troops to Libya or Syria and now ending the war in Afghanistan.They said he was just doing this so he can be seen in history as ending two wars.

++Just a factual note. The withdrawal plans for Afghanistan have been in development for 8 years. The US military commanders finally believe there is a definitive plan that provides real dates.

++Jennifer Rubin writs today that Hillary Clinton will have to repudiate Obama's foreign policy to show she is tough.

++John McCain said that just because a politician declares a war is over that doesn't mean it is. But you do have to try and end wars.

++The President delivered his West Point address today and spoke about coming to the end of a "long season of war". He went at length to say that military intervention should not be the first option of choice in policy-making. He said because of the cost of war the threshold for using force has to be higher than all the other options. I found it interesting that the three presidents he quoted were FDR, JFK and Eisenhower. Vietnam-era presidents and beyond didn't make the cut.

++The West Point speech was long on specifics, which I will deal with later.

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