The Military

While politicians worry out loud about the costs of healthcare reform at the same time that wise observers appropriately call for a major job-development program that would cost billions of dollars, the president proposed a military buildup in Afghanistan. That questionable adventure will cost the lives and limbs of American young men and women, as well as a million dollars a year for each of the 30,000 new troops he says he will send there. On top of the approximately 60,000 American troops there already, the total troop commitment will approach 100,000, at a cost of $100 billion! And that doesn’t reflect the off-the-record CIA money being spent in Pakistan, the other side of the coin in this misadventure.

It was the most important decision of his presidency — the troop surge in Afghanistan. Yet President Barack Obama's speech lacked the commitment, passion and confidence of literally every other speech he has delivered.

Obama blew it. Big time.

Probably the best part of President Barack Obama’s speech at West Point last night was the end, when he left the stage and posed for pictures with the young kids who may eventually be shipped to Afghanistan because of the words spoken by Mr. Obama this evening.

Adam Belmar, a smart guy whose office is a couple of doors down from mine, used to help stage President George W. Bush (he didn’t do the “Mission Accomplished” banner, though) as the former president would go in front of the cameras. He is a real pro and he knows what he is doing when it comes to framing the television picture. He told me Monday that he was surprised that for such an important address, President Obama was using West Point as his backdrop to announce his major troop increase to Afghanistan. “His eyes will keep shifting from one side to the other as he looks at the teleprompter,” he told me. “It will make him look shifty and weak.”

In June 2002, George W. Bush went to West Point to announce “The Bush Doctrine,” a new principle of pre-emptive war — of which Iraq became the first application.

In December 2008, Bush returned to West Point to press the importance of pursuing war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And now, in December 2009, Barack Obama has gone to West Point to announce his escalation of the war in Afghanistan. This is not the change we voted for.

The political community anxiously awaits the details of President Barack Obama’s new policy on Afghanistan. It certainly has been argued and vetted in the courts of public and pundit opinion. Even Republicans have come out this week questioning if we need more troops, while progressive Democrats howl at the thought of Obama sending more troops to fight a so-called senseless, unwinnable war, to borrow their rhetoric.  Read more...

The media is fixated on the party crashers who sneaked through security and partied with the Indian prime minister.

Dick Cheney is focused on the party crasher who sneaked through the election and became president of the United States. Read more...

To review: Liberal response to the war so far has been resolute support (Bill, Hillary, Biden, Kerry) then resolute opposition (Obama, then later Hillary, Biden, Kerry), then support again in Afghanistan (Obama, Hillary) then indecision (Obama, Biden). This is the way things fall apart. It is good for Mitt Romney who offered principled support throughout. It is good for Ron Paul who offered principled opposition throughout. But it is bad for the Democrats. We could see awaken now a seismic shift in the political flow; a shift away from the relevant countervailing dialog between Democrat and Republican to between two different principled Republican approaches instead. Read more...

Let us stand together in awe of the war-fighting urges of former Vice President Dick Cheney and his use of war for partisan political purposes. Dick Cheney never met a war he didn't like, except those he would have to fight in himself. Cheney likes wars financed by tax cuts for the wealthy, which creates mammoth deficits and tragic deaths and wounds from lack of body armor, Humvees and post-traumatic stress, which helps the wealthy, harms the troops and soars the deficit.

As with most things, the path that led Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan to allegedly stage an attack on his fellow servicemen and -women at Fort Hood was complex. No doubt his minority status had something to do with it, although an awful lot of adherents of minority religions get along just fine in the U.S. military. Heck, these days, anybody who professes any religious belief at all is going to find himself a target for somebody's criticism. Still, it's highly plausible that a practicing Muslim in the post-9/11 military would run up against more than his share.

Beyond all this identity stuff, however, it looks as if Hasan had a clear history of professional incompetence, at least according to a memo from a supervisor at Walter Reed Army Hospital.

Why avoid investigating the fact that our military allowed one of its own, who would eventually murder 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, to continue communicating with radical clerics who advocate terrorist acts? Why recommend women stop getting mammograms in their 40s and cause such a backlash that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelious has to come out and disavow the recommendations? And in a nation riven by unemployment, how did our government mess up the stimulus data so badly that not 10, not 20, not 50 but up to 700 congressional districts were mistakenly credited stimulus grants out of 130,000 grants given, according to ABC News?