The war in Iraq is winding down, the president said in a speech thanking Camp Lejeune Marines and their families for the sacrifices they have made. Christian Bose, writing for Foreign Policy, says that the president might have gone out on a limb and thanked the man who made success there possible:
I think Obama should have tipped his hat ever so slightly today to President Bush, Sen. McCain, and other Republicans who had supported the surge strategy, naming them and thanking them. Of course, there’s no telling how Iraq would look today had the surge never happened, but it’s likely that conditions would be pretty grim and that this withdrawal plan would have the smell of defeat to it, rather than the opposite, as it does.
Obama could have caveated this to death — “I opposed Bush’s decision to begin this war, I opposed how he sold it to America, I opposed the way he prosecuted it,” etc. But he could have recognized that Bush’s decision to change strategies in 2007 is in large part why the security situation in Iraq has turned around more than anyone could have hoped, why we can now begin drawing down our forces with a good measure of confidence, and why our troops now feel more and more that their sacrifice is worth it.
That’s a nice suggestion, but it would have irreparably damage the president’s reputation with so many of his supporters that it’s scarcely worth contemplating.
Not when there’s so much figthing left to do.
Funny how links like this aren’t floating around:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aryTu4ZlhZc
You forgot the most important part of the quote: “At the risk of heading into la-la land,”
Cap’n,
Those Marines standing behind the first Marxist President elected in this Country look like they could chew nails.
And that’s just the women.
SJBill/
You just CAN’T leave the poor guy alone, can you? Picky, picky, picky…..
I watched his speech, and unlike any other time I have ever sen him, Obama showed no enthusiasm or even sincerity in his remarks. Besides being disrespectfully late (without even offering an apology) he almost seemed resentful of having to show up at all.
I mean, this is the guy who can say with a straight face and great [sounding] conviction “there are no earmarks in this bill” when it has 9,000 earmarks.
Perhaps his eloquent vocabulary failed him, but neither the word victory, nor its synonyms were heard from his lips.
He took this opportunity to announce there will be a military pay raise. I appreciate his honest statement of that fact, but note that he failed to say it would only be 2.9%, while he is giving untold millions to mortgage scofflaws and “community organizers” like ACORN.
Like in the Carter and Clinton eras, they will obey the Commander-in-Chief’s lawful orders. But I am afraid they will need to be very alert to detect any which are not lawful orders.
Our troops deserve better.
I don’t see how they can ever respect this President.
I was impressed that the new Pres called the old Pres before the speech to give him an update.
But considering the dozens of times that the Pres, the VP, or new cabinet officials have blamed current problems on the last occupant of the White House, an official mention in the speech was clearly in order.
Re: The 2.9% pay raise.
It would be interesting to see what DOD asked for, before going overboard in blaming Obama for that. For the last five years, the DOD request was lower than the final amount, and in two of those years the original DOD going in position was no pay raise. It was Congress that voted a higher raise than what the President asked for.
I’ve tried to find an actual copy of what DOD requested of OMB , but I cannot find it. I’ve been told that the DOD submission is considered an internal document. However it would be interesting to see what kind of a pay raise DOD asked for-I’ll bet it was 2.9 %-and its tied to projections about the CPI.
We do some of this to ourselves.