Dec. 2nd, 2009
To me, it seemed Obama fully assumed Bush's mantle last night.
Edit: I say this because of some of the phrases he used and concepts he advanced as the thrust of his message. I suppose it was inevitable that he would invoke 9/11, but some of his phrasing directly mirrors what Bush would have said (and did say) in order to influence public opinion about his war actions.
A fiscal conservative might highlight that we simply don't have the money to finance more troops in Afghanistan, a point with which I wholeheartedly agree. But besides the horrible shape of our economy--drained in large part due to costs for eight years of war at more than $1,000,000,000 a week--is the fact that any major foreign policy concerns necessarily dwarfs domestic policy, which is direly needed. The United States languished under Bush.
I understand that withdrawal from Afghanistan may directly lead to a failed state. However, I don't see that an injection of 30,000 troops (not nearly enough to secure the nation) changes that fate except in terms of chronology.
Edit: I say this because of some of the phrases he used and concepts he advanced as the thrust of his message. I suppose it was inevitable that he would invoke 9/11, but some of his phrasing directly mirrors what Bush would have said (and did say) in order to influence public opinion about his war actions.
A fiscal conservative might highlight that we simply don't have the money to finance more troops in Afghanistan, a point with which I wholeheartedly agree. But besides the horrible shape of our economy--drained in large part due to costs for eight years of war at more than $1,000,000,000 a week--is the fact that any major foreign policy concerns necessarily dwarfs domestic policy, which is direly needed. The United States languished under Bush.
I understand that withdrawal from Afghanistan may directly lead to a failed state. However, I don't see that an injection of 30,000 troops (not nearly enough to secure the nation) changes that fate except in terms of chronology.