Obama -Warrior In Chief

As someone who watches no cable news, where is all this end zone dancing happening?

 

How is Obama getting a pass from liberals for following through on a campaign promise that helped him get elected? I don't follow.

 

I haven't gotten any Code Pink emails asking me to support Obama lately. And come to think of it - has anyone heard from Cindy Sheehan?

 

I have no problem with the end zone dances. Obama made the call and he deserves to take the bows. I would question the timing though. Usually the football is spiked immediately after the TD and not a year later. I understand that they did not want to dance on Bin Laden's watery grave but to do it now on heals of election makes it look a little too political.

I also have a problem with the venue. We should have made Karzai come to us and sign whatever document they signed. It makes us look weak to bow to a guy who has not been fully appreciative of our largesse.

 

If by "continued and even improved upon the Bush strategy" you mean threw it away and implemented a far more clear-sighted, effective and efficient one, then we agree totally.

 

Oh where to begin...Let's see civil liberties, GITMO, drones, expansion of war in Afghanistan. All things that Bush was criticized for but that Obama gets a pass on.

As a good example just go back on and look at some of the SJ discussions.

 

I am not sure "threw it away" is the right term. I look at it as more of an evolution - fine tuning perhaps. Overall though I believe that we are on the same page.

 

Not possible in many cases.

 

Saddened, but not surprised, to see that Matt Drudge puts clicks above the safety of our Commander in Chief.

Only one element of Tuesday’s choreographed events departed from the script. An Afghanistan station tweeted the news of Obama’s visit shortly after 9 a.m. Eastern daylight time, and it was retweeted by the website BuzzFeed. Editor in chief Ben Smith took it down after receiving a call from a White House spokesman. “Like most news organizations, we will typically defer to the White House's judgment on true security risks," Smith explained.

The New York Post also took down a report, but the Drudge Report kept the story up, with a red-type headline, for hours. White House officials denied the original report by saying the president “is not in Kabul”—which was technically accurate because he didn’t land until about 2 p.m. (A handful of White House correspondents were summoned for the trip and sworn to secrecy, as is standard practice.)

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/01/obama-s-stealth-mission-to-afghanistan-shakes-up-the-campaign.html

 

For the record, I would have deleted my thread if the White House had asked.

 

I thought this was kind of funny from White House briefing:

"Pool was required to give up all cellphone and computer devices upon check in earlier in the night. The equipment was returned about an hour into the flight. ... The pool traveling on Air Force One is the standard complement, augmented by an additional TV crew and producer to oversee the live address from Bagram. Pool members were briefed on the trip on Sunday on an off-the-record basis with the customary tell-only-one-editor rule. Pool has been asked for security reasons to withhold some logistical details relating to the trip. ... Thanks to co-pooler Mark Landler, NY Times, for assistance."

Then from Mark Landler story in the NYT:

Instead, late on Monday, Mr. Obama slipped out of the White House and traveled to Joint Base Andrews. At midnight, Air Force One, its lights switched off and window shades drawn, rolled out from behind a hangar. A small group of reporters, including one from The New York Times, were allowed to accompany the president, after they agreed not to report on his whereabouts until his helicopter landed in Kabul.


I know it's a fine line but when these things come up it always makes me wonder what else newspapers decide to withhold when asked.

 

OK, I thought the comment was confined to the discussion on this thread of his war policies.

As for the ones you mentioned, again, he campaigned on drawing down troops in Iraq and shifting focus to Afghanistan, so that's not "giving him a pass" on expansion in the Afghan theater. He's following through on what he said he was going to do.

I'm not sure what the problem is with drone strikes.

GITMO needs to be closed, but it's not a unilateral decision and the Legislature has not been helpful in that regard, largely because people don't want the detainees held in their states.

Civil liberties? He's done a lot of work in that area and has a lot more to do (get the Patriot Act repealed, get same-sex marriage legislation passed), but again, the President can not make or repeal laws. He needs some cooperation from the Legislature.

The difference, for me, is that Bush was actively taking courses of action I disagreed with, while Obama has largely taken a course of action I do agree with. He has not yet accomplished all that I would like to see done, but he's moving things in the right direction.

So it's not about liberals giving Obama a pass that they did not give to Bush, it's realizing the reality that it takes time to undo some of the things Bush did and seeing some of the ways Obama has been superior to Bush in enacting policies they (we) believe are good for the country.