UPDATED 3/29: When pressed for clarification, Obama now states that he has no current intention of overthrowing the Pakistani government.  A “you’re welcome” would be nice:

Obama said U.S. ally Pakistan needs to be more accountable, but ruled out deploying U.S. troops there. “Our plan does not change the recognition of Pakistan as a sovereign government,” the president told CBS’ “Face the Nation” in an interview broadcast Sunday.

*pfew*  What a relief.  Plans do change though, so you never know.  Obama has decided to recognize another country’s government.  How “conservative and brave”.  He then completely undermines my new found respect by giving a pep talk to the Taliban, demoralizing our troops, qualifying a commitment to the Afghanis that would help and finally blaming Bush as usual:

The president also bemoaned the tenuous security situation in Afghanistan, saying, “Unless we get a handle on it now, we’re gonna be in trouble.” He made clear that his new strategy for the long war is “not going to be an open-ended commitment of infinite resources” from the United States.

In a wide-ranging interview, Obama sought to counter the notion that Afghanistan has become his war. He emphasized that it started on George W. Bush‘s watch.

“I think it’s America’s war. And it’s the same war that we initiated after 9/11 as a consequence of those attacks,” Obama said. “The focus over the last seven years, I think, has been lost.”

Yea…the focus was lost.  We’re gonna “take our eyes off the real fight in Afghanistan” by putting a focus on overthrowing the Pakistani government.  Bush wasn’t invading Pakistan.  When Bush routed the Taliban they were scattered the wind for several years.  You, on the other hand, just threw several dozen thousand US soldiers into the meat grinder with the qualifiers that we’re not going to stay very long, the terrorists are getting worse, you never claim to want to win and finally that no matter how it turns out (unless you do win by some miracle) that it’s always Bush’s fault.

Success has a thousand fathers which explains Barack Obama in a nutshell since the one he had walked out on him.

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Consider the memo received.  WWII will now be known as “The Next To The Last Good War”.  Both the Washington Post and the New York Times are now officially in favor of not only expanding a war and an expensive nation building gamble in Afghanistan but curiously in Pakistan as well.  And  you guessed correctly that you are either a traitor or worse (e.g., a capitalist) to think that this might not be the brightest move to be made by the equivalent of our 3rd Shift McDonald’s Assistant Manager in Training of a President:

From the WaPo:

THE STRATEGY for Afghanistan and Pakistan announced by President Obama yesterday is conservative as well as bold. It is conservative because Mr. Obama chose to embrace many of the recommendations of U.S. military commanders and the Bush administration, based on the hard lessons of seven years of war. Yet it is bold — and politically brave — because, at a time of economic crisis and war-weariness at home, Mr. Obama is ordering not just a major increase in U.S. troops, but also an ambitious effort at nation-building in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is right to do it.

No offense guys, but where have you been for the last 8 years? Here is the WaPo on March 9th of this year:

There is no such thing as a free lunch, and there is no such thing as a free war. The Iraq adventure has seriously weakened the U.S. economy, whose woes now go far beyond loose mortgage lending. You can’t spend $3 trillion — yes, $3 trillion — on a failed war abroad and not feel the pain at home.

Some people will scoff at that number, but we’ve done the math.

Seems a lot of people are “doing the math” these days.  The math just seems to add up differently depending on who’s President.  When Bush was President, spending a bunch of money on a war and nation building was weakening the economy (and “a failed war” they assure you).  Now, they’re willing to throw a lot more blood and treasure on a riskier military gambit when the economy is unarguably worse than it was prior to the election and it’s suddenly the right thing to do.   The Post’s editorialists rival Cirque de Soleil for their contortions on the most serious of issues.

From the NY Times:

Mr. Obama has come back to first principles. Instead of Mr. Bush’s vague talk of representative democracy in Afghanistan, he defined a more specific mission. “We are not in Afghanistan to control that country or dictate its future,” Mr. Obama said, but “to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

The United States removed the Taliban from power in Afghanistan in 2001 as it sought to stamp out the Al Qaeda militants behind the 9/11 attacks. More than seven years later, the Taliban and Al Qaeda are stronger than ever.

And how does Pinch quantify that the Taliban is “stronger than ever” exactly?  Apparently, the old standard of counting smoldering buildings that had hijacked airplanes flown into them isn’t being used anymore.  Sending a standing army into another country may not be “dictating it’s future” but it sure is dictating it’s present for the foreseeable future.

There is nothing intelligent about this move.  It is a voluntary elevation of hostilities, especially in light of a nuclear Pakistan, during a time of great economic weakness.  Addtiionally, Obama does not have the first clue about what he’s doing.   A terrorist army dressed as civilians and hiding among a civilian population is going to increase casualties on both sides to unacceptable levels.  A post-Musharraf Pakistan will be an even greater destabilized neighbor teeming with ready, willing and excitable human firecrackers.  Though not as excited as the cheerleading Axis of Washington, New York and LA press corps aching for so long to show their war faces.

Do we have all of the answers?  No.  But we do know that this is the beginning of Obama’s Vietnam and he’s rushing in alone with only the support of Democrats and the newspapers behind him.  There are no other nation’s signing onto some alliance with this that I’ve seen.

Mr. Obama confronts many challenges. He must persuade the Pakistani intelligence service to stop underwriting the Taliban and the Afghan government to eradicate corruption. He also must persuade NATO to contribute more to the war effort — if not combat troops in Afghanistan, then trainers or development aid.

His plans to urge so-called moderate Taliban to abandon their hard-line leaders is worth trying.

That’s an awful lot of persuasion.  Jawboning Iran and Russia into being good little Mahmoud’s and Pooty-Poots might sound like a good plan in theory but in reality they know that Obama is weakening our country.    I’m only basing this on his comments from earlier today:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told his Syrian counterpart, Bashar Assad, on Friday that Israel and the US were “weakening with God’s help”.

During the phone conversation quoted by Iranian news agencies Ahmadinejad said, “The strong camp of friendly countries such as Iran and Syria are on their way to victory.”

We’ve got him on the ropes now, eh?  He’s just about ready to crack, give up nuclear weapons and go in halfsies on Afghanistan.

Back to the WaPo Editorial closing:

Such initiatives are not the product of starry-eyed idealism or an attempt to convert either country into “the 51st state” but of a realistic appreciation of what has worked — and failed — during the past seven years. As Mr. Obama put it, “It’s far cheaper to train a policeman to secure his or her own village or to help a farmer seed a crop than it is to send our troops to fight tour after tour of duty with no transition to Afghan responsibility.“

Can you tell us, off the top of your head how much this is going to cost and our exit strategy?  Can we count on George Stephanopolous running the names of the war dead with maudlin dirges complete with flag covered coffins (as Obama revised that policy last month) at the end of ‘This Week’ every Sunday?  Can we count on ambushes of politicians who support this initiative to recite the names of the soldiers who died in their district a day or two after it’s released?

How any principled leftist is going to reconcile the single greatest issue of their opposition to Bush between the Not In Our Name!/Code Pink/International ANSWER/MoveOn.org crowd will be mildly entertaining/annoyingly hypocritical but the enjoyment will be muted by the number of good men and women who are going to have to die for Obama’s on-the-job training as a War President By Choice.

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