Obama vows to exit Iraq, crush al-Qaida and rebuild U.S. 'moral stature'
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0
Proffessor
I can see washington going back to normal. At least.
0
some14some
I can finally see Washington also entering 21st Century.
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powderfinger
"I can finally see Washington also entering 21st Century."
How's the view from back there?
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OnTheRecord
Oh yes Obama. Let's ruin all of Bush's sterling work in one go.
Iraq will become a terrorist Taliban state,Al Qaida will laugh at his military spending cuts, and our nation with the worlds highest morals will become a sleazpoll of depravation.
I urge all moderate and fair media to expose these mans ideas before our nation is destroyed.
God bless America!!!
0
Badsey
getting out of Iraq = saves money Getting out of Cuba = saves money
Stimulus packages = 150B typical GM bailout = $,$$$,$$$,$$$
Having mother move in = priceless
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skipthesong
crush AQ..... almost makes me want to re-enlist. Close Gitmo? Well, not that I really care, but where are they going to send those inmates? Oh, I know, Newark.
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Alphaape
That is an interesting statement. I seem to recall that in CA a majority of the voters believed that gay marrige should not be allowed and that marriage is between a man and a woman. Would this be considered "rebuilding moral stature" or do we go with what the oppents to the ruling say.
Also, as far as I have read, most of the Islamist that hate America say we are the "Great Satan" and thus have no morals. So once again I ask, whose morals.
Whatever the case, I hope he knows what he is doing. I can't wait to see the race in 2012. I believe that it will be in full swing by March 2009. Started not by the Republicans, but by some of the Dems who got slighted when they didn't get picked by him for cabinet positions.
0
Betting
I most sincerely hope he can make good on all these promises, the world really needs it. And I hope he can do it, because I want to name him, "Best Presidentist".
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sailwind
Must be some of that sacrifice he was talking about. Tax, Spend and BORROW some more.
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sailwind
Ahh......No Bias in this piece.
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ca1ic0cat
If anybody had actually paid attention to the memoirs they might anticipate what is coming. You better be ready for the most left of center president of all time. How that works in practice is yet to be seen but I doubt it's going to be the utopia that people seem to expect.
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Betzee
George Will is hopping mad. But he rightly points out "socialism is already here" as reflected in the spending priorities of the past eight years:
[W]hile Republicans -- whose prescription drug entitlement is the largest expansion of the welfare state since President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society gave birth to Medicare in 1965; and a majority of whom in Congress supported a lavish farm bill at a time of record profits for the less than 2 percent of the American people-cum-corporations who farm -- and their administration were partially nationalizing the banking system, putting Detroit on the dole and looking around to see if some bit of what is smilingly called "the private sector" has been inadvertently left off the ever-expanding list of entities eligible for a bailout from the $1 trillion or so that is to be "spread around."
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SezWho2
If only! Bush's term paper was extremely well-typed but contained so many errors that it will take a decade to correct them.
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Sarge
"exit Iraq"
Doesn't matter if Iraq's security forces are ready or not. They had better be, because how would letting Iraq fall into the hands of extremists honor our fallen troops?
"crush al-Qaida"
I really don't think an Obama administration is going to be any better at crushing al-Qaida than the Bush administration. The Bush administration has been successful at killing and capturing al-Qaida wackos and keeping them on the run.
"rebuild U.S. moral stature"
Yeah, liberating two countries, and providing Gitmo prisoners with more than most of them have ever had in their pathetic lives has really damaged our moral stature. ( roll eyes )
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powderfinger
"Obama, a gifted writer who has authored two best-selling memoirs, turned wistful as he anticipated life in the White House fishbowl."
His ghostwriters can be proud of the snow job they have pulled off.
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Molenir
And once we finally get rid of Obama, it will take another decade to then fix Bush and Obamas blunders. Wonder if he is really planning to close gitmo, or if he is going to just close the prison there.
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Betzee
The LA Times Op-Ed page dealt with this issue:
The traditional makeup of families has changed too, in ways that many religious people find immoral. Single parents raise their children; couples divorce and blend families. Yet same-sex marriage is the only departure from tradition that has been targeted for constitutional eradication. Religions and their believers are free to define marriage as they please; they are free to consider homosexuality a sin. But they are not free to impose their definitions of morality on the state.
By contrast, what Obama is referring is the view that an unfettered America is good for the world. We want the Russians bound by international norms such as seeking UN security council authorization before invading another country but will not be constrained by such rules ourselves.
This view has proved very costly in dollars, the ongoing occupation of Iraq has run up a tab ten times the original estimate. But also in moral stature. When Condi goes and lectures the Chinese "violence never solves anything" in response to their crackdown on Tibet what do you suppose they thought? It's OK for you but not for us? Screw that.....
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DXXJP
I watched a report on the tube about how a group of special forces were within a klick of UBL and they were told to stand down. So tell me sarge how could walking out of Iraq not honor our fallen troops, when your dear leader not only let him get away he also said we didnt care. Now isnt the whole invasion of Iraq supposed to be linked to UBL.
As for moral stature well the US isnt too far from sodom and gomorrah in the morals department. And might as well send the prisoners from gitmo to crawford. Dubya wanted them so bad he can care and feed them. Funny most still havnt been charged.
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VOR
Obama's walk in the park ends when he takes over on January 20th. Only then will we begin to understand the ramifications of electing someone with no executive experience to run the country.
Will he deliver on his promises and live up to his lofty speeches? I doubt it.
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tigermoth
DXXJP - who is 'UBL'?
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CaptDingleheimer
I've never been much for conspiracy theories, but I've long suspected that the current administration doesn't want to catch Bin Laden (though perhaps they do now in their final so as to leave at least something positive for the history books). The average American seems to believe that 9/11 was all Bin Laden's doing and that he IS Al Qaeda. Catch him, and the base of the administration's support for the War on Terror would likely say "Alright, we got 'im! War's over, bring 'em home."
0
Betzee
Captain Dingelheimer,
That is an astute observation. I wouldn’t call it a conspiracy theory, however, but rather an acknowledgment that the political fortunes of GWB (or any given leader) are distinct from national security.
Bin Laden “reared his head” to weigh on the election in 2004. Though he mocked GWB, many people felt he in fact helped him because GWB was a known quantity as a leader while John Kerry was not. Had OBL been captured, it would have been easier for Kerry to argue he was better suited to lead the US in the next chapter of the war on terror.
The decline in violence in Iraq, ironically, probably helped Obama, convincing “up for grabs” voters they could go with the guy who lacked a long foreign policy pedigree (they both lacked executive experience of course). Had McCain been wrong about the surge, it might have helped him, though of course he would have argued the failure was due to poor implementation which he, with all of his experience, was better suited to correct. The fun of studying politics lies in all these counterintuitive outcomes.
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Everton2
VOR: Bush with all his executive experience could not deploy it in a way that helped anybody.
Alphaape: Moral statue in this case is concerned with the type of examples America set in the world. The extent to which it adheres to international laws and facilitate due process. Honoring the Geneva Convention is certainly something that most people would like to see reinstated as a corner stone of American foreign policy.
The Gitmo internments with its attendant torture have certainly made a mockery of the developed world system of justice and have largely been the source of moral condemnation for the Americans. This is what Obama wants to salvage. Who the hell cares about gay marriages which is a social construct that has nothing to do with morality. Marry who the hell you want!
President Obama just by his election has done more to salvage America's pathetic international reputation than any leader in modern times. Thats right he is going to save all your American asses from the current international ridicule you have experienced over that last 8 years.
I suggest that in 20 years from now all you anti Obama supporters will be telling your kids fat lies; About how you supported his campaign, and was resolute in the face of opposition to him bla bla bla. Again you all should be on bended knee each time his name is mentioned.
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powderfinger
Do the conspiracy types above realize that many of the same people saying America (or any foreign force) can never take Afghanistan because the terrain and topography area also saying OBL is an easy catch in those mountains but Bush (who supposedly went into Iraq for pure vengeance) has personally canceled special forces' missions that were "within 1 klick" of bin Laden.LMFAO.
0
Helter_Skelter
First-world socialists certainly don't want to hear this. It would crush their alliance with al-Qaida as well.
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Betzee
Must be nice to lead such a life of leisure. But you're conflating a lot of things there. It is a valid question to ask why GWB outsourced the job of capturing OBL to local warlords (whom we had armed in the fight against the Taliban and earlier against the Soviet-installed regime).
They were willing to take casualties to fight their own enemies, not ours. Surely people in the Pentagon were aware of this. Moreover, there was good intel on where OBL was, Tora Bora, but capturing him would have meant casualties (since he certainly would have put up a fight). To accept this one has to believe that GWB, who plays up the "Commander in Chief" bit more than any previous prez, was content to be the commander of a warlord militia.
It sure smells a bit until you stop to consider that spilling our own treasure would have made the Iraq War a tougher sell to the American people. I mean if we got the head honcho who's Saddam goin' pass his nuclear weapons to? Here's an explanation for why GWB chose to hand-off responsibility to local militas rather than the best troops in the world.
As for Afghani terrain, it is not conducive to military control. We find ourselves in the same position as the Soviets who learnt the hard way how difficult it is to control much beyond the capital.
For us, the problem is compounded by past support for any group which was anti-Soviet, and later, anti-Taliban. The lack of cohesion among resistance groups, in short, stymied collective action, which was also undermined by competitive rivalry for international support. These provincially-based militias still seem more interested in jostling with each other for local advantage than in helping the Karzai government extent its authority beyond Kabul.
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