Yes Pdox, the GOP is truly the party of Nothing. But yet, after the abject failures of the last 8 years, there is one facet of their general makeup that still is in full...complete belief that they never have been wrong on anything and the Dems are wrong on everything. A letter to the editor in my paper this morning sums it up: a GOPer complaining that Obama was paying more attention to the college basketball playoff than fixing the economy. It will never change.
Posted by T2 at March 27, 2009 07:50 AMspeaking of Nothing, I read a bit of Obama's Afghan plan...sounds like the same old 'hearts and minds' blabber that has always failed us. Obama will, some day, wonder why he just didn't get out of there and blame Bush with the failure.
The centerpiece of his plan: "the purpose of training Afghan security forces". Here's the thing...this is what we've been trying to do in Iraq for years, and what we tried to do in 'Nam. See, these people already know how to fight, and are pretty damned good at it. There is no difference in them than the "insurgent Taliban" except the color of their turban. They can fight and don't need our training to do so. They did fine against the Russians, and have done fine against us. The "Training" is just a way to keep them under thumb so they don't kill our troops while we go about the business of blowing up their country and killing their kids.
Also speaking of nothing. Can Obama please do more of it? Not sure doing "something" is better than nothing when it leads to a $20 trillion debt we'll have to repay.
Also, when will Obama admit the evil top 1% can't pay for everything he wants to do. He'll have to come for the rest of us sooner or later. Maybe the $400 smokescreen is working. People are pretty dumb these days.
Posted by at March 27, 2009 10:09 AMSo you seem to be saying that anybody good in 2012 would be on the Democratic side of the aisle...
...and that potentially good candidate would be blocked by Obama.
Why am I not grateful for the TWO PARTY monopoly created by and for the two parties?
What you see a feature, I would describe as a bug.
Posted by S Brennan at March 27, 2009 12:59 PMT2
I think you are missing the point that last 7 years Bush spent most of our resources and attention to Iraq and Afghanistan got neglected. As a result, Taliban and Al-Queda were able to re-establish themselves. In other words, Obama has inherited another of these messes created by Bush/Chenney.
As Obama said that these Taliban and Al-queda hiding in Pakistan have definite plans to mount attacks on US. It is his duty to make sure that does not happen. If that means sending more troops, then so be it.
You are saying these Afghans did fine against Russians. Well only after we trained them and provided them with high tech weaponery. Otherwise Russians were routing them handily with their helicopter gunships. When Afghans got our shoulder fired missiles, Russians started taking big tolls.
Posted by suresh at March 27, 2009 01:03 PMsuresh, I miss a lot of points. But the same people shooting the SAM's at Russian helo's are the same people we apparently have to train again. Better hope the result isn't the same, i.e. driving the invader out at great cost to the invader. As we did in Iraq, lets see how much heavy artillery, mechanized artillery, fighter jets and attack helo's we place in the hands of the newly trained Afghans..
Posted by T2 at March 27, 2009 01:56 PMNo T2. The people we tarined are the Talibans (previously called mujahuddins)that are fighting so effectively against us. Now we need to train the Afghan Regular army to fight against these Talibans.
The difference is that these mujahuddins were basically a religious militia. Once they got Russians out of Afghanistan, they went after the Afghan government and executed the president. The reason they were against the Afghan government is because it was not an islamist government. They will never accept a democratic secular government.
Only way US or in that matter whole world can win in Afghanistan is to have a secular democratic government that is capable to stand to these jihadis.
I think Obama's thinking on Afghanistan is sound. However, I am not so sure that Pakistan will cooperate fully. Their army and their intelligence service (ISI) have been the sponsors of Taliban since we left Afghanistan. They will not break that relationship that easily.
Posted by suresh at March 27, 2009 03:06 PMJindal, Palin, Dole, Petraeus.
All suitable for the Office of the President of The United States.
Please do not forget Romney, Pawlenty, and Sanford (along with others).
It appears as though those of us on the right side of the aisle have a surfeit of potentials.
What do you folks have?
Obama...and, by him, in 2012: trillions of dollars in deficits, hyper-inflation, resurgent adversaries, and higher taxes, to identify just a few pending issues.
Obama is yours. Good luck with that.
Also, Rush Limbaugh? Well, the last time I checked, his ratings were going up and Obama's approval rating was going down. Interesting, huh?
Regards,
Bagley
P.S. I wonder if Obama will replace Joe Biden on the ticket in 2012? Perhaps with the teleprompter?
Posted by Me Again at March 27, 2009 04:50 PMTheir dream is to run Petraeus. The main question right now is would he even want the nomination?
Oh yeah, speaking as a South Carolinian, anyone who thinks Sanford has endeared himself to this state's working population with his grandstanding on the national state over the unemployment issue when our unemployment rate is over 10% is only deluding themselves.
speaking of delusions the bag-bot rears up, showing exactly how poor the pukes are at programming...yes please baggy butt run one of your inbred morons..apparently you idiots are proud of them...you all are a laugh a minute..of course a real hoot would be joe the plumber and s palin..now there's a winner that would be the end of us all....
Posted by headxray at March 27, 2009 08:03 PM