Blog of Jeff

It’s an incredibly exciting race now, between two people with light-weight experience to be a President. A few years in the senate doing next to nothing, with Hillary being able to add 8-years of life in the White House as a spouse. And the more Hillary talks about bringing peace to Ireland, facing her fears on her trip with Sinbad and the lessons learned from her complete failure on health care last time around, the sillier she sounds. Sure, she’s smart and knows politics, but her list of accomplishments without Bill is pretty thin.

As far as Obama, now that he is plugging away with the “I never wanted to go into Iraq, because it was a distraction from the real war in Afghanistan,” it makes me wonder if he is actually willing to go on record with a plan to increase our troop levels there. I somewhat agree with the general idea that we can’t forget that front, but as a Democrat running against an unpopular war, does he have the nerve to suggest that he wants to increase support for the war he likes? If he doesn’t have the guts to commit more resources to that region, then he really should shut up about it. Our allies aren’t going to send any more troops into harm’s way for him any more than Bush at this point, so it’s on us to accomplish our goals there. If he thinks Afghanistan is the right war, that probably means sending some units from Iraq to Afghanistan. Not a popular idea with the troops, the Democratic party or the general public at this point in time. You can make a pretty convincing argument that botching up Afghanistan is terrible for the long term security of the U.S., however.

And it would be a “fight fire with fire” way to go after McCain’s national security credentials. Obama wouldn’t be running as a dovish pacifist eager to avoid conflict everywhere, but as a commander-in-chief with a different set of priorities on where to fight. I just think he’ll lose a lot of his hardcore left-wing support on that policy idea if he pushes it.

A retired general spoke on “Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer” on Iraq and made two great points today. I’ll add some links and name the general when the “Face the Nation” website gets updated. It was the more right-wing criticism on the war and focused on two points. First, we have not increased the size of the military over the past four years to a level that could support the Bush’s foreign policy objectives in Iraq. This is where Rumsfield, Wolfowitz and company really made horrible mistakes in the war’s implementations.

They refused to accept the reality that conditions on the ground were escalating beyond the numbers of troops they sent and continued to try and prove the false theory that all modern combat will require a smaller, nimbler force without the need for the large numbers of “boots on the ground” types that traditional wars used. Well, occupying Iraq is absolutely the proof that providing security for a large country requires those boots on the ground.

Even the surge shows the lack of preparation over the past years. Many generals have indicated there are still not enough troops and we just don’t have any more. Win or lose, we don’t have any more troops to send. And, if any other conflict takes place, we have no troops to commit anywhere.

The second issue the general addressed was the we have not committed nearly enough resources for the political and economic parts of the war. He expressed his opinion that the president had not done nearly enough to mobilize the country to win the war. I agree completely and would add that no other president has ever even attempted to have both “guns and butter” as much as this president. Tax cuts at a time of war?!?

Other people have pointed out the growing divide between classes of people who serve in the military and classes of people who send the military into places like Iraq. At least tax policy in the past made the upper class feel the financial consequences of the war.

This president likes to talk about history judging his actions far down the road. Not only will the history books be judging Iraq, but so will our grandchildren as they work to pay China back for all the money we borrowed for the war.