Andrew Klavan: Do Something!

Yesterday, fourteen Americans died in helicopter crashes in Afghanistan, the deadliest day for Americans there since June, 2005, in what has been the deadliest year for international and US forces there since the 2001 invasion. Meanwhile, in Baghdad, where Obama has ordered our troops into slow retreat, two massive suicide car bombs claimed hundreds of lives, including those of at least two dozen children, while destroying three major government buildings. And then, of course, came news that Obama had now played more golf while in office than our last president did in nearly three years.

All right, I don’t begrudge Obama the golf. It’s his dithering and cowardice I find shameful. During the campaign, he told us Afghanistan was the necessary war. In March, he told us he had completed a major review of the situation and come up with a new strategy. The commander he put in place has told him he needs 30- to 40-thousand more troops to finish the job. Civilians are dying in the war he wants to abandon. Our soldiers are dying in the war he swore he’d win. And Obama, caught between campaign rhetoric and reality, can’t figure out what to do.

Again, I’m not an expert, but I’m beginning to smell disaster, big time disaster. Is it possible the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize will not only lose the war Bush won but simultaneously tiptoe by cowardly half-measures into a wearying round of useless American deaths before he’s forced to retreat from Afghanistan as well, having accomplished absolutely nothing? God forbid.

Andrew Klavan

Unacceptable. TheOne finds time to golf, to jet off for date nights with the wife, to drop in to raise money for his party’s candidates, to make a public appearance every single, stinking day, but he can’t find time to make a damned decision about the lives of our soldiers? He only found 25 minutes to meet with his general – in the last how many months – because of public pressure to do so. He shelved his general’s request for over a month.

In the (similar) words of that idiot Garofalo, “this is politics, straight up.”

A decision, either way is going to piss off a large segment of this country. He knows it. He’s afraid of it. It means loss of votes, in the end. But what he’s not getting is that pissing off a large segment of this country should not be the issue. The lives of our soldiers, and those of our allies, is what matters. The security of this nation should be paramount to him.

Our soldiers can’t possibly feel like they are being backed up. This indecision from their commander-in-chief cannot be moral boasting for them.

Good Lord! He’s spending precious time blasting Fox and anyone who gets in his healthcare way. He’s doing whatever he can to distract us to get his public option and his crap-and-trade shit through. And all at the expense of the soldiers who are defending and dying for our freedom and our protection. I can’t believe that this is all going past the understanding of our soldiers and their families. They see it. They understand what he’s doing or more correctly, not doing for them. This is one president who does not have the military behind him because he has so far shown them no leadership. Being Mr. Smooth-and-Cool President is not going to make them feel safer.

It’s time to make a decision and one that puts our soldiers and our security first, no matter what it is, and in Klavan’s words DO SOMETHING!