By: Truthiz

Truthiz — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:05:05 +0000

Nate Silver - Excerpt cont:The second is that, although Obama inherited the war, he owns that inheritance by virtue of his statements during the 2008 campaign. He can complain about the war's intractable nature, but he cannot complain about its burden or point as directly to the persistence of the problem as a result of his predecessor's (in)actions.Having said that, and given the grumblings by McCain and Palin, I wonder if we are about to witness the (partisan) politicization of Afghanistan in the way we saw the "Waterloo"-style opposition to Obama's health care plan. During the Bush era, Republicans used the politics of warmaking to cudgel Democrats, and warned that criticisms of the president or his policy amounted to near-treasonous politicization of, and thus the undermining of, America's national security interests. There are no real good solutions in Afghanistan, but whatever semi-promising options are available to us need not be clouded by a new round of shameless politicking designed to batter the president at the expense of non-failure--I hesitate to use the word success--in Afghanistan. Dilemma Full Read: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

By: Truthiz

Truthiz — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:01:29 +0000

The truth is, I don’t know nearly enough about this very complicated and very serious issue to speak with any clarity or credibility.And I seldom pay polls any mind (positive or negative) except for Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com. IMO, he sums up this particular dilemma correctly: Excerpt:Pretty thorny. There are divisions between the parties, divisions within his own party, and divisions among the American public more broadly. A new Quinnipiac poll shows how divided and discouraged Americans are. Though a 52 percent majority think "the war is the right thing to do," 37 percent do not and by only a 49-38 percent margin do they think the war there will successfully remove the terrorist threat to the U.S. (I cannot help but pause here to note that critics of Obama's health care reform who say the public option is unpopular with Americans ought to be reminded that public support for the public option is higher than that for the war in Afghanistan.)There are two fundamental domestic political truths about Afghanistan for Obama. The first is that this is a war without much of a political upside because it is difficult to ever prove that we have "won" it, for even temporary victories can be reversed. There will be no armistice, convention, or capitulation, and the asymmetries of the fight mean that the "enemy," such as it is, can always regroup or displace. We can only measure victory by the vague metric of days during which no major terrorist attack hits America or its allies, or by the withdrawal or reduction in resources invested there.

Comments on: WE’RE NOT LEAVING!

By: Truthiz

By: Truthiz