I can't believe it's already the last day of August. Summer flew by.
Obama really has to be dreading the end of his summer vacation.
Things aren't looking very good him.
Steven R. Hurst, AP, writes:
President Barack Obama confronts a tortuous September — and it's not just the divisive political fight over health care.
Back from his first presidential vacation, a break truncated by the death and remembrance of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and the nomination of the Federal Reserve chief to a new term, Obama settles back into the Oval Office well aware his approval ratings have fallen.
He now must spend heavily from that shrinking fund of political capital — with a highly uncertain outcome — if his vision of a health care overhaul is to emerge from Congress.
...That plan faces fierce opposition among Republicans and many conservative Democrats, and it will take a huge amount of White House muscle to keep it alive.
It would be bad enough if health care were Obama's only challenge.
He has a plateful of problems, including growing anger and discontent over a number of issues from his supporters on the Left.
A major issue: Afghanistan.
As Obama escalates the war in Afghanistan, Americans are becoming increasingly weary of the conflict.
...Then there is Afghanistan and declining support nearly eight years after the U.S. invaded and drove the militant Islamic Taliban from power, forcing its al-Qaida allies — including Osama bin Laden, it is believed — to scatter to mountain hideouts across the border in Pakistan.
The administration has said it plans this month to finish a reassessment of the war to which Obama has already dispatched nearly 20,000 additional troops, raising the total to about 68,000 by year's end.
As part of the study, commanding Gen. Stanley McChrystal is widely expected to ask for even more forces, as he tries to implement the kind of counterinsurgency strategy that prevented Iraq from descending into all-out civil war two years ago.
While American support for the Bush administration's conduct of the Iraq war quickly vanished after the 2003 invasion, backing for the U.S. mission in Afghanistan had held steady. But a recent Washington Post-ABC news poll shows that only 49 percent of Americans now think the fight is worth it. Sliding confidence may diminish further as American troop deaths increase.
That would put Obama at odds with a slim majority of Americans who doubt the U.S. mission and his promise to free Afghanistan from the brutal and resurgent grip of the Taliban while making the region unsafe for al-Qaida.
Mavericky Russ Feingold determined it was time to get on Obama's case for his handling of the war in Afghanistan.
In an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, Feingold calls for (What else?) a timetable for troop withdrawal.
He writes:
After nearly eight long years, we seem to be no closer to the end of the war in Afghanistan. In fact, given the current buildup of U.S. troops and the possibility that even more may be deploying soon, many Americans, and many Afghans, wonder what we hope to achieve—and when our service members will start to come home.
We went into Afghanistan with a clear mission: to destroy those who helped to perpetrate the horrific 9/11 attacks. I voted to authorize sending our forces there because it was vital to our national security, and I strongly criticized the previous administration for shortchanging that mission in favor of a misguided war in Iraq.
President Barack Obama is rightly focusing on this critical part of the world. But I cannot support an open-ended commitment to an escalating war in Afghanistan when the al Qaeda operatives we sought have largely been captured or killed or crossed the border to Pakistan.
Ending al Qaeda's safe haven in Pakistan is a top national security priority. Yet our operations in Afghanistan will not do so, and they could actually contribute to further destabilization of Pakistan. Meanwhile, we've become embroiled in a nation-building experiment that may distract us from combating al Qaeda and its affiliates, not just in Pakistan, but in Yemen, the Horn of Africa and other terrorist sanctuaries.
We need to start discussing a flexible timetable to bring our brave troops out of Afghanistan. Proposing a timetable doesn't mean giving up our ability to go after al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Far from it: We should continue a more focused military mission that includes targeted strikes on Taliban and al Qaeda leaders, and we should step up our long-term civilian efforts to deal with the corruption in the Afghan government that has helped the Taliban to thrive. But we must recognize that our troop presence contributes to resentment in some quarters and hinders our ability to achieve our broader national security goals.
Some may argue that if we leave now, the Taliban will expand its control over parts of Afghanistan and provide a wider safe haven for al Qaeda. But dedicating a disproportionate amount of our resources to the military occupation of one country is not the most effective way to combat the terrorist threat we face. Even if we invest billions more dollars annually for the next 10 years and sacrifice hundreds more American lives, we are unlikely to get a credible government capable of governing all Afghan territory.
Instead, we should seek to deny al Qaeda a safe haven in Afghanistan in the long term with a civilian-led strategy discouraging any support for the Taliban by Pakistani security forces, and offer assistance to improve Afghanistan's economy while fighting corruption in its government. This should be coupled with targeted military operations and a diplomatic strategy that incorporates all the countries in the region. We will never relent in our pursuit of al Qaeda, nor will we "walk away" from Afghanistan. But our massive military presence there is driving our enemies together and may well be counterproductive.
Feingold thinks he has all the answers.
...While we have many important goals in Afghanistan, we must be realistic about our limited ability to quickly change the fundamental political realities on the ground. The recent presidential election shows there will be no easy solution to the sectarianism, corruption and warlordism that plague that country. We should seriously question putting so many American lives at risk to expand, through military force, the reach of a government that has failed to win the support of its own people.
Instead of increasing troop levels in Afghanistan, we should start talking about a flexible timetable to begin drawing those levels down. It is time to ask the hard questions—and accept the candid answers—about how our military presence in Afghanistan may be undermining our national security.
This is just the beginning of Feingold's push.
He's very vague about his timetable, no specific dates. Perhaps he learned his lesson after proposing date after date for American troop withdrawal from Iraq.
In any event, it's significant that Obama is being criticized by elected officials and others in his own party, whether it's on health care or Afghanistan or gays in the military or climate change.
This being president stuff isn't that easy.
Democrat Rep. Alcee L. Hastings told Bloomberg News Service, "The bloom is off the rose as far as Obama-mania is concerned."
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