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Obama to take weeks to study Afghanistan strategy

Reverend_Hellh0und said:
there is nothing there that addresses what obama did.

as for leno, Sure thing, Obama 1st.
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You are now claiming he did not send troops? The Leno thing is just stupid, as it takes a tiny portion of his time and has zero impact on his ability to handle Afghanistan. It's just a talking point to smear, it's not a real argument.
 
Redress said:
You are now claiming he did not send troops? The Leno thing is just stupid, as it takes a tiny portion of his time and has zero impact on his ability to handle Afghanistan. It's just a talking point to smear, it's not a real argument.
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50 apperances. olympics debacle.


he sent troops and then forgot about it. the fact he spoke to the olympics for hours and his general minutes suggests his priorities are not on afghanistan. :shrug:
 
Reverend_Hellh0und said:
Weeks? really? how long has he been in office? it hasn't taken him weeks to go on leno, it hasn't taken him "weeks" to go to the olympic committee... why is it taking him "weeks" to decide what our troops should do?


you all realize while he "thinks" about it, our troops are being shot at.
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So I take it that Presidents take a great deal of time to decide to do a short interview with Jay Leno or do a couple of PR stunts for the US to host the Olympics?

I completely see how the two fields are related. Am I wary of "weeks"? Surely. However, is comparison military strategy to Jay Leno or the Olympics hilariously stupid? In the words of my neighbors, "You betcha".
 
Fiddytree said:
So I take it that Presidents take a great deal of time to decide to do a short interview with Jay Leno or do a couple of PR stunts for the US to host the Olympics?

I completely see how the two fields are related. Am I wary of "weeks"? Surely. However, is comparison military strategy to Jay Leno or the Olympics hilariously stupid? In the words of my neighbors, "You betcha".
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50 tv interviews, olympics, ncaa pics, etc etc... its not a time thing, its a priorities thing and how the troops percieve his focus.
 
Kandahar said:
You'd rather he make a rash decision without collecting evidence and consulting all of the relevant people? Once upon a time we had a president who tried that strategy. Our troops ended up in Iraq.
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Yep. And thousands and thousands of people who wanted you, your mother, and your little dog dead have been niccely killed in the sand over there.

People need to learn to take a longer view.

The fact of the matter is that the current president is in way over his head, and it's getting harder and harder for him to act on substantive matters. This situation is likley to get much worse.
 
Reverend_Hellh0und said:
50 tv interviews, olympics, ncaa pics, etc etc... its not a time thing, its a priorities thing and how the troops percieve his focus.
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It's note ven worth pointing out how completely retarded you are being about this any more. You have such a will to believe the worst that reality will never penetrate you pea brain. Every president has multiple pretty much daily little PR things, and every president still manages to handle making decisions. Some make good decisions, some make poor ones, but they all manage to get them made. The fact that you are taking such a stance when you do not even know the situation in the pentagon shows that it is your own self delusion, and not at all based in fact.
 
Redress said:
It's note ven worth pointing out how completely retarded you are being about this any more. You have such a will to believe the worst that reality will never penetrate you pea brain. Every president has multiple pretty much daily little PR things, and every president still manages to handle making decisions. Some make good decisions, some make poor ones, but they all manage to get them made. The fact that you are taking such a stance when you do not even know the situation in the pentagon shows that it is your own self delusion, and not at all based in fact.
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hmmm I will have to by-pass making remarks about your physiological assessment of Mr. Rev's brain but regarding the apparent accusation that Obma is not concentrating on one and only topic well let's face it it's a strawman. If he did indeed act as if Afghanistan war the one and only problem he has to solve he would be accused of terminal and fatal myopism.

The other falacious attack against Obama is the he is taking forever to make a simple decision on Afghanistan. Well some wise man or maybe wise guy one said that a quick decision made to solve a complex problem is usually wrong.

Some say that the decision about Afghanistan is simple just send more troops.

I guess if I was ever accused of being wise I would give this sage adivise : simple solutions to a complex problems are usually wrong.


Well a quick and narrow minded decision may just send us down the wrong road and to a rapid disaster.
 
Reverend_Hellh0und said:
50 tv interviews, olympics, ncaa pics, etc etc... its not a time thing, its a priorities thing and how the troops percieve his focus.
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Public relations will not be the primary function of the president's thought. It may be a valuable resource to publicly advocate for his positions or agenda, but when it comes to attention, we have to realize that his own administration will take up the slack. This does not mean that the President could ultimately fail to understand the important implications of foreign policy (anything is possible, and I am not willing to deny that perhaps we can disagree with his foreign policy stances or aptitudes), but it does mean that we have to separate something that is highly coordinated with his speech writers or public relations team and his foreign policy team and advisers.

The President of the United States is literally expected to perform many activities in various subject matters every day. Evaluating his foreign policy stance and actions via his relations with plebeian media personalities is utterly silly to me.
 
Fiddytree said:
The President of the United States is literally expected to perform many activities in various subject matters every day. Evaluating his foreign policy stance and actions via his relations with plebeian media personalities is utterly silly to me.
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Oh I agree here, this is an excellent point. We certainly wouldn't have held it against Bush I should he have torched cute lil Katie Couric, it certainly wouldn't have hurt Bush II should he have brought a lawsuit against Dan Rather.

May I ask..can we evaluate foreign policy stances by the fact that he spoke to General McChrystal once after sending him on a surge strategy in Afghanistan? And if we can, what is your eval?
 
He spoke with General McChrystal again just a couple days ago. And that is face to face meetings. I have not heard anything about the number of phonecalls they have had between each other.

You know, phones, these marvolous inventions that let people speak to each other without actually having to be in the same room.
 
Reverend_Hellh0und said:
50 tv interviews, olympics, ncaa pics, etc etc... its not a time thing, its a priorities thing and how the troops percieve his focus.
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It is somewhat pointless to debate this point with somebody who doesn't accept basic fundamental cornerstones of reality, but oh well. As it is, there is no argument to address, because you haven't proven anything. You need to demonstrate very precisely how the time Obama has spent on interviews contravenes other projects of interest to the United States (not just the military) which will be pretty tough for you considering most of them are concentrated into specific time frames, leaving the vast majority of the time to dedicate to executive work without interruptions. For the latter reason, you can't really do that. You also need to show why several weeks of study is abnormal and psychotic amount of time for a president to dedicate to war related matters. You can't do that either.

how the troops percieve his focus.
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Doesn't really matter. The troops are only one aspect of the nation. Obama can take as much time as he wants to address the others. Several weeks consisting primarily of Afghanistan strategy study is pretty generous.
 
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Should the President of the United States simply reinforce a military effort that has largely failed over the past eight years .... and do it without careful study?

That essentially what is being asked here.

Not one post in here clamoring about the President dragging his feet has addressed the likely results of a decision to reinforce, by how much, and what we expect to be the result.

I will submit that there has been a key factor in the President's decision to delay making a decision: the Afghan election.

There is little doubt in anyone's mind that the US military can largely bring the Taliban to heel. To what purpose though?

The people in the remote villages of Afghanistan will not accept permenant governance by a foreign miliyary power. Essentially, if the military component of this strategy is all we got, then we have a permenant military occupation of a hundred thousand soldiers or more.

Sound like victory?

The real victory is found through the Afghan government. The Afghan people are fed up with corruption and the inability to deliver services. the Afghan security forces are riddled with corruption, often as brutal as the Taliban, and only tacitly loyal to the Afghan central government. They are also not participating in combat operations in the critical sectos of the country.

It is a pretty sad state when teh average Afghan civilians can look at the Taliban and think, "Well, at least they are not corrupt and they do exactly what they say they will do."

Now we add an election that is widely believed to have been stolen on top of this and we have a very serious question to answer: Can we stabilize and professionalize the Afghan government?

Is Karzai damaged goods in the eyes of the Afghan people? And, bearing in mind what happened when we pushed out governments that we didn;t agree with in Vietnam, how exactly can we stabilize a government propped up in place not by merit but by corruption and nepotism?

Can we stabilize and professionalize the Afghan government?

If the answer is no, then we have no business sending in tens of thousands of more tropps to accomplish .... something.

So, all those thinking that the US government should just send its soldiers off to fight at the drop of a hat, what exactly is it you want us to accomplish?

Are we ready for more war like this?

FRONTLINE: Coming Soon: Obama's War | PBS
 
Reverend_Hellh0und said:
Weeks? really? how long has he been in office? it hasn't taken him weeks to go on leno, it hasn't taken him "weeks" to go to the olympic committee... why is it taking him "weeks" to decide what our troops should do?
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Aghanistan is a little more complicated than going on a talk show or supporting bid for the Olympics in the U.S. - It's like comparing how fast you'll buy a house to how quickly you decide you're going to go to the store. I mean you can say that you can buy a house in a day. But I doubt it. It takes most people weeks to properly decide to buy a house and seconds to decide whether or not they're going to go to the store and pick up milk. The two are unrelated when trying to show how well they make decisions.
 
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Morality Games said:
It is somewhat pointless to debate this point with somebody who doesn't accept basic fundamental cornerstones of reality, but oh well. As it is, there is no argument to address, because you haven't proven anything. You need to demonstrate very precisely how the time Obama has spent on interviews contravenes other projects of interest to the United States (not just the military) which will be pretty tough for you considering most of them are concentrated into specific time frames, leaving the vast majority of the time to dedicate to executive work without interruptions. For the latter reason, you can't really do that. You also need to show why several weeks of study is abnormal and psychotic amount of time for a president to dedicate to war related matters. You can't do that either.
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So what do you really think of the emporer's new clothes? :lol:



Doesn't really matter. The troops are only one aspect of the nation. Obama can take as much time as he wants to address the others. Several weeks consisting primarily of Afghanistan strategy study is pretty generous.
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ok so the americans who have to sit around and be shot and killed "don't really matter" while Obama fiddles while Afghanistan burns.... Gotcha. :roll:
 
It doesn't take weeks to figure out that he needs to either give them the combat power they need, or bring them home. But, it's not as if we have some sorta genius in the White House right now.
 
Kandahar said:
You'd rather he make a rash decision without collecting evidence and consulting all of the relevant people? Once upon a time we had a president who tried that strategy. Our troops ended up in Iraq.
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A bad decision is better than no decision at all.
 
The blood of the 8 American soldiers that died this past weekend is on the hands of the anointed one and that my friends will NEVER wash off!

... as is every soldier that has died or been hurt since he read the report (I don't care when he received it, he's had it for over a month now!). His incompetence is screaming!:3oops:
 
ConservaBill said:
The blood of the 8 American soldiers that died this past weekend is on the hands of the anointed one and that my friends will NEVER wash off!

... as is every soldier that has died or been hurt since he read the report (I don't care when he received it, he's had it for over a month now!). His incompetence is screaming!:3oops:
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Really? And what could Obama have done to prevent it? And what is the right doing about it, other than using that blood to score cheap political points?
 
ConservaBill said:
The blood of the 8 American soldiers that died this past weekend is on the hands of the anointed one and that my friends will NEVER wash off!
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Are you suggesting that if Obama had ordered more troops last week to be deployed in December or January (or announced an eventual withdrawal), that these soldiers would not have been killed? :confused:
 
Reverend_Hellh0und said:
So what do you really think of the emporer's new clothes? :lol:






ok so the americans who have to sit around and be shot and killed "don't really matter" while Obama fiddles while Afghanistan burns.... Gotcha. :roll:
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really? really? our troops have been shot at for how many years, and you're actually upset about weeks? how non partisan of you.
 
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