Wednesday, August 12, 2009

W. v. Obama

It's quite the oddity, quite the irony really. Bush gets Iraq right, finally. And things start looking up there. Obama gets into power, proclaims his Iraqi demobilization with target dates and what not, and terrorist sectarian flare ups begin. Obama fights a campaign blasting Bush on Iraq and emphasizing Afghanistan as the correct war which must be won, largely to contrast himself first with Hillary and then with McCain, gets elected and then gets trapped by his own campaign rhetoric. He's hopelessly mired in Afghanistan, quagmired really, the way Bush never was, and he has not the political will to do anything concrete or meaningful about it--including admitting that there is nothing to be done but get out. Afghanistan may become Obama's Vietnam, when neither Iraq nor Afghanistan became Bush's Vietnam. The spectre of Jimmy Carter is haunting Obama's foreign policy.

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