Sunday, October 4, 2009

#162 An Obama Report Card III

"Barry" Obama, as he was known in 1971--even then, the trademark ears!--has already killed more foreigners than Clinton killed in his eight years as President. Since he was elected, Commander-and-Chief Barack Hussein Obama has "presided" over not only the deaths of 300+ American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (and hundreds more maimed and mangled), but also double or triple that of "enemy" combatants, in addition to about 10,000 non-combatant civilians. He promised Dave Letterman last week that combat troops (wiggle word) would be out of the Middle East sometime in 2011. Well and good, but do the math. Two years from now = many more thousands dead. Even if his "timetable"proves to be correct. They always are, of course. Obama campaigned for awhile promising a target-date of late 2009. Grade = F

Grossly unfair to the new President, you say. Well, he's not new anymore. Moreover, he missed his chance the moment he was inaugurated. We're not a parliamentary system like the Brits, but we became one, virtually, when Obama was elected our prime minister, presiding over a majority of his party in both legislative assemblies. On Jan 20, in other words, all bets were off. As Commander-in-Chief, he could have unilaterally--the very next day--started the withdrawal HIS troops from the entire area of conflict, or as President-in-Chief have begun working with HIS congress to pass a bill to get them out as soon as possible. He did neither. Grade = F.

He did keep the campaign promise--a bad one--to concentrate the war-effort on Afghanistan. I was heartened last week to hear on the local news--while incredulous at what I was hearing--from an old VFW guy talking about Obama's expansion of the war. It was at a Veteran of Foreign Wars rally in Fayetteville NC, home of Fort Bragg, altogether the least likely of venues to hear the "Q-word"--No, no ... it sounds a lot like Vietnam to me. Lot of comparisons there. I think we're getting into a QUAGMIRE, just like Vietnam, and it's not good for our troops. Wow. And this from grizzled war-veteran. He'll probably be asked to turn in his medals. Not to mention his funny hat. C'mon Obama, this old VFW warrior is probably farther to the right in his politics than Mussolini, but he knows the score. And he's given you an F.

BHO, you don't want to be remembered as an LBJ. President Johnson took over a war from his predecessor, like you. He expanded it to apocalyptic proportions, and it ruined a presidency that was otherwise the most successful one on the domestic front since FDR. (I owe him my Medicare.) Common knowledge. Let's try to surpass your Democratic predecessor, Clinton, who was called by Tony Morrison "our first black President"--half-ironically. You're the real thing, and starting out in politics, as you did, on the social-welfare front as a community-organizer, you know you can accomplish a lot more here at home--starting with what Clinton failed at: health-care reform--if you weren't hampered by overseas adventurism.

Stop killing foreigners. It's pulling your grades way down.
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