A Quote by George Packer
The war in Afghanistan is not of a peace with the rest of Obama's worldview. It's a holdover from the era that his election was supposed to bring to a close.
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Mattis has been sharply critical of President Barack Obama's policies on Iran and Obama's capping of troop numbers and campaign end-dates in theaters of war such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Mattis also appears to be a skeptic of the Obama-era policy of putting women into combat roles.
The military sensed weakness, exploited it and played Barack Obama. Obama's foreign policy has been consistently hawkish despite this reluctant warrior schtick that he pulls. But at the end of the day a reluctant warrior is still a warrior. Look at the drone strikes, the tripling of the war in Afghanistan, and now Libya. I'm convinced that had Obama been in the Senate in 2003 he would have voted for the Iraq war. He's clearly easily convinced by his advisers and the Pentagon.
At least, it is encouraging to me that President [Barack] Obama has put Afghanistan front and center in this broader so-called War on terror, and that he is taking a different approach to Afghanistan.
President Obama continues to support war. He continues to remove many basic civil liberties and human rights. He continues to condone drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan that kill women and children. He meets with his advisers every Tuesday morning and signs extrajudicial killings. To me, those are not the actions of a peace person.
I voted for Obama. I was very happy when he won. But Obama hasn't really been able to effectively do anything that has made me... He hasn't helped the environment. He didn't close Guantanamo Bay. He went deeper into Afghanistan.
No power but Congress can declare war; but what is the value of this constitutional provision, if the President of his own authority may make such military movements as must bring on war? ... [T]hese remarks originate purely in a desire to maintain the powers of government as they are established by the Constitution between the different departments, and hope that, whether we have conquests or no conquests, war or no war, peace or no peace, we shall yet preserve, in its integrity and strength, the Constitution of the United States.
Like Obama before him, Trump will escalate in Afghanistan. Like Obama before him, Trump will lose in Afghanistan. And the rest of us, shamefully, will continue to look the other way.
I think Israel, as a number of commentators pointed out, is becoming an insane state. And we have to be honest about that. While the rest of the world wants peace, Europe wants peace, the US wants peace, but this state wants war, war and war.
If the thumbnail version of the Iraq war was that Bush lied about WMD, the thumbnail version of Obama's war in Afghanistan is that the generals pushed him into a war he didn't want to fight.
Inside the White House there were always extreme amounts of doubt about whether they should be escalating in Afghanistan. In fact, most of the president's advisers said, "This is probably not going to work." A lot of people in the military said, "This is probably not going to work." If the thumbnail version of the Iraq war was that George W.Bush lied about mass destruction weapons, the thumbnail version of Barack Obama's war in Afghanistan is that the generals pushed him into a war he didn't want to fight.
Romney's Obama-era CPAC struggles spoke to a challenge his '12 campaign never overcame: to shore up the GOP's restive conservative base in a way that would allow him to pivot to the middle in pursuit of general election voters.
I wore the cloth of the nation for over 31 years in peace and war, from the Vietnam and Cold War eras, to Afghanistan and Iraq, and the emergence of China.
In 2001-2002, I told the president that the election was supposed to take place when the war was over, at a time when we could return to peaceful life. We agreed upon that. However, I can see now that the election cannot be delayed any longer.
Now that Obama is at war in a 3rd country, does that mean he has to give back his Nobel Peace Prize?
Race has clearly played a role in Kentucky's Obama-phobia, as it has in other swaths of Appalachia. The Obama administration's supposed 'war on coal' is a big factor too.
Regardless of how you feel about war and peace those serving military are doing a duty for the rest of us and they're protecting a way of life that they sometimes come back to and it's not close to them.
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