A Quote by Josh Mandel
You know, I agree with President Obama that in Iraq and Afghanistan, at some point in time, we have to take the training wheels off and we have to allow those countries to stand on their own two feet.
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You know what really makes this embarrassing? The other day the president said the leaders in Iraq are 'ready to take off the training wheels.' That's what he said, 'take off the training wheels.' Then he goes out and falls off his bicycle. And they wonder why the rest of the world doesn't take us seriously.
Running on the pledge to end two wars, President Obama has the country entangled in three: Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, and that doesn't include the American's foray into Libya.
Well, first, the situation in Afghanistan is much better than it was. But there is no comparison between Afghanistan and Iraq. Iraq has a bureaucracy, Iraq has wealth. Iraq has an educated class of people who are positioned to come in and take over.
I agree with the president [Barack Obama]. I've said myself, we will not send American combat troops back to either Syria or Iraq - that is off the table.
I think, while it is true that the Hillary Clinton and I voted differently on the war in Iraq, what is important is that we learn the lesson of the war in Iraq. And that lesson is intrinsic to my foreign policy if elected president, is the United States cannot do it alone. We cannot be the policeman of the world. We are now spending more I believe than the next eight countries on defense. We have got to work in strong coalition with the major powers of the world and with those Muslim countries that are prepared to stand up and take on terrorism.
Like Obama, President Trump has utilized military strikes, albeit in a limited fashion. Nevertheless, he has invaded no new countries and worked steadfastly to end the two-decade-long war in Afghanistan.
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.
Iraq and Afghanistan will, over time, become stable. But the War on Terror will continue long after Iraq and Afghanistan have had success in standing up their own governments.
Yes, Obama took over two wars from Bush - just as President Richard Nixon inherited Vietnam from President Lyndon Johnson and President Dwight Eisenhower inherited Korea from President Harry Truman. But at least the war in Iraq was all but won by 2009, thanks largely to the very surge Obama had opposed as a senator.
In his first term, President Barack Obama played a cautious manager navigating the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression and cleaning up the messes left by President George W. Bush in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It cannot be an American fight. And I think what the president [Barack Obama] has consistently said - which I agree with - is that we will support those who take the fight to ISIS. That is why we have troops in Iraq that are helping to train and build back up the Iraqi military, why we have special operators in Syria working with the Kurds and Arabs, so that we can be supportive.
I have a song called 'Training Wheels,' and it's about being in love with someone and taking it to the next level by taking off the training wheels.
I mean, you can agree or disagree with Iraq or Afghanistan, but by the way, now the great campaigning cause out there is the absence of intervention in Syria. And then in Libya, it's partial intervention. And that doesn't really explain why some countries that have literally nothing to do with the interventions in the Middle East end up getting targeted.
The reality is that [Barack] Obama has some 15 countries in the current Libya coalition. President Bush put together close to 50 countries for the Afghan coalition, some 40 countries for the Iraqi coalition, more than 90 countries for the Proliferation Security Initiative and over 90 countries in the Global War on Terror.
The Iraq War has thrown such a heavy shadow on Afghanistan that you can't hardly get any news about that now. I went to Afghanistan this year and spent more time there than I did in Iraq ... just 'cause they were forgotten about, and I wanted them to know that I appreciated it.
I don't pretend to be a general or an admiral or anything else, but I just - every time I see - I see President [Barack] Obama get up, "Ladies and gentleman, we are sending 50 people to Iraq," 50.So that's bad in two ways. Number one, it's such a low number that the enemy's saying is that all?And number two, when you think 50, those people now have a target on their back. They wanna find those 50 people and they look for those 50 people.
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