A Quote by Michael Hayden
A significant U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan has been continuous since October 2001, and President Obama's short-lived 'surge' in 2009 was a continuation of his predecessor's buildup there.
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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.
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 2001, President George W. Bush was condemned for politicizing science with his decision to limit federal funding for stem-cell research; in 2009 President Obama was praised for reversing it, even though his decision was arguably just as political.
Afghanistan would have been difficult enough without Iraq. Iraq made it impossible. The argument that had we just focused on Afghanistan we'd now be okay is persuasive, but it omits the fact that we weren't supposed to get involved in nation-building in Afghanistan.In my new book, I open with a quote from Donald Rumsfeld. In October 2001, he said of Afghanistan: "It's not a quagmire." Ten years later there are 150,000 Western troops there.
Facts are facts: No president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the Great Depression inherited a worse economy, bigger job losses or deeper problems from his predecessor. But President Obama is moving America forward, not back.
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.
Since his inauguration in 2009, President Obama has upheld FDR's vision of America as a nation that keeps its word - a nation still committed to uphold the 'four freedoms' that President Roosevelt set down in the great Atlantic Charter of August 1941.
Continuous wars - which we have now had since 2001 - starting with Afghanistan, continuing on to Iraq. And even since Iraq, it's been more or less continuous. The appalling war in Libya, which has wrecked that country and wrecked that part of the world, and which isn't over by any means. The indirect Western intervention in Syria, which has created new monsters. These are policies, which if carried out by any individual government, would be considered extremist. Now, they're being carried out collectively by the United States, backed by some of the countries of the European Union.
President Obama, don't you think you should follow in the footsteps of your predecessor? Remember, President George W. Bush? He stayed out of the political arena, and he let you, his successor, do your job.
The list of non-democratic regimes that have seen significant reforms since 2001 is long and significant.
In effect, there has been a significant shortfall in the overall amount of monetary policy stimulus since early 2009.
It will be an unusual dynamic [in Congress]. It won't be like the rallying behind President [Barack] Obama in 2009 or behind President [George W.] Bush, even at the beginning of his presidency, or even [Bill] Clinton in '93, when he got his budget through on a partisan vote.
Toughest decision was early in my presidency when I ordered 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan. As somebody who had run to end a large troop presence overseas.
One of the problems of not allowing the American people to read what bin Laden has said is that in October 2001 just after the war began in Afghanistan, he gave a speech that had two parts to it.
I've been looking at some video clips on YouTube of President Obama - then candidate Obama - going through Iowa making promises. The gap between his promises and his performance is the largest I've seen, well, since the Kardashian wedding and the promise of 'til death do we part.
For nearly three years, President Obama devoted a great deal of effort to finding compromises with Congressional Republicans. That was futile, in my view, since those Republicans had made it clear from the day he was inaugurated in 2009 that their plan was to oppose everything he wanted and then paint him as a failed president.
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