Obama's speech: The morning after (I agree with all of this)

[underpants]

I listened to Obama's speech on the radio, so it's interesting to see all the attention being paid today to all the visual aspects about his remodeling of the Oval Office, as if that were the salient message of what happened yesterday. I'm certain the Usual Suspects will sound off loudly and rudely today about the speech (Obama was too Muslim-looking, Obama wasn't American enough, Obama still didn't show us his birth certificate, Obama didn't say a word about how his health care reforms will bankrupt the country and destroy our moral fiber, Obama forgot to mention how truly transformative and uplifting Glenn Beck's show was on Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial).

The speech was never meant to be a victory speech about Iraq . Nor was it even meant to be a speech declaring that the Iraq war is over, because it clearly is not over. It wasn't even meant to be a speech about the end of U.S. military engagement in Iraq, because we still have 50,000 troops there and remain very much engaged. We will still suffer casualties. So the question of "Did we win?" is absurd. We might be able to answer that in 20 years, but certainly not now.

Yes, the speech was low key and a bit underwhelming. For me, that's fine. I didn't expect fanfare and banners. All he was doing was punctuating a significant moment in history. My main critique was in the weird transition from Iraq to the focus on the American economy. If you bill your speech as being about Iraq , then you should focus on Iraq . But if your intention is to talk about disparate subjects and to give Americans a pep talk, then don't say it's about Iraq. Or find a better way to link the two so we understand, for example, that a big part of the reason we're in such a huge financial hole today is because we spent nearly $1 trillion fighting a war to find weapons of mass destruction that weren't there. Or something like that.

As I listened to the speech, I felt as if the White House announced that Obama was going to give a speech about Iraq before his writers sat down to figure out exactly what he was going to say. And when they looked at the fact that, really, this is a transition phase in which tens of thousands of U.S. troops will remain for many months to come, they realized it's not really the hoo-rah moment everyone had hoped for.


http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2010/09/obamas-speech-t-3.html

[JuniperLea]

1. He did talk about the war's cost...

That was the segue into talking about the economy. The wars are a huge part of the deficit... and all the GOP want to talk about is "entitlement" spending.

I say if you pay into a system, you damn well ARE entitled to benefit from said system.

Pardon my segue:)

[russspeakeasy]

2. A waste of electricity....

This is the guy I voted
for?????????????????????????????????????????????????

[Monique1]

3. My electricity

was well used last night.......

[yurbud]

4. Did we win in the Philippines in the Spanish American War?

They kicked us out 80some years later.

And in that case, as this one, winning seems beside the point when the point is a pile bodies that were no threat to you even when they were alive.