My heart goes out to the president

[impik]

With all that he's facing, with what he's seen over the past couple of weeks - The visit to Dover, the heartbreaking day today - And that Afghanistan decision. Man. That is SO tough. We know that he is not some war monger, that he's a man of peace. we know that unlike the two Dicks from the previous 8 years - He actually gets that there's an awful, awful price to war, and i truly trust him that if he'll send more troops it's because he honestly think it's necessary - Based of facts, logic and reality, not hateful religion and fanatic ideology - But this must be almost impossible to bear.

I'm not particularly religious, but i will pray for him. He's a good man, i hope he'll make the right decision.

[HopeOverFear]

1. same here

[The Wielding Truth]

2. Yrs, I too believe that his heart is with us and that he will so his best.

[Cha]

3. Thank you, impik..

This needs to said..I'm glad you did.

[Clio the Leo]

4. But he has a bit of advantage over all of us....

.... in that he understands what a complicated matter it is. Lives will be lost either way. ..... And speaking of praying, I thank God every night that he's the one making the decision.

[ThomCat]

5. Does he get the aweful price of war?

I can't imagine that anyone who does would keep waging one. :(

If he keeps supporting war, sending more troops, more contractors, and trillions of dollars more that we don't even have, then he's a war monger. It really is that simple.

He can talk to the wounded and thank them for their service, and that is very kind and sweet, but he is still responsible for expanding and continuing this war and sending them there.

Whether his motivations are religion, politics, global economics, or whatever else, doesn't really matter. None of us are in his head, or should ever pretend to be. We can only see his public choices, and the outcomes. So it is those choices and outcomes that matter. Look at those choices and what the results are.

Do we have any justifiable reason to be in either war, borrowing more trillions of debt, getting our soldiers killed and wounded and not being able to tell them why? Do we have any reason for continuing to destroy our economy with this war? Is this debt worth what it is doing to our country? Really, what are we getting in return for this mountainous growing war-debt?

They can't even say what victor means, how to describe it or what it might look like, or how they would know it when we have won. If you have you idea what the hell you are doing or where you are going, then how can you ever expect to succeed? Why are we allowing such a farce to continue?

I feel sorry for Obama. I really think he was being honest to at least some extent in his campaign speeches when he talked about timetables for ending at least one of the wars, and restoring the rule of law, and ending torture, and other stuff he has abandoned since taking office.

He has changed since taking office. He has been inundated with secret information, huge problems, and horrible evidence of US war-crimes that he is trying to defense us from, and prevent us from even knowing about. He is dealing with stuff that traumatizes people, so it should not be any surprise if some of this might traumatize him and change him. Every president leaves office changed.

But I feel more sorry for all of us, that we did not get a President who would end wars instead of continuing and escalating them.

[Baltoman991]

7. You don't

need to feel sorry for me.

I knew what I was getting when I voted for President Obama and I'm not disappointed in the least.

The man said he was going to draw down on Iraq and it's happening. He said from day one that the Afghan war was the just war and he would, if needed, send in more troops to get the job done. The man was handed a steaming pile of shit and he's doing what he can do make things better for us and it's going to take time. Time that many around here don't want to seem to give him.

[ThomCat]

8. How is Afghanistan a "just war?"

Based on what justice? Against whom? Are those really the people paying the cost of this war? Are they the ones we are attacking and fighting?

Women in Afghanistan have said publicly that things are far worse now thanks to the US. We used the liberation of Afghan women as part of our rational, but we make things much worse for them.

Getting rid of the Taliban? Why? They seem to be less corrupt than the warlords we put in place, get rid of the drug trade we keep putting into place, and actually reduce violence. The rationale is that they were harboring Al Qaida, but they have apparently been in Pakistan for years now.

Attacking Al Quaida? Not only are they reportedly in Pakistan, but the UK has revealed that Al Qaida didn't really exist as an organization when all of this began. They were a few men, and Bin Laden even had to rent mercenaries as extras in his videos to make it look like he had followers. All the rest was a deliberate lie of the CIA in order to create a big boogieman enemy that could be used to justify policy. An imaginary enemy could be controlled more than a real one, and could be counted on to do what the US government need them to do. A lawful police action against those few men would have worked better than a war against this imaginary entity, but because of our PR and marketing Al Qaida, and our war against everyone imagined to associate with them, those few men have been able to recruit and now Al Qaida really does exist.

This whole thing in Afghanistan is far more complicated that this "just war" label that you throw around. I really think that "Just war" is for people who don't know anything and don't want to know anything. :(

[dionysus]

13. the taliban "reduce violence"?!?! look, case can be made that this is not a wise war, but saying

the taliban reduce violence is friggin nuts man.

[karynnj]

15. It might come down to how you define reducing violence and if you ignore all costs

It is possible that when the Taliban was in power, that they were so authoritarian and succeeded in controlling so much, that there was little "violence" - I put violence in quotes to mean that it excludes violent repression by the government. Under that metric, it might be true, but not at an acceptable cost.

[goclark]

16. And who would that President have been ~

Who running had the power to control the Bush Mafia?

Clinton? Dennis? Biden? LIEberman?

[impik]

23. He promised to end one war

And he's doing it. He never said that he'll end the war in Afghanistan. Quite the opposite.

Anyway, don't feel sorry for me. I wouldn't have anyone else at this position right now.

[ThomCat]

29. When has he said anything about ending the war in Iraq?

He is implementing a permanent presence there, and stop-loss orders to extend tours. That hardly sounds like ending the war.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

6. He should ignore the neocons and their warmongering

[bigwillq]

9. That's part of the job.

My heart doesn't go out to any politician for reasons associated with the job. If if something happened to a politician or his/her family, like a health issue, or something along those lines, then I would feel compassion.

[uponit7771]

10. Amen!!!

[jenmito]

11. K&R. I agree. n/t

[liquid diamond]

12. Touching post.

But it won't stop the haters from calling him a warmonger or Bush III if he does deploy more troops. If it were that simple to just pull all our troops out with no negative consequences, I'm sure he would do that.

[Cha]

17. Precisely.

[tomm2thumbs]

14. seems like just yesterday that anything was possible

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADSRsAyhgxw

announcement of Obama as President

[earth mom]

18. ROFLMAO! A man of peace?! WTF?!

Obama is going to send THOUSANDS of more troops to war.

Lay off the Hope & Change Kool Aid will ya? :eyes:

[ClarkUSA]

19. He's ending the Iraq war or did your Obama Hatred Kool Aid fry your memory cells?

44 campaigned on finishing the war in Afghanistan in order to beat back the growing Al-Qaida threat along the Pakistan
border and catch bin Laden. As a New Yorker, I support his aims. What's wrong with that? You know, it's whiners like you
who probably think we never should have fought in the American Revolution and WWII. :eyes:

[bevoette]

22. that's the thing...

people who voted for him seem to forget that he campaigned on focusing on this war and doing what it took to win it


just like people who didn't vote for him forget that HCR was one of his primary platform goals...and they act like this came out of left field

i don't get it, on either side - he's doing what he said he would do :shrug:

[ClarkUSA]

26. I hear ya.

Fact is, both sides of the aisle have their bitter sore losers who want the President to fail. They're all crazy as loons, lie like hell,
and could care less about the big picture for any legislative effort by the White House. You see it on DU 24/7.

[Baltoman991]

20. And once again,

you prove you paid no attention to the man for the 19 months of his campaign. Iraq is winding down, as he said it would. He's concentrating on Afghanistan, as he said he would.

But you hatred not only blinded you, but it apparently caused you to temporarily go deaf in the process. He said he was going to continue the Afghan war and he won. You're not being able to get over that fact won't make it go away.

He is a man of peace. He walked into this bullshit. If he were to pull out of Afghanistan right now and the Taliban were to get into Pakistan and get a hold of those nukes you'd whine about that too.

Nothing this man does or will do will make you happy because you're still bitter and it shows with each and every post you make on this board.

[bevoette]

28. +1 (nm)

[impik]

24. Wow, still fights the primaries, ah?

[ClarkUSA]

27. Most of the Haters/Failers/trolls here fit into that category.

They just pick the Outrage of the Day to stir up shit. They'll keep doing it until the day President Obama leaves office, too.

[emilyg]

30. Annoying. Come up with something new and clever.

[truedelphi]

21. My heart would go out to the president

If he hadn't stomped all over my heart his first weeks in office. (And he continues to do so.)

Thanks for Kissinger/Geithner, GoldmanSachs/Bernanke, for startting out by putiting us Single Payer Advocates in a weak position TO BEGIN WITH, and then for running around with the manufactured chaos Teabagger crowd all summer, and for having such weak deplorably weak talking points about the public option.

Thanks for expanding Afghanistan and thanks for not having a single advocate for the elderly or the impoverished holding a top position in your Administration.

[vaberella]

25. I feel for him too. I wouldn't want to be President. n/t