Bill O’Reilly was elaborating on the “ineffective Obama” meme last night:
This guy’s been paralyzed on Afghanistan for two months,
he sneered. Apparently, if you were to possess the insight of Mr. O’Reilly, deciding whether to escalate or deescalate a war in a tribal, backwards country, each of which options comes with considerable, if not massive, geopolitical repercussions, would be a straightforward decision, kind of like that other no-brainer of invading Iraq. I mean, what could you possibly learn in two months about as transparent a spot as Afghanistan that you couldn’t have brushed up on in a week? Two months, after all, is several lifetimes on the “no-spin zone.”
Then there’s the stretching-on of the health care debate:
How long has health care been going on?
O’Reilly asked.
He’s not even going to make Christmas.
Now the simplest way not to have a months-long negotiation over health care reform is not to engage in such reform at all, or at least, not to seek a total transformation of the system in one stroke. Some would argue, with justification, that such inaction is precisely the proper course. But if you do set yourself such an ambitious goal, leaving aside whether it is a wise one, spending months debating and working out the details hardly seems excessive.
The Right launched the “ineffective Obama” meme a few weeks ago, and even the MSM has picked it up. It happens to conflict with the “Obama is rapidly turning us into a socialist country” meme, but what the heck.
Karl Rove today tallies the costs of the Democratic health care bills as a self-evident argument against the plans. Such an argument seems to me to circumvent some possible prior points that first need to be established: Either a. Covering more people is not a sufficiently pressing need to justify the costs of doing so, or b. There are cheaper ways of doing so, or c. Covering more people is a pressing need, but we can’t afford it at the moment. But if you believe that it is morally (see the great Kausfiles) or even, over the long term, fiscally imperative to cover the uninsured, the present costs of doing so is not a slam-dunk argument against so-called reform. I doubt whether National Greatness enthusiasts would ever be deterred from military actions designed to maintain America’s rightful (or, as some see it, divinely mandated) world hegemony by arguments of cost. Certainly, in nearly all cases of public action, proceeding incrementally is far preferable to huge new legislated rearrangements of social and economic relations. But conservatives don’t always eschew the totalizing attack on a problem: vouchers are intended to blow up the public school system, for example.
“deciding whether to escalate or deescalate a war in a tribal, backwards country, each of which options comes with considerable, if not massive, geopolitical repercussions”
So does not deciding. In the UK for example support for the war in Afghanistan has roughly halved in the last couple of months I wouldn’t be surprised if that were also true in other Nato countries. Letting things drift has repercussions too.
I mean, what could you possibly learn in two months about as transparent a spot as Afghanistan that you couldn’t have brushed up on in a week?
Well, he’s had far more than two months. He’s had 10 months as president to study the issue, and he’s been commenting on it for almost a year before that as a candidate. As Ross points out, you either **** or get of the pot. His dithering is just as lethal (perhaps more so) than making a bad decision. If he wants to clear out of Afghanistan, fine. I don’t blame him, but do it already. That, or give your generals the troops and support they say they need.
But if you do set yourself such an ambitious goal, leaving aside whether it is a wise one, spending months debating and working out the details hardly seems excessive.
Except the Democrats didn’t intend to do that. They promised to pass a bill by the close of summer. Given their own yardstick, they are ineffective. Does this means their program was any less of a threat? Well, if it was as bad as it sounded, then, yes, and that justifies the mobilized opposition, with all its goofy hysterics.
I doubt whether National Greatness enthusiasts would ever be deterred from military actions designed to maintain America’s rightful (or, as some see it, divinely mandated) world hegemony by arguments of cost.
True dat, but one idiocy hardly justifies another.
Remember Bill Clinton saying that he’d have national health care up and running by June 1993?
Worse than dithering about Afghanistan is his (and Bush’s) dithering about the United States. How about some sanity with regard to our own Islam problems: honor killings, immigration Jihad, the flying Imams, CAIR (and other pro-Jihad groups); Islamic soldiers; and Mosques that promote slaughter in the name of Allah.
Yes, there are no easy solutions to these problems in a country that respects individual rights, but I don’t see much of an effort from the powers that be, present or past.
Does it need to be repeated that any decision the President would have made two months ago, or two months from now, wouldn’t take effect until 2010 anyway? Even if he wanted more troops in Afghanistan now, they wouldn’t be there until early Spring.
So this whole “the cost of dithering” debate doesn’t mean squat.
“Dithering” may be a charitable explanation for what the president is doing. An alternative explanation is that he’s waiting until after a healthcare bill is passed before taking politically unpopular action.
I must admit, that like O’Reilly, I sometimes am a little haste in condemning Obama. I have such a disdain for the man and the far-left hatred that he represents that I can’t stop “hatin'”.
I do not doubt that the delay is about politics, not military strategy.
Obama is playing politics and so are those who attack him for “dithering”.
This is not news.