On at least one of his major policies, President Obama is getting support, and a nudge, from an unlikely quarter – Sarah Palin.
Ms. Palin, the former governor of Alaska and last year’s Republican vice presidential nominee, joined a group of conservatives signing a letter to Mr. Obama praising him for his management of Afghanistan and urging him to commit more troops there.
Among others who signed the letter, organized by the Foreign Policy Initiative, a newly created conservative organization, were Karl Rove, the senior adviser to Mr. Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush; William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard; and Ryan C. Crocker, the former ambassador to Iraq.
Uh oh, this can't be good.
As flaming liberal I have finally come to terms with the fact that Obama's presidency did not immediately herald an end to all of the wars started by the Bush administration. It was a painful epiphany, but one that I have learned to live with. However having this group of Republican ne'er-do-wells patting you on the back is a clear indication that you have f**ked up somewhere.
Just take a look at this "Rogues Gallery" of supporters.
Steve Biegun
Gary Bauer
Max Boot
Ellen Bork
Paul Bremer
Christian Brose
Debra Burlingame
Eliot A. Cohen
Ryan C. Crocker
Thomas Donnelly
Eric Edelman
William S. Edgerly
Jamie M. Fly
David Frum
Abe Greenwald
John Hannah
Pete Hegseth
Margaret Hoover
Thomas Joscelyn
Frederick W. Kagan
Robert Kagan
William Kristol
Tod Lindberg
Herbert London
Clifford May
Robert C. McFarlane
Joshua Muravchik
Andrew Natsios
Sarah Palin (If you need me to identify this person then you are on the wrong blog.)
Keith Pavlischek
Beverly Perlson
Danielle Pletka
John Podhoretz
Stephen Rademaker
Mitchell B. Reiss
Karl Rove (Another person who does not need introduction. Nickname: Turdblossom.)
Jennifer Rubin
Randy Scheunemann
Gary Schmitt
Dan Senor
Ashley Tellis
Marc Thiessen
Daniel Twining
Peter Wehner
Kenneth Weinstein
Christian Whiton
Rich Williamson
If I were Barack Obama and any of these people tried to pat ME on the back I would immediately ask to be rushed to the hospital to have the knife removed.
Perhaps the ONLY conservative of note that Obama should accept a pat on the back from is columnist George Will who recently called for a substantial withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. The list of failed politicians, ex-Bush cabinet members, and neo-cons above is exactly the sort of people that President Obama should try to disappoint. If they were unhappy with his policies he could be damn sure he was doing the right thing.
Just having both Sarah Palin and Karl Rove alone endorse your policies in Afghanistan should serve as a huge red flag.
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
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yeah when people like this are praising you, you know you're on the wrong track. these are people who love war and can't get enough of it - as long as they or their family members don't have to participate.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how many on this list are war investors? members of the carlyle group or other war promoters?
The Foreign Policy Initiative is the new name for the Project for a New American Century--you know, the rogues' gallery of Zionist neocons and military-industrial--oil thugs in league Darth Vadar Cheney who back in the 90s talked about attacking Iraq and a host of other Moslem nations but said probably the only way the American public would get behind the idea would be in the aftermath of a "Pearl Harbor-like attack on the United States." The lot of them ought to be tried for treason.
ReplyDeleteReagan and the Republicans like to take credit for the fall of the Soviet Union, but it's an illusion. What did the Soviets in was Chernoble and Afghanistan. No one can win in that country. Just ask the Brits. And Alexander the Great. If Obama doesn't get the hell out of there, fast, we're doomed. Midnight
"Just having both Sarah Palin and Karl Rove alone endorse your policies in Afghanistan should serve as a huge red flag."
ReplyDeleteAnd the rest are just as crazy as Palin, maybe worse, because they do have good educations and know their way around national government.
William "the Bloody" Kristol has been wrong 100% of the time. Really. He has never, ever been right about anything. He was also the one who convinced McCain that Palin was the right V.P. choice. Need I say more?
The other one who jumps right out at me, mostly because of an interview with Jon Stewart, is Clifford May. Jon tore him apart, in only the way Jon can do it. The guy is a complete wingnut.
You can also note, not one of them, not a one, has ever done military service for our nation. But they are always the loudest voices when it comes to bombing some Country that they don't like or want to steal oil from. Bush is the only one who signed up, but he knew he would never have to go overseas. Damn, he couldn't even serve stateside.
What a bunch of losers!
I sure hope President Obama pays close attention to this and one of his blue dog staff doesn't try to brush it under the rug.
This reads like a list of "The Family".
ReplyDeleteEeek! What if they're trying to ingratiate themselves for an evil hidden agenda?
Gryphen, even a moron is bound to be right twice a day..or something like that. Look, these guys are war-mongers, so they're happy about the situation. That doesn't change the fact that after Synthetic Cowboy saw Gog in Iraq and attacked them, ignoring Afghanistan, he got us into a huge mess that we can't walk away from.
ReplyDeleteOur troops are drawing down in Iraq and we're only supporting the Iraqis now, when they ask for our help. We're moving toward less violence, but sadly, we will never be able to end this cluster fu** W swaggered us into.
That was why we objected and protested at the time...Viet Nam...you can't get out...
here we are. Even a man as diplomatic and brilliant as Obama can't change the past.
W left quite the legacy. Never mind the clowns on this list- they're just happy to see death and destruction any time. Doesn't mean they understand the reasons we are in Afghan or what our strategy is.
Sarah Palin signs anything with a dollar bill attached. Don't let it bother you:-)
He should start pulling the troops out immediately!
ReplyDeleteWow! I agree with Gryphen. We supposedly went into Afghanistan to get ben Laden and stopped when we 1000 yds away. Afghanistan broke the back of England and the USSR, pay attention President Obama.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant observation; more to the point thoroughly indicative
ReplyDeleteof the fact that your interest in politics in international affairs is a sham.
This is just a pissing contest for you: my guy against yours.
Worse still, is the hypocrisy: had they roasted him for his policy you would have blown them up.
The British Commander is calling for more troops to staunch the escalating Taliban advances.
He gets it. You, clearly, don't.
Can you put aside your disgust of Palin and Carl Rove long enough to understand at least two or three of the reasons why the war in Afgahistan must be won.
Not in any order but First, there's the critical problem of Russian national security. Rampant drug use by Russia's youth has become a
serious threat to society. The main source of supply of heroin is Afghanistan. Russia has called on the U.S. stop the flow of Afghani heroin across its borders.
Second, Mushareef sees Pakistan as a progressive nation but it considers India a greater threat than the Taliban, which it sees as a
counter force to Indian influence in Afghanistan.
Big problem.
America has strong ties to India which is NOT a muslim nation but one with whom America has strong ties. Pakistanis, by and large, dislike and distrust the United States and that's a huge problem because of its nuclear capacity. The longer the situation in Afghanistan is in chaos the greater the probability Pakistan's questionable nuclear security can be reached and when it comes to nuclear terrorism, all roads lead to Pakistan.
Third, the war in Afghanistan has all but shutt down the cash flow from Afghanistan to Al Queda causing the latter a serious cash flow problem. They can no longer recruit. Muslim Charities have stepped in to bring discontented and impoverished potential recruits into "rehab"
programs to "return and repent" to moderate Islam.
Al Queda's new strategy is simply to play "rope-a dope" with the U.S.:
just go to the mattresses in the hell-hole of Kandahar province to prolong the war which will at the very least result in civil unrest in America and financial strain.
I bet you didn't entertain even one of these realities of the war. Why should you. The magnetic north pole of your life is Palin. She is your "Moby Dick"; the architect of some great evil inflicted upon you. The rest of the world, independent of your expressed self-righteous
indignation is an afterthought.
@3:06, speaking about you now: why do you try so hard to prove that you know anything? Why are you so insecure? What is it in your background that makes you so afraid? What makes you think your writing is so interesting as to take up more space than any other poster on Gryphen's blog? Don't you have your own blog? No one forces you to come to this blog...Or do they? Has Sarah taken juju away and given us YOU, Mr. Ad Hominem? Because it seems as if you are assigned here. It is so easy to see which posts are yours, as you can't figure out how to format your sentences correctly.
ReplyDeleteI embrace Quittypants as my "Moby Dick". On that day when she is led away in handcuffs, I will know that Lady Justice is alive and kicking, instead of the comatose state brought on by the mugging Cheney inflicted on her on behalf of the oil industry.
ReplyDeleteRe: War in Afghanistan. Protecting Russians from a drug culture? Protecting Indian interests? Defending ourselves from Al Queda? Hmm.. well, maybe. Can we "win"? Probably not.
OT: Forgive me if someone else has covered this, but does your website get paid if I click on the "SarahPac" (or other) ads I see on your site?
Miss Sunshine
Wonder what's going on with that pipeline.
ReplyDeleteBush planned on going after OBL before 9/11.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4587368
@3:06
ReplyDeleteThere are serious problems with your reasoning:
The most glaring one is that Gen. Musharraf is no longer the leader of Pakistan. I could go on, just this:
Afghanistan may have been temporarily subdued many times, but historically, this assemblage of independent, interminably warring tribes inhabiting a forbidding terrain has prevailed over would-be conquerors from Alexander the Great to Djenghis Khan to the British Crown and the USSR. The US will no more "win" than did all the others who, each in their own time, tried to subdue those who "own" the ancient trails of the Silk Road.
(Or should we now call it the Oil/Minerals/ Sphere of Influence Road?)Think of all the many "...stans" and their below-ground wealth.
Gryphen, from one Flaming Liberal to another:
I thought of adopting FLing as my own avatar after the election, but that word may have as much of an unintended non political connotation as does Immoral Minority. As I live on the East
side of the Gulf of Mexico, I shall just sign in as "from the diagonal"... which applies anyway, as I have lived long enough, and travelled far enough, to approach Life from outside the box of conventional thought.
I thank you for your thought provoking posts.
.
@3:06
ReplyDelete"Carl" Rove?
There you go again with the old "go to the mattresses" catch phrase.
Maybe better not to say that so often if you really want to remain "Anon"...
The situation in Afghanistan is extremely complex. Some of the concerns expressed by anon @3:06 are quite real. Still, as others have stated, no nation has mananged to subdue the Afghanis (really a group of regions with great ethnic and other differences). The most recent election there where Karzai "won" is now being exposed as a huge fraud. My point is that if we want peace there, we cannot achieve it by war ! Some how, what the Taliban is offering to folks there has to be made unacceptable. In other words, we need to find more creative ways to solve these problems.
ReplyDeleteSome may believe that the situation is calm in Iraq-- nothing could be further from the truth. First, it is only calm in relation to the chaos created by the un-necessary war there. Secondly, now Iran is in a strengthened position as a Shiite power with the new Shiite majority in Iraq ruling the joint-- the last few years in Iraq have meant ethnic cleansing in many areas with increased tentions between Sunni and Shiite. The Sunni leaders in Saudi Arabia and Jordan who are US allies are very nervous about the new power of Iran in the region.(i.e. with the disappearence of a united Iraq as a buffer to Iran) THIS IS THE RESULT OF THE IGNORANT GUNG HO POLICIES OF THE BUSH-CHENEY REGIME. So please understand that we are leary of greater U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan where the problems are even more daunting.
@ 6:31 conscious at last:
ReplyDeleteOne of the worst and most longlasting legacies of colonial imperialism of the 19th to the mid 20th centuries is that of arbitrary borders. In every one of their former possessions tribes which were incompatible for ages were thrown together under the umbrellas of the overlords, the vice roys, or whatever their titles may have been, and armies they commanded.
When these colonializations ended and the resulting artificially conceived countries became independent, ancient enmities once again exploded. Nation building at its most ignorant.
I seems we are trying to reestablish a similar imperial reign upon the unwilling, and it will only cause more hate and discontent. It does not matter what name we give to these efforts.
Our leaders, or at the very least, their advisers, must know this. Failure to recognize the dangers will only cause more death and destruction.
"Go Home Stranger" may very well be a valid refrain for those formerly colonialized groups in this world.
Anon @7:23:
ReplyDeleteA guy in one of my classes is from the DRCongo, and he said essentially the same thing about his country. There are alot of countries out there that would never have sprung up on there own...except perhaps as federations of smaller states.
If these colonial-born countries don't want to split apart, then they should give significant autonomy to their constituent parts ("states"). Like the US, but more so.
India's a good example, IMHO. States in India are mostly drawn along linguo-ethnic lines. Each has its own official language. The national government has dozens, though English is the one most often used in practice.
Historically, the country is a fusion of smaller medieval states, lumped together by the British (Even PAKISTAN was part of British India). But it's been pretty stable, as countries go (We've been unusually stable, for example).
Russia is another example. If you want more, look at Wikipedia's "Federation" article.
So Afghanistan should perhaps be split into two states, Baloch and Pashtun. Maybe.
David Corn is calling Buttercup a "Neocon Pawn" for her involvement in this statement-
ReplyDeletehttp://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/09/neocons-ride-again-sarah-palin
"One of the signers tells me a reason she was recruited for this letter was to "lock her in." That is, the neocons are fearful that Republican politicians may go squishy on Afghanistan or come to see it as another opportunity for an attack on Obama."
So the Neocons are afraid that Buttercup is going to get mavericky and use any excuse to feed on her obsession with President Obama to attack him and want to "lock her in". Haha! Good luck with that- she's a quitter- I'm sure the citizens of Alaska thought they "locked her in" to serving them as Governor for a full term and look what she did to them.