Last night I felt com­pelled to watch our Dear Leader’s speech to the brave and hon­or­able cadets at the USMA at West Point.  I thought the speech was a fee­ble attempt to por­tray him­self as a strong, war-time leader.  There are a few sec­tions of the speech I will dis­cuss below.

On Iraq

Then, in early 2003, the deci­sion was made to wage a sec­ond war in Iraq. The wrench­ing debate over the Iraq war is well-known and need not be repeated here. It’s enough to say that, for the next six years, the Iraq war drew the dom­i­nant share of our troops, our resources, our diplo­macy, and our national atten­tion, and that the deci­sion to go into Iraq caused sub­stan­tial rifts between Amer­ica and much of the world.

This appears to me as an under­handed and some­what covert attempt to blame the cur­rent Afghanistan sit­u­a­tion, as well as the state of our for­eign relations, on the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion.  Remem­ber, most of the Con­gress was behind the War in Iraq (includ­ing Demo­c­ra­tic lead­er­ship such as Hillary Clin­ton), and our intel­li­gence as well as our allies’ intel­li­gence showed that Iraq was a vital threat and was linked to Al-Qaeda shortly after 9/11.

Thanks to their courage, grit and per­se­ver­ance, we have given Iraqis a chance to shape their future, and we are suc­cess­fully leav­ing Iraq to its people.

This sen­tence seems to con­vey that it was the result of the cur­rent administration’s actions that the war in Iraq has been a suc­cess.  Not so.  It was Pres­i­dent George W. Bush who ini­ti­ated the surge in Iraq (which iron­i­cally is the basis for the new strat­egy in Afghanistan) that brought about the defeat of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

On the Delay

Now, let me be clear: There has never been an option before me that called for troop deploy­ments before 2010, so there has been no delay or denial of resources nec­es­sary for the con­duct of the war dur­ing this review period.

This doesn’t seem to be entirely true.  Gen­eral Stan­ley McChrystal’s assess­ment back in August made in clear that we had to turn things around in twelve months, or incur a high risk of los­ing the efforts in Afghanistan.  If the deploy­ments for addi­tional sup­port and troops wasn’t going to hap­pen until Jan­u­ary 2010, you would lose at least four months.  There’s no way you can get the new deploy­ments in, change strat­egy, and then start turn­ing things around in just eight months.  This is just another under­handed attempt to not take respon­si­bil­ity for “dithering”.

On See­ing the Wages of  War

As pres­i­dent, I have signed a let­ter of con­do­lence to the fam­ily of each Amer­i­can who gives their life in these wars. I have read the let­ters from the par­ents and spouses of those who deployed. I’ve vis­ited our coura­geous wounded war­riors at Wal­ter Reed. I’ve trav­eled to Dover to meet the flag-draped cas­kets of 18 Amer­i­cans return­ing home to their final rest­ing place.

I see first­hand the ter­ri­ble wages of war. If I did not think that the secu­rity of the United States and the safety of the Amer­i­can peo­ple were at stake in Afghanistan, I would gladly order every sin­gle one of our troops home tomorrow.

This is where Obama’s nar­cis­sism comes out full-force.  How dare the POTUS pat him­self on the back - in front of cadets, no less — for doing what the CinC is sup­posed to do any­way?  How dare he use our fallen as props?  And, no, sir, you have not seen the ter­ri­ble wages of war first­hand.  For that you will need to go to the bat­tle­field in Afghanistan.  This part of the speech really angered me.

On the Withdrawal

After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.

This really angered me as well.   It’s a clear sig­nal to the Tal­iban and Al-Qaeda to just lay low for eigh­teen months, then we’ll leave so you can take back over.  It never should be pub­licly adver­tised when we’re leav­ing:  It embold­ens the enemy and weak­ens the morale of our troops.

Fur­ther­more, the absence of a time­frame for tran­si­tion would deny us any sense of urgency in work­ing with the Afghan gov­ern­ment. It must be clear that Afghans will have to take respon­si­bil­ity for their secu­rity and that Amer­ica has no inter­est in fight­ing an end­less war in Afghanistan.

It’s not about an absence of a time­frame.  It’s about pub­li­cally announc­ing it.  The DoD can have a time­frame in mind — not every­thing has to be pub­li­cally broad­cast.  The only peo­ple who need to know a time­frame are those in com­mand of the troops.  The pub­lic doesn’t need to know an exact date.

On Being United

It’s easy to for­get that, when this war began, we were united, bound together by the fresh mem­ory of a hor­rific attack and by the deter­mi­na­tion to defend our home­land and the val­ues we hold dear. I refuse to accept the notion that we can­not sum­mon that unity again.

Make sure you tell your lib­eral friends this.  They opposed every­thing Bush did, sim­ply because it was Bush doing them.  To this day, there is vehe­ment hatred and vit­riol spewed con­stantly toward those on the right.  (And some­times by a select few, to the left.)  We can’t be united behind a com­mon pur­pose when we’re being set up to fail.