He Started It!
Vice President Cheney kindly offers a valuable lesson to President Obama, one that His Worship would have learned on the playgrounds of his youth if he had been born in America—kidding!—don’t start what you can’t finish.
He’s finished, all right:
“Recently, President Obama’s advisors have decided that it’s easier to blame the Bush Administration than support our troops. This weekend they leveled a charge that cannot go unanswered. The President’s chief of staff claimed that the Bush Administration hadn’t asked any tough questions about Afghanistan, and he complained that the Obama Administration had to start from scratch to put together a strategy.
“In the fall of 2008, fully aware of the need to meet new challenges being posed by the Taliban, we dug into every aspect of Afghanistan policy, assembling a team that repeatedly went into the country, reviewing options and recommendations, and briefing President-elect Obama’s team. They asked us not to announce our findings publicly, and we agreed, giving them the benefit of our work and the benefit of the doubt. The new strategy they embraced in March, with a focus on counterinsurgency and an increase in the numbers of troops, bears a striking resemblance to the strategy we passed to them. They made a decision – a good one, I think – and sent a commander into the field to implement it.
“Now they seem to be pulling back and blaming others for their failure to implement the strategy they embraced. It’s time for President Obama to do what it takes to win a war he has repeatedly and rightly called a war of necessity.”
Now, that’s all true. Facts even a code-pinker couldn’t dispute.
But there are more facts that make President Obama’s craven behavior even more despicable:
IT WAS ONLY last March 27 that President Obama outlined in a major speech what he called “a comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan” that, he added, “marks the conclusion of a careful policy review.” That strategy unambiguously stated that the United States would prevent the return of a Taliban government and “enhance the military, governance and economic capacity” of the country. We strongly supported the president’s conclusion that those goals were essential to preventing another attack on the United States by al-Qaeda and its extremist allies.
…
It’s hard to see, however, how Mr. Obama can refute the analysis he offered last March. “If the Afghan government falls to the Taliban or allows al-Qaeda to go unchallenged,” he said then, “that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can.” Afghanistan, he continued, “is inextricably linked to the future of its neighbor, Pakistan,” where al-Qaeda and the Taliban now aim at seizing control of a state that possesses nuclear weapons. Moreover, Mr. Obama said, “a return to Taliban rule would condemn their country to brutal governance . . . and the denial of basic human rights to the Afghan people — especially women and girls.”
Seven months ago, he told us he had the answer, one that “marks the conclusion of a careful policy review.” Now, he doesn’t—and he still wants to blame the Bush administration, 10 months after they decamped and almost a full year after he knew he was going to be president and have to deal with this s**t??
Is he [bleeping] kidding?
Pencils down. You’ve either passed the test or you’ve failed it. But copying from another boy, and then complaining because he got the answer wrong is not a successful strategy.
