President Obama's first 50 days in office ended with doubled-barreled shotgun blasts from conservatives, who accused him of not only reneging on his pledge to be bipartisan, but - horror of horrors - taking the United States down the primrose path to socialism.“An Iraq withdrawal plan not much different from his Republican predecessor,” huh?
Ooooh, scary stuff. Of course, neither charge is true.
First of all, any nation that provides Medicaid, food stamps, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and a host of other equally valuable programs that redistribute tax dollars has already walked more than a few steps down the lane to socialism. Whether it's called that or not.
As for being bipartisan, what else but bipartisan would you call a president who has drawn the ire of many in his own party for pushing an Iraq withdrawal plan that's not much different from his Republican predecessor's and an education plan that has cringing teachers unions buying bottles of aspirin?
This story tells us that Dubya proposed “(the) withdraw (of) about 8,000 combat and support troops by February (2009)” (the MSNBC story was dated last September; given that Dubya was done regardless on 1/20/09, how could he have expected to meet a February deadline – and wouldn’t it have been nice for the AP to ask that question when they wrote this story?). This story, though, tells us that Obama will withdraw 12,000 troops over the next six months (still leaving about 128,000 in Iraq).
I will admit that the troop strength Obama has proposed for Afghanistan is worrisome in its Dubya-esque numbers, but as noted here, Obama has proposed keeping 50,000 troops in Iraq by August 2010 (removing 92,000 by then), with the balance scheduled to leave in 2011. And that’s the difference between our current president and our former one; did Dubya propose any such timeline for the departure of our forces?
Do you even need to ask? Particularly given the fact that, under the foul, fetid Bushco reign, I read more stories like this than I ever want to read again (a bi-partisan congressional failure to act taking its cue from an utterly intransigent executive branch)?
In short, I never read anywhere that Dubya ever intended to remove our troop presence from Iraq at any point in the future. Obama, though, has already gone on record that he will do so.
But the Inquirer considers Obama’s withdrawal plan to be “not much different from his Republican predecessor.”
I’ll tell you what, Inky – try asking these people whether there’s “not much difference,” OK?
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