"Dean" Broder to Obama: Make A Decision On Afghanistan! It Doesn't Have To Be The Right One!
By Nicole Belle Monday Nov 16, 2009 7:00am
I checked the byline a couple of times this morning, to make sure the column that was ostensibly written by David Broder wasn't, in fact, written by Charles Krauthammer. Regrettably, the so-called Dean of the D.C. Media Establishment actually wrote this.
The more President Obama examines our options in Afghanistan, the less he likes the choices he sees. But, as the old saying goes, to govern is to choose -- and he has stretched the internal debate to the breaking point.
It is evident from the length of this deliberative process and from the flood of leaks that have emerged from Kabul and Washington that the perfect course of action does not exist. Given that reality, the urgent necessity is to make a decision -- whether or not it is right.
"Whether or not it is right." The Commander in Chief, in other words, should put expediency over merit. Speed is preferable to accuracy. It's only the longest military conflict in American history, with the future of U.S. foreign policy on the line -- the president should worry less about due diligence and thoughtful analysis, and worry more about picking a course, even if it's wrong. Other than the loss of American servicemen and women, untold billions of dollars, and undermining U.S. interests in a critical region, what's the worst that can happen?
This says so much to me. The "dean" of Beltway journalism and conventional thinking perfectly encapsulates the Republican zeitgeist:
- Criticize anything that Obama does. If he acts decisively, complain that he's reckless. If he acts thoughtfully, complain that he's "dithering". If he points out that he's inherited a big fat clusterf&ck, complain that he's pointing fingers. If he tries to move forward in even a slightly progressive way, complain that he's not bipartisan enough and that he should listen to Republicans. In short, make sure that no matter what, Obama is wrong.
- There are no consequences to telling Obama he's wrong. So what if 45,000 people die because they don't have healthcare? So what if sending more troops is basically sending them to their deaths? So what if there is no stable government in Afghanistan? So what if we're spending millions of dollars every month and deficit spending is the cause du jour for those suddenly fiscally responsible Republicans?
If Obama acts quickly, and it's the wrong choice, will the decision to act fall back on Broder and the Republicans for the pressure they've placed on Obama? 'Course not. But you can bet your sweet bippy they'll only be too glad to pounce on him if there are more American deaths.
Tell you what, Broder, if you're so eager to see some action in Afghanistan, let's see you do one of your patented "folksy" reports from a coffee shop in Kandahar or Kabul. Otherwise, STFU and let the people in charge actually make a reasoned and thoughtful decision, since it affects so much in American blood and treasure.
We've had eight years of quick rather than right decisions. It's time for the grownups to be in charge now.
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End the 'wars', bring the troops home and de-fund the mercenaries. End the empire and the state of perpetual war, dismantle the MIC, the CIA, the NSA, the national surveillance state and institute a new WPA 2.0 to replace the military pseudo jobs program.
Sadly that one word is a sufficient argument against your position in the minds of most Americans. But then, most Americans are so brainwashed that a monosyllable is all they understand.
BTW, I'm Canadian, so I was either born socialist or the government forced me into it, whichever floats your boat. ;-)
... the far right seems to think that fascism is form of socialism and we all know the right is never wrong—at least that's what the righties tell us.
Thank you Nicole. On point. Perfect.
Yeah, that was very well done. Excellent response.
Nicole wrote, "So what if 45,000 people die because they don't have healthcare? So what if sending more troops is basically sending them to their deaths?"
It's appalling how many sociopaths (psychopaths?) we have in our government. They have no conscience.
As always, on time and on the money.
An angry old white guy.
angry old white guy. There are so many.
So it's important to take our time, spending years to decide whether we should provide health care for all of our citizens, but it's dithering to take the time to think about sending more forces to Afghanistan to fight the 100 Al Qaeda who may or may not be hanging out there?
This is a little hard for me to sort through, Mr. Broder.
I have never in my life seen someone stretch the internal debate this perilously close to the breaking point.
You know Jack Kennedy made a decision in the Cuban Missile Crisis when the perfect course of action did not exist. I am sure, even if nuclear holocaust had been the result, Broder would have applauded him for recognizing the urgent necessity of the act of decision making. Christ, columnists have to decide on a topic a few times each week! Dithering would demoralize their readers.
Please help by donating to fight Alzheimer's.
People should bombard Broader with emails to ask him to explain himself.
However, I am sure this arrogant prick does not read his emails.
fascinated by the dominion of moron culture in the USA.
We need to build a monument to our demented leaders. No Rodan's The Thinker but more like a bronze statue of old guy passed out on the couch in front of a TV watching Glenn Beck.
... The George W. Bush Presidential Library.
However, the snack bar was forbidden from selling pretzels.
I picture a copy of "My Pet Goat" on a stool, in a phone booth.
... it's in the trophy room, along with Saddam's pistol, the bust of Sir Winston Churchill, and the painting of
The Horse Thief'A Charge to Keep.'memorialize the WMD??
A faerie ring of mushrooms growing in the front yard?
... of Saddam's
rusted out trucksmobile chemical weapons labs.Seems a deflated weather balloon would be appropriate.
We need an sculptor that can really capture the texture of the spilled Cheetos and beer stained T-shirt.
... make the plastic food for restaurant display windows in Japan. (You see this at some Japanese restaurants.)
You, know, what's missing from this debate is the fact that EVEN if we somehow fail in Afghanistan the the Taliban and Al Qaeda resaestablish themselves and succeed in pulling off some kind of unimaginable terrorist attacks, its still not worth the cost of occupation. The occupation is far worse for us than anything they can do to us. And that course was the whole plan all along. Al Queda rejoiced when we fell for their trap and they rejoice every day we are still there.
All we had to do was listen to Ralph Nader and to Al Gore's Airline Safety Commission, which he headed while Vice President when they said we should reinforce the cockpit doors. That's all we really had to do.
I agree. Your comment sounds like an over-simplification at first, but it reminds me of an essay "What if we had done absolutely nothing after 911?" Except for some simple increases in security, and getting law enforcement to share information (not creating the largest bureaucracy ever just to make them do it), none of what we've done has been worth it or productive.
Much of what we have done has been a colossal waste. And the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq did not prevent further attacks.
... Broder's excuse for criticizing Obama no matter what.
If Obama decides, and everything works smoothly, Broder complains about it taking so long when it was So Obvious what needed to be done.
If Obama decides, and everything goes to hell/gets worse, Broder complains that Obama made the wrong choice.
if Broder is right, and Obama streches the internal debate past the breaking point, what will you say to all those internal debate widows and orphans?
to join if more troops get sent.
I've worked under management teams that would over analyze and prepare contingencies, contingencies for contingencies, contingencies for the contingencies for the contingencies ...
... but at the same time, these same people always want to know why it can't be done faster.
And then they whine like babies when 'faster' turns out to be shit.
I keep thinking of Madden's term: paralysis through analysis.
Broder could be on to something, because if after all this delay Obama decides in escalation, everyone on this thread will be pissed and wonder why he didn't just go ahead and do it sooner.
If he's taking time to consider a completely different approach that does not rely on the military, great. If it is the same decision W would have made in a hip shot, then Obama is a little slow.
... we ain't playing this war in four quarters.
that the New England coach should not be derided for going for it on fourth and two at the 28, but applauded for the recognition of making a prompt decision during the two minute warning?
If the coach waited any longer, there would have been a delay of game penalty, thus making it fourth and 12.
Touche.
it would have been fourth and seven, he would have had to punt and New England probably would have won the game.
I really can't believe some of you have lost the point of this post. Broder is an idiot who says it does not matter if the President of the United States, with lives of service men and women on the line, makes the right decision.
Your analogy implies that we are this close to winning. I think you don't understand our field position. Plus, the game has been going on for ten years.
The decision to get out is the right decision. I think you'll be pissed ricky if he deliberates all this time and decides to send in 40,000 more troops.
He would tell you my pom poms would be waving regardless of the decision. And that this is another desperate attempt to get his attention.
You are right. I think he is trapped by his own campaign rhetoric. To attack the Iraq war he thought he had to be tough somewhere else.
Four quarter-centuries if we don't get out now. McCain's strategy executed by Obama.
... proud nation brought low by Afghanistan.
when the contingency planners are appeased, the crisp rebuttalists pay the price in bloody retorts.
You obviously have not seen first hand the lingering effects of stretch marks after one of these broken internal debates.
How can I NOT have seen first hand the lingering effects of such contingency planners when I just said I work in an industry where this is the norm?
The worker bees call it 'In third place, clawing our way to fourth.'
Some people have to have happy faces typed for them. I always thought you were not one of them.
Where's my happy face? It's Monday. I need my happy face! Give over!
:)
Here's your happy face!
to the dark side of the fourth. {.
(That is a smiling cyclops with a repaired cleft palate. He is located in the Southern hemisphere.)
That cleft palate does not look repaired. Is that doctor the same guy that gives you advice on Afghanistan?
"I think that cleft palate might fix itself if we sit here long enough and think about the surgery."
"So what if he bled to death because he was a hemophiliac. At least we made a prompt decision. Screw the patient. It is better to look confident than be competent. Besides, his smile looks good there in the casket."
I don't think you'll be happy with the decision once it is made, that's all I'm saying. Call me psychic but his decision will be to escalate, send more troops and rely on his military for a solution. Obama's decisions have consistently been in line with what McCain or Bush would have done.
And it sucks hearing people that were so doggedly against the war defend Obama's decision to continue it indefinitely because "the other guy screwed it up so badly"
decision is to get the hell out of there.
Unfortunately I have no idea what the hell that means to the continued instability we have caused in Pakistan.
Consequently I do not think my right to post a comment on a blog makes my opinion worth much more than yours.
the pakistani goverment from their own populace for working with the americans and allow them to reunify their focus and resolve on their other destabilizing threats, like the fight for kashmir.
Hinduism. I have no idea.
reveal his own brilliance in contrast to Obama's foolishness?
LOL okay
was decisive.
I know there are More Smart people out there than there are dipshit dumb-ass people out there. I just can't figuer out where they are. With all the bullshit the courpourate ran congress is doing, where is the outrage. Shit, have we become a Nation of sheep. When you have a home loan that pays $208 on your loan and $805 in interest. WTF. When you have a war that some asshole started that is sucking the country dry and the pres isn't stoping it Now. The banks getting $700 billion with no pay back in sight. People like lize chinie getting air time, and that bimbio palin selling a "BOOK" people paying $100,000. to here talk?????WTF. Health Insurance doing what ever they want.Just got my new health insurance for next year. these assholesss just jumped every thing, out of pocket went up, deductibales went up, more shit they don't pay for,drugs, surgerys not covered now.WTF. As afghanistan goes, fuck-it. take the 45 to 55 billion and spent it here to protect the US. Jobs, put on more border patrol, You know, the 6000 bush said he was going to hire but only put on about 7 or 8 hundred. Check every one comming in. Put the army on the border, with amo. The TV, if it is bullshit the news is putting on with no facts, cancel them.
$700 billion, most of which they are loaning back to us via credit cards and charging usurious interest rates on.
Border security is a joke, but it's impossible to make it the impenetrable wall conservatives want. Put up walls, they'll dig tunnels. Put up cameras, they'll figure out patterns (and if it's a fixed camera, you have to make sure the people watching the system are paying attention).
As for 'hey, if the media isn't reporting facts, take them off the air' - really, that's all we need ... the party in power deciding what 'facts' are. Welcome to GoodThought.
Try $14 trillion. The $700 billion may have used to loan us our own money at 29% interest. The rest of the $14 trillion was used for acquisition and speculation.
The next catastrophe is in on schedule. They will be bailed out again. Until we go bust.
Nomi Prins gives a good talk here
Retire, David. Seriously. You've outlived your usefulness.
..after all, its a no-win situation courtesy of the last administration. Where were you when we invaded that other country and forgot about what we were doing in Afghanistan? Where were you when w, the dope that used to run things, called off assets who may have had the target of the Afghanistan campaign in their sites? So he takes a little time making a decision, hopefully the least of all the evils, and you want what..to move forward recklessly? When you get elected President, then you can talk like one and make the decisions that our troops will live and die by.
The ones that said, "my country right or wrong"-?
An attitude like that leads to a country that is wrong at least half the time.
Sorry, that attitude LED to a country that is wrong most of the time.
In a way you guys, Broder is right. Obama should have already made his decision: to get out. Whether right or wrong, at least we'd be moving forward.
but it still looks like this next century is going to be mostly a battle for "table scraps".
If Obama had made a quick decision to withdraw, we'd be hearing no end of how Obama was the 'cut and run' president.
And, frankly, Bush/Cheney fucked things up so bad, we can't move quickly. It's like trying to get your car out of the mud by flooring the gas pedal. Your tires spin and spin and spin ... and you get nowhere.
Sounds to me like Broder's mind has been "dithering" for something intelligent to say.
*****
These RW jerks make a mess, create a problem, offer no answers for eight years then when someone actually acts to clean up their mess all they can do is whine.
Obama's next speech on the economy:
"My fellow Americans, I have listened to Republican's and monetary hawks for some time now and I have decided that they do have a point: we need to bring the deficit under control. To accomplish this, I decided to utilize another GOP theory on reducing government spending: I'm going to reduce wasteful and excessive spending. Therefore, I have ordered that all military forces deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan be returned home to a grateful nation. God Bless America!"
the old truism "It is better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt". The republican mantra is do something even though it is proven to be wrong
and recovering! (GM only lost $1.2 billion in Q3. . . calls it progress.)
Hillary was right. If Obama could walk on water they would criticize him by saying he only did it because he couldn't swim.
If he saved a child from a burning house they would say he only did it for the publicity.
If we have figured this out, I imagine the President has too and pays little attention to goofs such as Broder.
hasty decisions by der Bushenfuhrer that got this country into the mess that Obama inherited? Sheesh!
Broder is just brilliant. We've already tried stupid, why don't we just take our time and think it through.
Obama six weeks later "I thought things through and I've decided to send more troops."
How do you like that well thought out decision?
for the holidays?
How bout if they spend the holidays at home and stay there?
No. No you're right, we have eternal wars to fight, progressive causes to spread, and faces to save.
damn the dithering, shit happens!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KTsXHXMkJA
the Repukes suddenly feel that it's urgent a decision is made. After all, they're the ones who've been screwing around in Iraq and Afghanistan for no good reason....well, except to steal oil/gas.
If we'd wanted Broder, or Kristol, or Krautface or Cheeeney to make these decisions for us, well I guess we'd have insisted one of them be President. And, I've not heard any of these asshole critics offer any credible thoughts about why we need to remain there and what we should be doing - other than sending more of our kids to die.
Frankly, I'm still waiting for someone to clearly state exactly what our Goal is in Afghanistan. Is it to secure gas pipelines? Heroin supply? Keep Pakistan stable? Spread democracy? Spread Christian theology and turn the heathens to jeebus? What?? How can you plan a strategy for anything if you have no real goal??
..Oil from Iraq, heroin from Afghanistan. Got it?
Obama's just waitng for McCain to tell him how to get Bin Laden.
in the tweet after she tells about the really cool guys she just met.
Broder is right if for the wrong reason.
There is never a purely right or a purely wrong course action when the behavior follows from one or another moral and political value judgment. There are only how the consequences of an action impact different people in different ways from different moral and political vantage points.
Broder, however, seems to be making this point from the perspective of means not ends. He makes the assumption that the war is just. He simply wants Obama to prosecute it [one way or the other] now instead of later.
But there is no way to determine if the war is just. That depends on the particular assumptions you make about the relationship between justice and war. Why your own and not another's?
We talk about the way the world is and the way it ought to be as though this distinction can actually be made essentially or objectively or universally.
Well, what if it can't?
I say we send in 100,000 of these and bring our troops home. they have better people skills than us Americans.
yup...so you can bloviate about THAT too...
(there is not enough duct tape in the world to put across the mouths of these morons)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=angi1vwUkQc
...the reason why Broder wants Obama to act immediately on Afghanistan should be blatantly obvious. Immediate decisions often tend to be hasty and impulsive ones which are usually regretted later. After all, it's exactly the same sort of pressure pitch which salespeople sometimes use when they know that the product they're pushing costs considerably more than it's worth and/or cannot be relied on to deliver what's promised..."if you don't act right now, you'll lose out/have to pay much more." Broder and others like him know that if they can manage to pressure Obama into making a rapid decision on Afghanistan, they can turn it into a win/win situation for them and a lose/lose situation for Obama. If by some stroke of fortune he were to make a decision which proved to be beneficial, they can say "See? This proves that we were right and Obama was wrong -- making a rapid decision is precisely what was needed in Afghanistan." If Obama were to make a decision which did not turn out to be beneficial, they would simply turn around and say "See? We were right all along...Obama really isn't cut out to be President." Unfortunately for them, Obama is a amarter man than I think they've given him credit for being -- and I think one of the reasons why he's avoided making a decision too hastily is because he knows it would play right into their hands. Let's face it...Broder and others of his ilk are determined to criticize Obama anyway no matter what he does, so he may as well do what he feels is best and tkae time before making this decision, especially since a wrong decision could put American lives at stake.
If it doesn't matter what the decision is as long as he makes one then he doesn't really need to make a decision at all does he? Just let things evolve naturally.
not making a decision is making a decision
curse you broder!!!
but in these perilous times, that would only stretch the internal debate past the breaking point. God knows what happens then.
And God knows there is no such thing as "evolve naturally," by the way. You wouldn't believe how many alternative universes He f**ked up before He got this one right, but no one ever criticized the Big Fella for not making a decision.
Once again...WHO CARES WHAT THESE ASS HOLES SAY?? They aren't in charge of the matter. They don't have the intelligence being shared. They are just as ignorant as you and I.
Fuck this senile old turd.
Gee Broder, I don't recall you saying anything like that when Bush took time to deliberate about what to do with the big mess he created in Iraq. Now we have a Democrat who was left with not just one big mess, but messes on multiple fronts, and you think he needs to make a speedy decision, whether it's right or wrong.
Until Pres. Obama makes a decision, they don't know what to hate.
Idiot!!
"It is evident from the length of this deliberative process and from the flood of leaks that have emerged from Kabul and Washington that the perfect course of action does not exist. Given that reality, the urgent necessity is to make a decision -- whether or not it is right."
----------------------------------------------------------
I say unto you... have faith... Godspeed :-P
Lemme get this straight.
The "Dean of the D.C. Media Establishment" is advising "Do something, even if it's wrong"?
Going by that theory Mr. Broder, if you have an ingrown toenail, to cure the problem should you shoot off your own foot?
What a god-damned stupid old fart. Living proof of my Dad's statement that there are sight more horse's asses in this world than there are horses. His column appears occasionally in my local paper, and to cure that problem, I will, in the future, wipe my ass with it.
Someone, somewhere must have photos of Broder wearing women's underwear. Except for Joe Lieberman and Sarah Palin, no one is that irrational unless they're forced to be.
There must be. Where else could fools such as Broder and the entire Republican Party and their "Teabaggers" come from?
There must be some press release on "call Obama a ditherer" that went out last week.
I saw this claim by some other MSM fool, can't remember who.
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