Sqawks of War
February 13th, 2007I’m not a big fan of Barack Obama but I am a big fan of feist and I loved this.
“I think it’s flattering that one of George Bush’s allies on the other side of the world started attacking me on the day after I announced,” Obama said of the low blow from Down Under. Prime Minister John Howard said Obama’s plan to withdraw troops by March 2008 would play into terrorists’ hands. “If I were running Al Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory, not only for Obama but also for the Democrats,” Howard said. Obama noted that Australia has only 1,400 troops in Iraq. “If he’s ginned up to fight the good fight in Iraq, I would suggest that he calls up another 20,000 Australians and sends them to Iraq. Otherwise it’s just a bunch of empty rhetoric,” Obama said.
Chickenhawks should be called for it and I commend Obama for his remarks. It’s great to hear a politician speak so candidly and not be afraid of the international establishment on it. I still don’t think he’s right for the Presidency or the candidacy, but — if he can keep being fresh, and straightforward, he’ll be good for the country in a lot of ways, provided it doesn’t win him the Presidency.
John McCain said something yesterday that I don’t quite understand, here.
“By the way, a lot of us are also very concerned about the possibility of a, quote, ‘Tet Offensive.’ You know, some large-scale tact that could then switch American public opinion the way that the Tet Offensive did,” the Arizona senator said. Last month, an Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that 62 percent said the United States made a mistake in going to war in Iraq. McCain made his comment in explaining why he did not believe the Bush administration should set a date by which it should deem Bush’s troop increase a success or a failure.
“I think that it should be publicly open-ended because I think that if you set a date, that there’s every possibility that the insurgents would just lay back and wait until we leave,” McCain said. Tet, a massive invasion in 1968 of South Vietnam by Communist North Vietnamese, inflicted enormous losses on U.S. and South Vietnamese troops and is regarded as a point where public sentiment turned sharply against the war.
Public opinion switched a long time ago, buddy.
Maybe that’s why the Republican Congress and their President took so long to address the countless flaws in our War — because they aren’t up to date on the news.