I remember all those many months ago when President Obama made clear that he was going to pull our military out of Iraq by the end of 2011 and how it was met with skepticism and pretty much dismissed by those in the Professional Left, who see everything through a filter that turns President Obama into another one of the Bush children.
Here are just some of the headlines from those supposedly über progressive blogs that have spent the last 3 years trashing on the most liberal president in a generation.
From Salon.com – Justin Elliott on September 12, 2011
Obama poised to break Iraq pullout promise
This one was from May 11, 2011 from Huffington Post’s Amanda Terkel
Iraq Withdrawal Date For U.S. Troops May Be Pushed Back Beyond 2011
There are many more where those came from. It’s been interesting to watch as these same people who were heaping blame and skepticism on President Obama’s promise to get all the troops out of Iraq are now failing to give him any credit for it. Glenn Greenwald and others are doing all sorts of contortions in order to avoid admitting that President Obama has kept another of his promises and has ended the Iraq War, which should send the likes of Greenwald into the streets in celebration. Instead, they are, in a round about way, praising President Bush for setting the initial timetable, which everyone met with skepticism as just a temporary measure that would be changed later on. That is why the Republicans are freaking out so much about it, they never intended on leaving Iraq at the end of 2011. Robert Parry spells it out in this piece called “Why the Left Won’t Accept Success”…(emphasis mine)
The neocons are furious because they saw Bush’s SOFA as only a holding action and expected that the U.S. government would twist the arms of the Iraqis to get them to accept a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq. The neocons are now condemning Obama for not doing so.
After all, Bush would not have made the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad the largest in the world, along with over-sized consulates in other Iraqi cities, if the neocons did not expect to turn Iraq into something of an American colony, a home for U.S. military bases to threaten other countries in the region, such as Iran and Syria.
Now, with the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops, the neocon dream of U.S.-controlled bases in Iraq has been dashed and the diplomatic outposts are already being downsized. The gargantuan embassy complex in Baghdad may well be viewed in the future as more a monument to American hubris than a hub of U.S. intervention.
But of course that makes no difference to those on the left who want to turn any success of President Obama’s into a non-success and will go to great lengths to achieve that. Robert Parry spells that out pretty well too.
It appears that some don’t want to accept that the anti-war movement has won a hard-fought victory and that Obama’s election was a factor. It’s almost as if the fact that something has been achieved through the deeply flawed U.S. political system threatens a preferred political analysis, which holds that nothing good can happen.
So, instead of giving credit to the many Americans who protested the war or who found ways to explain its injustice to the public, some activists are stressing the negative, noting that security contractors will remain to protect the U.S. Embassy or that U.S. corporations will still try to sell weapons systems and exploit Iraq’s oil reserves.
Others observe that the Iraqi government negotiated the “status of forces agreement” setting the timetable for a drawdown of U.S. troops with President Bush in late 2008 – and thus President Obama should get no credit. He should just be denounced for not ending the war sooner.
Does anyone else see the inconsistencies between the Professional Left dismissing President Obama’s pledge to withdraw the troops by the end of 2011 and writing countless articles saying how it wasn’t going to happen and then when it does actually happen, no fucking credit whatsoever? Talk about having your cake and eating it too. This case is such an obvious example of the agenda that the haters in the Professional Left have adopted since President Obama was elected. A clear victory for liberal ideals is met with not a bit of cheering, but rather gross twisting of reality and one’s own ideals in order to avoid just saying, good job President Obama. Thanks for getting us the hell out of Bush’s fucked up war. Would that be so hard to do?
Cross-posted at Angry Black Lady Chronicles
Extreme Liberal's Blog 
That’s the way its always been with the left. Look at LBJ once he achieved all these civil rights legislation the left turned on him and said it wasn’t enough. Many blacks choose to bash LBJ and didn’t get behind him because they felt like he still didn’t do enough. Lets even go further to Carter, achieved a lot of things foreign policy wise but boy you wouldn’t know it by the way the left turned on him.
See the left (and what is slowly happening to the right) is very divided. What ever the president achieves it can never be enough and he must be attacked because that would be admitting that the establishment did something good. See Cenk Uygur and people like him have to hate the establishment no matter if the guy is a democrat or a republican as its how they make their money. If for example Obama signed some great liberal legislation, Cenk and others like him would be quick to give Jon Stewart credit but never and I mean never Obama any credit.
Now I’d also like to add that the treatment of Obama has been some of the worse treatment I’ve ever seen. I think if Obama becomes a one term president the left is going to look back at this moment and deeply regret their actions. Michael Moore wont because he likes to blame the candidate for not fighting hard enough like he did with Gore although Moore supported Nader.
An enigma of this season is Herman Cain and yesterday when Cain spoke to 3000 Texans, mostly white teabaggers at the Gulf Greyhound Race Track near my house, he was introduced by Apostle Claver, who evidently makes money from his http://www.ragingelephants.org/ website….kind of like those on the “professional left” with their income generating blogsites. Claver raged that the Democrats are most racist by giving a long laundry list of those from the OLD Dixiecrat element like Thurmond, Helms, and Lott. Claver didn’t right the history of Southern racists being invited to come over to the GOP in the infamous “Southern Strategy” of the late 60’s to turn the south into a Republican bloc in order to elect Nixon. The racist Pat Buchanan was one of the Nixon strategists involved. It hasn’t been the “Party of Lincoln” for decades now!!!
Is Cain BEING USED by the REICH??? Was he USED by Kraft as diversity window dressing to please the public? Anyone who makes stupid remarks like Cain is unbelievable as a corporate CEO. He would not be the first corporate or political puppet. I cannot believe a mostly white and yes, racist Republican demographic would actually vote for a black man in the privacy of the voting booth. I think Cain and toadies like Claver are being employed to siphon off black voters from Obama. It won’t be the first time a black person has BEEN USED. Cain said he didn’t hear the warm up speech at his teabagger rally as he was selling and signing books for the couple of hours leading up to his time on the podium. Since the Texas Primary is so late in the spring, this state isn’t as important as Iowa or other early voting states where Cain should be spending time IF he is actually a serious candidate. Cain’s Koch Brothers affiliations run deep, but I don’t believe he is a serious candidate. But he told the teabaggers here in Texas that “I kind of like my guns and my Bible” to get cheers from the cowboy hat wearing crowd.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/26/us-usa-campaign-cain-texas-idUSTRE79P0R220111026
If PBO is a one term president, I tend to doubt that many on the left would come to regret their words.
There are not many people who have political fervor who can respect ‘politics is the art of the possible’. That requires a professional detachment and an ability to be logical that is in conflict with political fervor.
“A politician is a person skilled in the art of compromise….usually an elected official who has compromised to get nominated, compromised to get elected, and compromised repeatedly to stay in office.”
– Dick Gregory
For the ideologue, compromise is a dirty word, “beneath them”. For them it’s “MY way or the the highway”! Thankfully, most of them (like Ralph Nader) never get elected.
Good points, Grant.
Still, I cannot help but let my blood boil when I read comments like this nonsense I spotted on another site:
“No longer consider myself a Dem. Won’t vote for Obama under any circumstance any more than I would vote for GW Bush.”
Even in the face of the amount of carnage that the GOP would release (hell, they’ve already done so!), some people just want to sit back and pout. Makes me want to go get a drink.
The whiners on the left forget that the President appoints Supreme Court justices and some of the problems we are now having are due to the right-wingers appointed by both Bush 41 and 43. Compare Roberts, Thomas, Alito, with Obama’s appointments of Kagan and Sotomayor. Bill Clinton appointed Ginsburg and Breyer. Raygun gave us Scalia and Kennedy. There are four incumbent Democrats in the Senate also being targeted by the GOP who want a clear majority in BOTH the House and Senate. Sitting at home also means giving the whole government over to the right-wingnuts. The guy above is right….he is “no longer a Democrat” if he was ever one in the first place.