All Blame And No Credit From The Professional Left Towards President Obama!

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)

President Obama Shows His Strength As A Leader And Keeps His Promise On Afghanistan

For the record, I didn’t support either the Afghanistan or Iraqi Wars and still don’t “support” any war. They are against what I believe in, peace, love and understanding. But I also live in reality and realize that once we’ve created a mess, we can’t just walk away without at least attempting to clean it up. At this point, I feel like I need to remind anyone on the right or left who was sleeping during the Bush Administration that President Bush started those two foolish ventures, NOT President Obama. It’s unfortunate that I have to remind people of that, but with so much revisionist history and subtle meme generation going on, I feel it’s necessary.

The head-in-the-sand critics on the left who seem to blame President Obama for everything, whether he was responsible or not (DADT), seem to think he should have just packed up all the troops on January 21, 2009 and brought them home, leaving much bigger messes for those two countries than when we invaded their world. The callousness of that thinking is astounding, really. How can these people really justify abandoning these countries that we ripped apart. Regardless of whether you were for ripping them apart or not, we couldn’t just leave them in the rubble. Part of me wishes that he had done just that, but the responsible part of me knows that we can’t just bomb the shit out of a country and then high tail it out of town. My preference, of course, was that we never go in to begin with.

I’ll post, once again, the speech by President Obama where he said what he was going to do as a candidate. It is for those on the left who have convinced themselves that he broke some promise when he ramped up the actions in Afghanistan. Isn’t it great that we have Youtube and Google so we can remember what he actually said, instead of the revisionist history so many use to their benefit.

The reason President Obama shows his strength and leadership with this decision is because unlike the Republicans who see any sort of winding down of a war as “losing”, this President has the confidence and maturity to know that “winning or losing” a war isn’t cut and dry. Especially when the enemy is some amorphous “ism” that can’t be identified at all. It is a concept, not an enemy, so it allows the Republicans who love to feed the military industrial complex with new wars, a way of having perpetual wars. Already this morning, I saw Sen. Cornyn on MSNBC wetting himself because we are actually doing what Republicans can’t seem to do, get the hell out of a war zone. He also spewed the nonsense that I’m sure the media will take and run with, that the President doesn’t have a plan. Give me a freakin break, the military loves them some plans, they draw up plans for imaginary wars, do they really think that we don’t have a plan? It’s a freaking propaganda game he is playing, he’s probably seen the plan himself.

So once again, our very qualified, measured, intelligent president has stepped up to the plate and made the tough decisions that a President of all the people has to make. He didn’t start those wars, but he sure as hell is going to end them in a responsible way. Bravo Mr. President for being the strong leader that you are and dealing with a mess that was handed to you.