Opinion Forum

Health Care vs Afghanistan

October 26th, 2009

The President continues to leave our troops in Afghanistan hanging in the lurch while he works to get socialized medicine established in the USA. With all the resources he can muster you would think that he could break away long enough to attend to this rather important and urgent task. At this time his excuse is the corrupt (maybe) election of a president for that godforsaken hellhole.

It seems to me that Hillary Clinton should be dealing with the issue of a possibly corrupt election. Past Secretaries of State have handled just this type of diplomatic work.

Why isn’t anyone other than Fox News, The London Times, and The Washington Post questioning this dangerous practice of ignoring of our military people?

Say what you will, President Bush clearly did a better job of keeping current with his commanders in Iraq, and he used his resources to better effect. To the contrary, President Obama and Secretary of Defense Gates don’t seem to work well as a team.

Our troops are not blessed with the freedom to stand down until the President decides on a political course of action. A general who is ham-strung by political considerations isn’t much better than a general who refuses to act at all.

Strategy in its leanest form is simply defeating your enemy by inflicting maximum damage. All the political considerations are nothing without victory first.

Lincoln learned this when politically favored general little Mac McClellan failed to deliver victory for fear of causing himself political damage. A hard drinking ex-harness maker from Ohio named US Grant had no political ambitions at that time. Grant gave Lincoln victories to re-enforce the political needs. Why not give the commanders in Afghanistan and Gates the same kind of control?

This President vowed to tackle health care during his campaign, making it the centerpiece of his administration. It seems that he clearly is not willing to stop working on his “legacy” legislation.

The White House is now claiming to need at least several more weeks before they can devote full attention to Afghanistan. Sadly, the situation in Iraq also appears to be becoming unstable. I doubt Obama is prepared to handle two wars should Iraq erupt.

Bring our troops home.

Articles written by Larry Ennis
Tags: Afghanistan, Gates, health care, Iraq, Obama, strategy
Categories: History, Military, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

One Response to “Health Care vs Afghanistan”

Tom | October 26th, 2009 at 9:53 pm

This isn’t as simple as President Obama being able to do either health care or Afghanistan, and neither dictates the course of the other. The President and the Administration are going through the process of making what will probably turn out to be the best or the worst decision of this presidency. I don’t mind them taking the time to do it right, but I, too, think they’ve dithered too long.