Corn: Obama’s Not “Going to War” in Afghanistan, He Inherited a War Already in Progress
David Corn, Mother Jones Washington reporter, brought reality back to Republican arguments about Afghanistan on ABC’s This Week. After conservatives George Will and David Brooks went over their thoughts on Obama’s distaste with the task of figuring out how to go forward in the country, saying he’s not showing the proper enthusiasm for war, Corn bottom-lined it.
Brooks: Listen, I think it’s worth doing. I think it would be a moral atrocity if we left and the Taliban took over parts of the country. I think it would fundamentally destabilize Pakistan if that happened. Nonetheless, when I look at the White House, I think what I see and what you hear in the president’s voice when you hear about the meetings are a couple of things. Tremendous ambivalence about this. You also hear, “Maybe we can’t afford it,” as if this is something I’m competing with.
I don’t think you should go to war if this is one of your priorities that maybe you don’t think you can afford. I don’t think you should go to war with a minimalist mentality. I don’t think you should go to war if you are just looking to get out. We went through the Donald Rumsfeld regime — that was trying to do war on the cheap. I [don’t] think you go to war if the president believes there’s no reason to do it. And if he doesn’t believe that, I think probably we shouldn’t do it.
Corn: But Obama’s not “going to war,” he has this war, that’s the problem. For six, seven, eight years, the Bush-Cheney administration addressed none of these issues, including the Karzai government’s ineptitude. And so now he’s stuck with no good choices, and you can’t start it over again. He’s inherited this.
Thank you, David Corn! After he spoke up, PBS’s Gwen Ifill took up the point, and described a cartoon that showed Obama selecting from four flip charts. One said, “Bad,” one, “Worse,” one “Horrible,” and one, “Disaster.”
Republicans have already forgotten that it wasn’t Obama’s policies that wrecked the economy. Now they are trying to blame him for Afghanistan. Like Corn, we have to keep reminding them that it’s just not that way.
