Not a War President

by William Kristol - February 24th, 2009 - The Washington Post

You’d never know from the one-sentence discussion of Afghanistan that just last week the president had ordered an additional 17,000 troops there. Obama doesn’t seem to think his responsibility as commander in chief is in any way special. He certainly felt no responsibility even to begin to educate the public about this theater to which he’s committing additional American soldiers.

Instead, both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were treated as sideshows to “a new era of engagement” that Obama claims has begun. The only particular place mentioned by Obama, in addition to Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan, was Israel: “To seek progress toward a secure and lasting peace between Israel and her neighbors, we have appointed an envoy to sustain our effort.” The Israeli-Arab dispute and its envoy merits a mention. Yet Iran and its nuclear program does not?

Democrats, including Obama, still do not see the war against the Islamo-fascists, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel ... everywhere around the world, as a single war. To them, each battlefield is an isolated issue to be dealt with individually. It is unlikely they will ever change this attitude, right up until the nuclear bombs start going off in American cities. Since one of the first cities that will see a nuclear bomb is Washington, D.C., I wonder what Obama will say to that incident, assuming he, his wife and two children are not among the casualties?