"When the Iraqi's Stand Up, We'll Stand Down"

This title quote was stated by George W. Bush quite often as he tried to convince a weary nation and adversarial Congress that a troop surge in Iraq was necessary and would work. This quote was the "timeline" George W. Bush created. It was a milestone and not a date on the calendar.

These days, President Obama is trying for a troop surge as well in Afghanistan, but he is also trying for a deadline; July, 2011; a month on a calendar, not a milestone of achievement.

Unfortunately, the "conservative" non-thinkers lack the will or brightness to make mention of this key difference. Newt Gingrich and the CWINOs (Conservative Writers in Name Only), are saying that Bush created a timeline for Iraq too. If he did, he didn't telegraph it to the enemy. He didn't include it in his speech to the nation on the Iraq Surge.

The question I ask is this: When did Afghanistan suddenly become such a tough fight? All during the Iraq War, we heard from the left that Afghanistan was the right war and their was no nightly body count given. The anti-war movement must have been so distracted by Iraq that they forgot to demand that the U.S. Troops in Afghanistan come home to fight Hurricane Katrina. I thought things were going well there, but then Obama got elected.

President Bush was in his second term but had just suffered a huge beating in the Congressional elections in 2006. He quickly fired Don Rumsfeld, and in January announced the Iraq surge. He did this with a Democrat controlled Congress who wanted troops out now, a minority of support from the public, and a squeamish bunch of what was left of Republicans in Congress. He did have the support of the ever so influential John McCain, but even without McCain, Bush probably would have taken the surge direction. The Democrats in Congress tried to cut funding for Iraq and played games with troop funding every chance they got. Remember the night that hundreds of cots were hauled into the Capitol building, for a night of debate on stripping war funds. Only a few of those idiots used the cots, while the rest went to their posh lodging. Yet another waste of taxpayer dollars.

Let us contrast this with President Obama. He has a huge advantage in Congress, and the pressure is not to withdraw troops from the evil Iraq War, but to withdraw them or keep a stagnant number in the good war, Afghanistan. Apparently, the moral justification for a war is solely dependent on its ease. Maybe the Civil War served no moral good afterall. Obama might still be waiting to send troops had not General McChrystal's request for more troops had been leaked. But as it was, Obama waited as long as possible so the domestic issues at home could go his way, before jeopardizing the unabetted assaults on the freedom of U.S. citizens, with a unapproved of foreign policy decision.

George W. Bush seemed to separate domestic policy advantages from foreign policy neccessity. It seems Obama has been unable to separate the foreign policy neccessities which hinder his momentum on his domination of domestic policy. He sure has tried; but time ran out on his dithering and the milestones have been hard to realize. Let us hope that our military has better success.