Motivation Nation

Now there we go again. Liberals can’t stop they just can’t stop defending Obama even in the face of his latest speech informing us of his Afghan Plan. I’ve done a lot of dumb things in my life, and continue to do so, yet I can proudly say I never defended Obama. To be sure there is pressure from the generals, and pressure from Clinton and Bob Gates the cat boiler. But that’s not what drives Obama. Politicians are self-serving beyond and above anything else they might be and Obama is no different no matter what color his skin is or how big his smile may be. As I said in an earlier post it is political considerations that drive Obama’s foreign policies.

Just like the news media who reports through the lens of Obama’s presidency that is also what motivates Obama’s foreign policy. If he makes a wrong move in Afghanistan the republicans could use it to rake him over the coals in the next election. Democrats live in fear of being accused of weakness regarding foreign policies and especially regarding war and much of what Obama does is driven by his own political needs like all politicians. So foreign policy when regarded in this manner is really domestic policy in a way.

William Lind I think hits the nail (because he agrees with me) on the head regarding Obama’s motives and presents us with valuable insight.

Link

So what lies behind President Obama’s decision? Domestic political considerations, of course. He has done what politicians always do when faced with difficult choices: he has kicked the can down the road to a specific date, July 2011. That is when the president promises we will begin a withdrawal from Afghanistan. The date is meaningless beyond its political meaning, i.e., at that point Obama will again be faced with the same decision he just punted. With a presidential election looming, he will punt again. Meanwhile, the war’s price, in money and casualties, will have risen, making it even harder to walk away from sunk costs.

The real choice Obama faced was not how many troops to send. We do not have enough troops to commit a militarily meaningful number. The real choice was to get out now or get out later. His duty as chief executive, the state of America’s treasury (empty), concern for the well-being of our troops and their families, and the hopelessness of the situation all dictated he get out now. By punting the decision, he showed America and the world what he is made of. Dec. 1, 2009, was the date the Obama presidency failed.

The two points of importance here are one, Obama didn’t decide anything rather he avoided it and two, the real choice wasn’t how many but was to pull out or not to pull out. That makes an awful lot of sense to me. Obama has made himself irrelevant yet not in the way his self-appointed defenders imagine.

Obama’s job is to keep the status quo by propping up the empire any way he can so that the elite can drain the last bitter dregs before the whole thing collapses in on itself. It’s only a matter of time. I like to think of Obama as an undertaker hammering the last nails into the lid of the coffin.