You’re not suggesting he can’t be taken seriously, are you?
Well, increased spending, more bureaucracy, started 2 wars – clearly Bush is a RINO who will be officially declared a Democrat in retrospect.
“Wind-em-up-an-look-at-em-go” seem to be the only type of representative or candidate the GOP puts out.
Steele’s reputation aside, isn’t it fair to say that he is somewhat accurate? Bush sort of left Afghanistan alone after the initial strike on Tora Bora. Dems criticized him for focusing on Iraq and “leaving the job unfinished” in Afghanistan.
So, Obama came in and made it a point to revamp and reignite the Afghanistan conflict to try to stop the surging Taliban.
I think the point, agree or disagree, is a legitimate one.
Sure, as long as Republicans are willing to take full responsibility for those killed while Bush let Afghanistan stew on its tushy.
My impression though is that they don’t want to be known as the party that puts American troops in harms way, and then leaves them there to hang because they got interested in some other adventure. Now it happens to be true that that’s what the GOP did, but I don’t think they want voters to think of it in that light, so they really should be asking Steele to open a big box of STFU. Of course, they could also just pray the thing blows over, and that voters don’t notice. The press’ll probably help them out with that scenario.
What bothers me. is there are really stupid mother fuckers who will flush recent history down the toilet, and buy all of Steele’s bullshit, just because they have a case of the ass against all Democrats. Afghanistan and Iraq both were started, for good or ill, under the previous (Republican) administration. To say otherwise is simply a big ass lie.
Well, sort of. Its a spin job, in reverse!
This kind of political pandering and sniping really fucking pisses me off. Its political obstructionism at its lowest ebb.
“I don’t care if its the right thing to say/do, I have to speak out against it because the other guys approve it!”
:rolleyes:
FWIW I think Obama is doing the right thing by refocusing on the war that out of the two, clearly has some semblance of justification and was left to rot essentially in terms of military expenditures and resources to properly conduct it in favor of the Iraq war.
First, Steele undermined his own point by backtracking, so if he had some sort of point initially, someone besides Ron Paul should let him know. Second, Bush didn’t leave or sort of leave Afghanistan alone, he just withdrew a substantial portion of the initial force sent in and left the remainder to try and accomplish the mission of driving the Taliban out and securing the Afghan state. The mission has not changed, though the troop levels have gone up and the expectation levels have gone down.
Obama did not “reignite” the war in Afghanistan because it has been steadily occurring since 2001 even when Iraq largely overshadowed it in the news. Casualties have been rising since 2005, with significant spikes that year, in 2008 and 2009. The 2009 spike is largely the result of the Marine offensive in Helmand province. Bush ordered an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan in 2008 and Obama ordered another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan in December 2009, but not all of those troops have deployed yet.
Afghanistan is a war of Obama’s choosing only in the sense that Obama chose to continue it knowing the crappy situation and the crappy likelihood of an outcome that truly looks like a success rather than throw up his hands and order a withdrawal. So, Steele does have a point that the war in Afghanistan is ugly and messy and the odds of achieving the mission objectives as currently stated aren’t that good, but his overall point that the war itself is essentially Obama’s fault is woefully and disingenuously mistaken.
I live in such a place.
The people around here elected Michele Bachmann.
Twice.
Are you all MAD?? Everything was perfect until Obama was elected. Eight years of peace and prosperity, all ruined by the warmongering waterboarding Democrats.
Further to my post, #6, above, Cynthia Tucker expresses in this video clip why it was a short-sighted and cynical decision for the RNC to appoint Steele to the leadership position in the first place, also touching on why they may be stuck with him, at least for now.
Yikes!
Well, no. Clinton and Obama were elected.
You have my sympathies. You should lie about where you live.
That makes him a Republican.
So, in the years down the road, can we bring up Michael Steele when Republican continue to whine about misguided affirmative action?
It certainly seems to open the door to the opportunity, However, to be accurate, although affirmative action was the result in Steele’s case, as he’s as far from being qualified for the position as a Buddhist monk, it definitely wasn’t the intent.
He’s somewhat accurate in the sense that Obama “chose” to focus US efforts there, but clearly Obama couldn’t just pull out, and leaving the same force in place to be slowly killed off wasn’t an option either.
To say Bush “left it alone” is rather generous to Bush. He left 15,000 troops there, just enough to ensure they’d have an election of some sort, in the hope that he could point to it as one of his achievements afterwards.