Obama using war, climate change, & jobs as distraction for health care

by John Allison III

After spending the summer and fall trying to cram an unwanted government takeover of the US health care system down the throats of the American people, he’s finally managed to get a bill passed in the House and its companion bill debated on the floor of the Senate.  Now’s the time most would expect a final push, a strategic surge, a call on the very reserves of his energy and effort, to cross the finish line with legislation that could ultimately define his presidency.

But, instead of a network news health care infomercial starring the President, he decided to shift gears this week.  Suddenly he’s stepped forward with a response to General McChrystal’s request for more troops in Afghanistan, decided to attend the climate change conference in Copenhagen, and Thursday held a “jobs summit” at the White House. Is he counting his chickens before they hatch?  Does he believe he has this battle won, so he’s already tackling the next challenge?  It’s just hard to imagine after he’s focused on little else for months now, that suddenly the issue no longer draws his attention.

Of course, it could be by design.  All smoke and mirrors to confuse and confound.

Sort of like Nancy Pelosi’s Saturday at midnight vote to pass her vision of “reform” that places our health care decisions in the hands of government bureaucrats, or Harry Reid’s choice to hold the vote to move his bill forward on the Saturday night before Thanksgiving, President Obama is now hoping to take the eye of the American taxpayer off the ball in the last seconds of the game.

His jobs summit isn’t so much about jobs, but it’s just one part of a plan designed to turn the heads of the majority of voters who oppose his vision for the health care system, distracting them long enough to let the bill squeeze through before they realize it.

Think about it…three months after McChrystal issued his request for 40,000 troops, three months of facing harsh criticism for “dithering” while American troops twisted in the wind, he comes forth with a decision that sends the health care story to the inside pages of newspapers across the country.  Just one month after we heard the President wouldn’t be attending the climate conference in Copenhagen, Obama has suddenly done a 180 and decided not only to  attend but to promise a 17% cut in US carbon emissions by 2020.  And now the “jobs summit.”

Don’t be surprised to see the front page too crowded by all these announcements to adequately cover the health care debate over the next couple of weeks.  Look for the mainstream media to fall in line and lead with these stories and others to give cover to Democratic Senators trying to tow their party line while their constituents are distracted.

Obama and his Democratic lackeys in the Senate know Americans don’t trust the government to administer the health care system, but THEY DON’T CARE!  In their minds, we’re incapable of knowing what’s best for us.

They’re creating a diversion, hoping to distract us and force us to swallow their “reform.”

Don’t take your eyes off the health care debate until it’s dead!

Uncertain Trumpet

by Charles Krauthammer at Townhall.com

We shall fight in the air, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields, we shall fight in the hills — for 18 months. Then we start packing for home.

We shall never surrender — unless the war gets too expensive, in which case, we shall quote Eisenhower on “the need to maintain balance in and among national programs” and then insist that “we can’t simply afford to ignore the price of these wars.”

The quotes are from President Obama’s West Point speech announcing the Afghanistan troop surge. What a strange speech it was — a call to arms so ambivalent, so tentative, so defensive.

Which made his last-minute assertion of “resolve unwavering” so hollow. It was meant to be stirring. It fell flat. In August, he called Afghanistan “a war of necessity.” On Tuesday night, he defined “what’s at stake” as “the common security of the world.” The world, no less. Yet, we begin leaving in July 2011?

Does he think that such ambivalence is not heard by the Taliban, by Afghan peasants deciding which side to choose, by Pakistani generals hedging their bets, by NATO allies already with one foot out of Afghanistan?

Nonetheless, most supporters of the Afghanistan War were satisfied. They got the policy, the liberals got the speech. The hawks got three-quarters of what Gen. Stanley McChrystal wanted — 30,000 additional U.S. troops — and the doves got a few soothing words. Big deal, say the hawks.

But it is a big deal. Words matter because will matters.

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Obama helps kill US troops then uses their bodies for photo-op

It’s been more than two months since General McChrystal sent President Obama his request for more troops.    More than two months since McChrystal told the President we will likely lose the war without additional manpower.  In those two months, President Obama has failed to give US combat troops the support they are due.   And today, to add insult to injury, he exploited those soldiers he has helped kill by posing for a photo op as their bodies were being offloaded at Dover Air Force Base.

Obama made use of his fawning admirers in the mainstream press to represent his reprehensible appearance as an effort to “honor the fallen.”  General McChrystal, his troops in Afghanistan, and veterans understand the greatest way the Commander-In-Chief could honor these men and women would be to stop playing politics with the war effort and give them the support that just might save their lives! 

After all, this is the war he said we must win.  This is the war even he and his liberal cohorts said they supported.  But now the deaths of American service members seem of less import to this President than his inability to sway Fox News to follow the lead of their competitors in painting Obama as some sort of flawless Savior.  He trots across the country and the globe with barely a whisper of their sacrifices.

Until he sees an opportunity to exploit their deaths for political gain, using their bodies as props to bolster his political image.

After two months of ignoring the struggles of our brave men and women in Afghanistan, after refusing to acknowledge or attempt to mediate the difficulties they face, our Dear Leader is using the bodies of those whose lives he sacrificed to bolster his political image.

This man has no shame!

A War of Necessity Turns Out Not So Necessary

by Michael Barone at Townhall.com

“This is not a war of choice,” Barack Obama told the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Aug. 17. “This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9-11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaida would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people.”

But that was nearly seven weeks ago. Now, it appears that Obama is about to ignore the advice of Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, whom he installed as commander in Afghanistan in May, after relieving his predecessor ahead of schedule. McChrystal, who came up as a Special Forces officer, is an expert in counterinsurgency. Not surprisingly, in his Aug. 30 report to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, he recommended a course that seems certain to require a substantial number of additional troops.

During the first three weeks of September, Obama held one meeting on the “war of necessity.” Then, on Sept. 20, Obama appeared on five talk shows to push his health plan. The next day, Bob Woodward published a story in The Washington Post based on a copy of McChrystal’s report, which the newspaper later posted in redacted form. Woodward made it clear that McChrystal would request more troops. When questioners pressed him about the war, he said he was rethinking his Afghanistan strategy.

The rethinking looks a lot like a rejection of his general’s recommendations. McChrystal said last week that he had spoken to Obama exactly once since he was appointed. But many people, notably Vice President Biden, seemed to be speaking against his recommendation in a three-hour meeting Obama held with advisers on Thursday, Oct. 1.

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To Lose a War

by Pat Buchanan at Townhall.com

While America was consumed this summer with quarrels over town-hall radicals, “death panels,” the “public option” and racism’s role in the plunging polls of Barack, what happens to health care is not going to change the history of the world.

What happens in Afghanistan might.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal has done his duty. He has bluntly told his commander in chief what he must have in added combat troops and warned that if he does not get them, America faces “mission failure.”

Translation: a Taliban victory and U.S. defeat, as in Saigon 1975.

Not only does President Obama face the most critical decision of his young presidency, this country is facing a moment of truth. Obama, now the Decider, has four options.

There is the Biden option of drawing down troops, drawing away from Hamid Karzai, and focusing McChrystal’s men on what they do best — running down and killing al-Qaida, be they in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

Second is the option of indecision — holding off on more troops until the 68,000 already committed have arrived by December, and seeing how McChrystal does with them until spring.

The third option is to give McChrystal some but not all the tens of thousands he says he needs.

Final option: Give Gen. McChrystal the blank check George W. Bush gave Gen. David Petraeus, with the surge of 2007 in Iraq, which radically reduced the violence and set the stage for U.S. withdrawal beginning in 2010.

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