Obama on Afghanistan: Will the Public Tune him Out

Obama on Afghanistan: Will the Public Tune him Out?

By Fubara David-West.

When President Obama ends his address on a new strategy for the "war" in Afghanistan tonight, one group that will be beaming with pride will be those in the corner of the former Vice President Dick Cheney, who have been opining that the president is handling national security rather poorly.

Vice President Cheney, in particular, should be a credible voice, if he now accuses the president of endangering the lives of American soldiers and the overall mission in Afghanistan. The argument will be that he has wasted too many valuable weeks, making up his mind on whether to accept his general's recommendation or not. General McChrystal reportedly asked for 40,000 troops. The president wants to send 34,000.

The argument that he has wasted time and endangered the troops will be given more credibility, by the fact that the president, after all of that time, holding his well-publicized meetings with his war council, has basically made a decision that he could have made weeks ago.

There is no credible way to dress up the message that President Obama needed all of those high-powered meetings, all of these weeks, just to shave off a few hundred soldiers from the number General McChrystal wanted. That is why the public will be quite justified, if it tunes the president out tonight.

This writer does not think that the difficulties, which the President Obama has put himself into will be overcome, with one of his great speeches. It will also be surprising if both his allies in the Democratic Party and Republicans, who in a few weeks will smell blood in the water, as this president staggers badly with this bad call on Afghanistan, do not recognize the writing on the wall.

The message will become ever more jarring, if members of the Congress start insisting upon a "war tax" to pay for this mission. Such a tax will push back the prospects for any quick recovery from the current recession. By the mid-term elections the unemployment rate might be 15 percent.

The latest word on the president's anticipated speech is that he will present a program to quickly have the troops in there, and ensure that this is not a long drawn-out program. That suggests that the president might also be seeing the writing on wall. If he does not decipher its every political code with some wisdom, his popularity will drop precipitously in a year, and with that much of the influence he might have in the Congress will disappear. A second presidential term might become an unrealistic goal.

I thank you.

Fubara David-West.