Is Europe Falling Out of Love with Obama?

posted at 8:31 am on October 29, 2009 by Howard Portnoy
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An editorial in Der Spiegel by Claus Christian Malzahn suggests that American conservatives are not the only ones growing increasingly restive over the duffer-in-chief’s continued diddling over Afghanistan. Evidently his “friends” across the Atlantic have also begun tapping their fingers nervously and gazing uncomfortably at their watches.

“The world,” Malzahn writes, “has been waiting for clear words from the White House for months. Obama has had government and military analysts studying the military and political situation in the embattled Hindu Kush region since early January.”

Clear words from the White House? Isn’t clarification what the White House specializes in? Isn’t the Bartlett Quotation Obama will be best remembered for “Let me be clear”?

Apparently not. As Malzahn writes several paragraphs later, “So far Obama has only made it clear that he doesn’t intend to withdraw any troops and that he hasn’t decided yet whether to add more soldiers.”

I wouldn’t bet the farm on Obama’s not withdrawing any troops — or all the troops. He is already feeling heat from the left. Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd recently wrote at the Puffington Host that he has become “deeply concerned that . . . the reason for the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan has become lost, consumed in some broader scheme of nation-building which has clouded our purpose and obscured our reasoning.” Translation: Time to pick up our marbles and head home.

Forgive my cynicism, but I believe that for Obama another “clear choice” looms, and it is this choice that will drive his decision regarding Afghanistan. The choice is how best to placate his dwindling base in the likely event ObamaCare is stripped of its public option before the bill arrives on his desk. The only way to mitigate such a grievous loss is by giving them something they want — a complete withdrawal of troops on the ground and a return to the Clintonian strategy of lobbing bombs in the general direction of Osama bin Laden’s likely location.

War of necessity? Let’s see him be perfectly clear about what he meant when he said that.

Cross-posted at Zombie Contentions

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