The White House is likely to delay the withdrawal of the first large phase of combat troops from Iraq for at least a month after escalating bloodshed and political instability in the country.
Here's what no Democrat wants to admit. From the day he took office, Obama has followed the same policy on Iraq as Bush.
Bush and the generals always promised a withdrawal. Bush always promised a withdrawal of some troops at some future date. The date was always dependent on some future milestone, usually an election of some sorts. Bush always said that some day in the future the Iraqis will be dancing around with purple ink on their fingers, and that will be the sign that Iraq has now 'stabilized' and that we can withdraw some, but not all of our troops.
For all of his faux anti-war rhetoric back in the primaries, Obama has continued exactly the same policy in Iraq. Obama promised exactly the same troop drawdowns as Bush, and the milestone that Obama was always pointing too was this recent round of elections. It took a long time for this to occur. First the elections were postponed from last summer (always a sign of a free and democratic country). Then they were finally held in March. And now there's been a long round of playing games with the election results, disqualifying candidates only after they won, and negotiations for a coalition.
But, the milestone is finally here. The Iraqis have formed their new government, and so now its time for the US to finally start withdrawing some troops..... Not!
It turns out that Obama has run exactly the same con Bush always ran. Now that the milestone is passed, suddenly we are told that the security situation is still dangerous and that we still have to keep all of our young Americans in Iraq.
Surprise, surprise, surprise.
What people have to wake up to is the fact that the Democrats have supported this war completely from the beginning. The Democrats voted to authorize this war. The Democrats regularly all line up and vote to fund this war. The Democrats have religiously protected war funding from any opposition since they took control of Congress in 2006. And Obama has firmly supported this war since taking office.
And now Obama has taken a page straight from the Bush playbook and is now announcing that because the CIA's candidate (Allawi) hasn't taken control of the country in the 'free' elections we've allowed them, that suddenly we have to keep a hundred thousand or more Americans in Iraq ... until the next mythical milestone/withdraw date that they come up with next. The message seems to be that American troops will stay until the Iraqis 'freely' decide to put the CIA's man back into power.
The Democrats have only been an 'anti-war' party for two brief periods of their nearly 200 years of existence as a political party. During the height of popular rebellion against the Vietnam war, the Democrats became anti-war from 1972-76. Then, when the party hacks retook control of their party, they changed the rules to ensure that this doesn't happen again (see 'super-delegates' for an example). The only other time the Democrats were anti-war was when they opposed Lincoln's call for the Civil War since the Democrats were the party of the slave owners.
The Democrats are not and have only rarely been an anti-war party.
Are the American people finally ready to wake up to the fact that the Democrats love these wars just as much as the Republicans. The war in Afghanistan has been massively escalated. A year of drone strikes has killed some 700 civilians and expanded the war to Pakistan. Now, Obama seems to want to use the Times Square dud bomb as an excuse to put 'boots on the ground' in Pakistan. And the threats to start a war with Iran haven't even slowed down as the (D)'s trade places with the (R)'s in the White House. One could seemingly make a 'morphing' video of SOS Hillary and SOS Rice doing the same saber rattling towards Iran. And his promises to withdraw some, but not all, troops from Iraq are now being revealed as a fraud. And least we somehow seem to have avoided a war with Yemen.
If the American people are sick of these wars, they have to start voting for someone besides Democrats or Republicans.
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