In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

BooMan asks:

Can I agree with Byron York?

Well, I'm sure you can, the guy's a complete douchebag but let's see what he has to say.

Fifty-seven percent of Democrats want to reduce the number of troops, and another 10 percent want to see troop levels remain the same.  That’s 67 percent — two-thirds — of Democrats who want the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to go down, or at least go no higher.  Which means two-thirds of Democrats likely oppose the president’s decision to send more troops.

And yet, in the 2008 presidential season, from the Democratic primaries to the general election, Democrats felt required to promise to step up the war in Afghanistan.  Was it because the Democratic base that now opposes escalation supported it back then?  No. A Gallup poll in August 2007 — in the midst of the Democratic primary race — found that just 41 percent of Democrats supported sending more U.S. troops to fight in Afghanistan.

If the base didn’t support it, then why did candidates promise it?  Because Democratic voters and candidates were playing a complex game.  Nearly all of them hated the war in Iraq and wanted to pull Americans out of that country.  But they were afraid to appear soft on national security, so they pronounced the smaller conflict in Afghanistan one they could support.  Many of them didn’t, really, but for political expediency they supported candidates who said they did.  Thus the party base signed on to a good war-bad war strategy.

Hey, holy hell, even *I* agree with Byron York here.  For once he's completely correct:  Obama played up Afghanistan as the "war we should be fighting".  Now, surprise!  Even more people are expecting him to get us out.

Tonight's speech supposedly has us beginning withdrawal from Afghanistan in July 2011.  Why the additional troops at all, then?  Obama wants it both ways, just like he did in the campaign, just like Bush did with Iraq. 

That's not a model we need to be repeating, folks.