We elected a President to make decisions using his best judgment.

[Bleacher Creature]

On Afghanistan, that's what he did. I personally have serious reservations about the decision, but I am comfortable that the President took the time that was needed to make it, that he talked to the right people and looked at every side of the issue. That's all we can ask, and THIS is what differentiates him from Bush and Cheney.

And please, don't bother comparing this post to Brittney Spears' "I think we should just trust our president in every decision he makes" quote, because this is not what I'm saying at all. I personally believe that this was a thoughtful, agonizing and informed decision. I may not agree with the end result, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for so long as I trust his judgment. That's a far cry from trusting someone like GWB, who acted before thinking, has the judgment of an earthworm, and has a thirty-plus year history of making terrible decisions.

[Clio the Leo]

1. That's all anyone can ask. NT

[Cha]

2. And, that's what I've been saying

and accused of the britney spears shit bc they don't know the difference between bush and President Obama.

[ProSense]

3. Some people long for the Bush days

when the guy in the WH acted before thinking and did whatever the hell he wanted to.

[Hekate]

26. ...For the days when we also could react reflexively to anything Bush did bcs it was easy...

It was just too easy to see how wrong he was nearly all the time. Heinously wrong.

Between ending up with Dem congresscritters reacting like a battered spouse to whatever the Repubs did and the rest of us Dems/liberals/Progressives howling like mad at whatever the Bush administration said and did, at some point a lot of us developed PTSD and a lot of us became intellectually lazy.

I say intellectually lazy because it doesn't require any thought to simply reject everything coming from the Obama White House on sight, solely because it doesn't match a predetermined agenda and timeline of one's own.

In our collective despair over Bush and our admiration of the shiny new guy on the horizon, there was a MASSIVE amount of psychological projection onto candidate Barack Obama. Projections that heroic cannot be sustained in reality, and the object of such projections is wise to not try to, or they risk personal destruction and destruction of much else around them.

Hekate

[MadMaddie]

4. Yes and it's a relief to know that it's not a knee jerk decision

and other options were analyzed and discarded. This decision took more time than it did for the previous administration to decide to invade Iraq and Afghanistan without a plan.

[treestar]

19. Amen!

And McWar would not have made a plan to end it in 18 months!

[Cant trust em]

5. Anyone who says definitively that they would have made a different decision

based on getting full intelligence and security briefings is not being honest.

I find it really difficult to pass judgment on national security because I have no idea what is really going on. My gut tells me to be skeptical of escalation, but I couldn't say definitely that I wouldn't do it if I were in power.

[vaberella]

6. Exactly. n/t

[Nancy Waterman]

9. I trust Obama's judgement and motivations

I am not happy with escalation but I also think Obama does not want to be a war president, unlike Bush and his delusions of grandeur.
This is a painful decision for someone who really would rather not have to escalate, and I feel I should trust him and his capacity to understand all the ramifications of the various plans.

[NC_Nurse]

7. Yep. I am hoping he gets it right. I don't envy being in his position. No matter

what you decide, many people will think you've got it all wrong.

[oneplanet]

8. He thinks in a completely different way than the previous administration.

He sees the big picture, considers all sides of view, and makes his decisions non-reflexively.

What more could we ask for?

[zipplewrath]

10. Who were the disenting voices

He can take as long as he wants, but when all of his advice is coming from the military/pro-warrior/peace through strength crowd, the end decision is always the same. The question is, much like the healthcare debate, where were the pacifists? Were they even in the room? Or were they shut out completely just like the single payer folks? Did he sell out right up front just as he did with big Pharma? Bush used his best judgment too. Were you comfortable with that as well?

[Bleacher Creature]

11. I don't know that he did or didn't listen to dissenting voices.

But neither do you, and neither does anyone else here. It would be nice if the WH put out a list of every person the President spoke to, every paper, book and report that he read, but that's both unrealistic and kind of pathetic. Again, all I am saying is that I trust that he listened to both sides of the issue. If it later turns out that all of his advice came from hawks and that dissenters were turned away at the door, I won't hesitate to admit that I'm wrong, but I just don't see it in this guy.

And finally, if you really think that Obama's judgment is equivalent to Bush's, I'm not sure there's any point even discussing.

[zipplewrath]

17. It's the way healthcare was handled

I'm not sure why you'd say "I just don't see it in this guy" when it is already the way he handled the health care debate. Single payer advocates not allowed. Big Pharma in first. So what would make you believe he'd handle this decision differently? This is especially true considering that clearances have to be obtained, and the number of people who are "current" on the facts is limited to those for whom the military has already decided to include? You can have "trust" in Obama, but in the absence of concrete reasons for this trust, that's really just "faith".

[davidpdx]

12. BC agreed

I think all of us in our hearts want this war over, but none of us want simply to pull the troops out and walk away. Bush screwed things up and ignored what went on for years, we now have to fix things and put pressure on the government there to get their shit together and start a gradual pull out like in Iraq.

It is disingenuous for people to make the Bush/Obama comparisons and for the life of me, if they hate Obama that much, they should really go join Free Republic.

[Arkana]

13. I do too, and I voted for the guy because I believed he was capable

of making an informed, thoughtful, and agonizing decision.

The last guy would have spent fifteen minutes on the crapper with this one--and ten of those would be wondering what kind of jelly he wanted on his next PB&J.

[yurbud]

14. that's a cruel joke. No one's best judgment would tell them to stay in Afghanistan

unless someone on Wall Street (like an oil company or an investment bank that needs the heroin money) has a gun to his head, there is no reason to continue the war.

[bevoette]

15. i am not a military strategist or scholar. nor am i an historian, an expert on world affairs...

...a warmonger, or a political leader with millions relying on me

i'm gonna bet 99% of the people here aren't either

i'm some chick in Texas that votes

i voted for this man for his intelligence, thoughtfulness, vision, and heart.

i trust that he gave this decision every ounce of deliberation it was worth, that he agonized over it, and that he made the best decision he possibly could in his position. given that, i believe he honestly thinks this is what is best for our country and the world.

unlike his predecessor, i DO NOT BELIEVE that he came to this decision for simplistic, jingoistic or nefarious reasons, or that he is so stupid and gullible as to be swayed by those with nefarious intentions around him.



i look around, and what i really think is that it is really no wonder that the Democratic party has such difficulties gaining and keeping power. it's not just because the country as a whole leans more 'right' than 'left'...it's because Democrats eat their own.

[lostnfound]

16. My moral compass as a citizen of the empire

It's still necessary for us to have one of our own, right?
My respect for Obama remains very high, but I am still adamantly opposed to an expanded war. His judgment may be intellectually sound and even sincerely motivated, or he may be constrained in his options, or he may be relying too heavily on advisors, or he may indeed have information that leads him to conclude that the world at large is imminently threatened by Afghanistan in ruins, but my compass still aligns with Howard Zinn and Smedley Butler and thou-shalt-not-kill and all that simple 'north is north' thinking.

[treestar]

18. That's the difference between Obama and the Chimp

No offense meant to Chimps.

[ShortnFiery]

20. No, I realized last night that Our President is "a puppet:" of the MIC and it's VILE. eom

[jgraz]

21. How do you know?

He could have looked at the briefings and then decided he could not get re-elected if he pulled out of Afghanistan without first committing more troops. What evidence do you have that he based his decision solely on national security and the best interests of the country?

[Bleacher Creature]

25. I don't.

But that's how our system works. We elect people to study the facts and use their best judgment, not to be our proxies. I completely agree that this trust needs to be earned and can easily be lost -- the previous eight years taught us that. I also agree that trusting an elected official doesn't mean giving him or her our blind faith. I campaigned and proudly voted for this President because I trusted him. Yes, there are some things that I've seen and heard that have tested this faith, but I'm not willing to abandon it yet, and certainly not on an issue that I know that he agonized over. I can't shake the image of him saluting the caskets returning home. Maybe it was just a photo-op, but it certainly didn't look that way to me.

[BennyD]

22. I always keep in mind that, the President has classified info that we DON"T.

Therefore, when people get mad at his decisions, they do so without full knowledge of the information.

[Robb]

29. Well, I'd argue he probably has

unclassified information most people on this board don't have. :D

[wowimthere]

23. well put nt

[Hekate]

24. Character and judgment and heart remain the reasons I voted for Obama. He still has those...

... plus access to information that none of us here has (except maybe Agent Mike's CIA brother, Agent Steve, and he's not sayin').

I don't have to like everything this president does to know that, unlike Bush the Lesser, President Obama actually READS the reports in front of him, TALKS with more people than Uncle Dick and Karl Rove, and THINKS deeply about matters of life and death. He's an imperfect human who doesn't rely on public God-talk to excuse past bad behavior or future mistakes, the way Bush did.

In fact, in every detail but the fact that they are both male mammals, there's nothing much that I can see about Obama that resembles Bush.

Hekate

[LiberalFighter]

27. I hope he made the right decision. But I have doubts because

of the people that may influence him. Some by not providing the details. And we all know the CIA can't be trusted.

[Bleacher Creature]

30. I have doubts too -- big ones. I just think he deserves the benefit of the doubt for now.

If you and I know that some sources are biased and cannot be trusted, so does he. All we can hope is that he recognized this and gave them the proper degree of skepticism.

[LiberalFighter]

28. The difference with Bush was that he made up his mind he wanted a war

and planned it months before he announced to the public that he had made up his mind.