During this entire health care debate one thing that has really irked me is the progressive bloggers acting like President Obama sold us out by not pushing universal health care. Not once did candidate Barack Obama push for universal health care. Instead candidate Obama pushed for:
Establish a National Health Insurance Exchange with a range of private insurance options as well as a new public plan based on benefits available to members of Congress that will allow individuals and small businesses to buy affordable health coverage.
This is the campaign that got Obama elected, so saying he is ignoring those who brought him to power is a lie. It’s like some prominent progressive bloggers just slept through the entire campaign season.
Now we got a new issue – Afghanistan. Yesterday Arianna Huffington wrote a piece calling for Joe Biden to resign in protest over a troop increase in Afghanistan. Today that piece is all the talk.
Joe Biden met with CENTCOM chief Gen. David Petraeus this morning to talk about Afghanistan — an issue that has pushed the vice president into the spotlight, landing him on the cover of the latest Newsweek.
I have an idea for how he can capitalize on all the attention, and do what generations to come will always be grateful for: resign.
When we were listening to candidate Obama he was a constant hawk when it came to Afghanistan. As matter of fact listening to Obama on Afghanistan was much like listening to Bush on Iraq.
While I agree with the general idea Arianna is pushing, I disagree with the outcome of this. Arianna thinks that Biden would be viewed as some sort of hero or martyr for doing this, while in fact he would be viewed as someone throwing a hissy fit. Joe Biden was very well aware of Obama’s stance on Afghanistan when he took the gig as vice-President, so resigning over a disagreement on Afghanistan would not bode well for Biden.
Having said that, the whole notion of “what to do with Afghanistan” is a tough one. Adding more troops isn’t going to help. History is a perfect indicator of that. Also pulling out completely will most likely become an eerie reminder of the Kurds in a post-war Iraq back in 91. This is why the wingnuts are also dead wrong on the issue. They believe that Obama should have already thrown a bunch more troops at the situation. Obama is doing the right thing right now by holding a bunch of meeting with high level advisors. It’s a bitch to wait for a decision, but I would much rather wait for a well thought out decision than watch Obama push something out the door.
No matter what the outcome the price will be high. And we can’t forget the most important point in the argument – that this quagmire is the product of Bush foreign policies that were never well thought out. We had the upper hand in Afghanistan in 2002-2003, but Bush got distracted and so did our military. Instead he wanted to go after the non-threat (or faux-threat) of Iraq. Now Obama has a nearly impossible situation to deal with.