0 Responses to “Rudy’s Concession Speech”

1. RCAR says:

   January 13, 2009 at 5:41 pm

   Also,let’s make sure Iraq & Iran don’t get too chummy.
2. Los Angeleno says:

   January 13, 2009 at 5:46 pm

   Obama appears to have broken a key pledge of his–16 month withdrawal of all combat troops. Now he appears (you never really know for sure) to be saying until the end of 2011. That is a big, big difference. Abe didn’t say Obama was “pro-war”. That is a straw man.
3. Jay from Texas says:

   January 13, 2009 at 5:56 pm

   Abe didn’t say Obama was pro-war but he did say that the Obama administration was turning into a pro-war administration.

   I also think that’s a stretch – at least wait until he gets into office.
   If he stays in Iraq and increases troop levels in Afghanistan and sends peremptory strikes into Pakistan then yeah – it could be called a pro war administration.

   But not yet
   Now we are still in the who the heck is Obama and what is he going to do stage. But that changes next week when he actually HAS to start doing things.
4. Brian says:

   January 13, 2009 at 6:20 pm

   This comment is just plain silly. The war in Iraq is won. If we can’t say that basic fact because “There are still all of the characteristics present for many more years of civil war, religous conflict, proxy conflict, you name it” then there’s hardly a piece of dry land on the planet that isn’t at risk.
5. J.E. Dyer says:

   January 13, 2009 at 6:21 pm

   Well, OK, but by the criteria on which the Bush administration was judged to be pro-war, during the presidential campaign, the impending Obama administration will also, apparently, be.

   If the Obama administration is NOT “pro-war” for accepting the SOFA and proceeding with a stately-paced drawdown — then neither is Bush’s.

   Abe is perfectly within the boundaries of rhetorical responsibility to apply the same standard to both administrations.
6. contra says:

   January 13, 2009 at 6:57 pm

   Abe Greenwald has supported his opinions with arguments:
   e..g., he calls the Obama team “pro-war” wrt Iraq for the reason
   that it is continuing the (pro-war) Bush team policy. Suxh arguments do
   not constitute an air-tight proof – dissent is possible – but they are
   arguments.

   The dissent of A Kill-Lease Heel contains
   no counter-argument: on every point that Abe Greenwald
   makes, he merely says: I wouldn’t say so – and
   essentially nothing else.

   Promoting such an unsubstantiated response to the
   prominence of “Commentary of the Day” has done it a disservice.
   It was fine where it stood before, as a subjective
   reaction of one member of the audience.
7. Paulo says:

   January 13, 2009 at 10:38 pm

   An Obama administration may or may not be pro-war, but he did say during the campaign that he “would be prepared to order U.S. troops into that country unilaterally if it failed to act on its own against Islamic extremists”…

   But I believe the media will take the “Obama doctrine” very differently… after all he has such “great challenges ahead” (as if the other presidents didn’t).

   One can judge the situation in Iraq by the lack of news from that country when things are relatively calm(and I emphasize “relatively”) as opposed to when the situation was really bad and one would be bombarded by casualties estimates and pundit’s panels discussing the “failures of the Bush policies in Iraq”.
8. nacl says:

   January 13, 2009 at 10:57 pm

   But the unqualified reversal from anti-war ticket to pro-war administration is still something to marvel at.

   Greenwald is right.

   Obama’s vow to at least double our commitment in Afghanistan is a clear pro war gesture, and pro war in the most pejorative sense, a will to fight, where there is no real need.

   In Iraq there was a real enough need: the Baath and Saddam, his contumacy, his appetite for the oil fields, his perceived WMD. His example inspired anti US forces everywhere to consider the US a paper tiger that could be flouted. If the US power position in the world was not to collapse Saddam’s neck needed to be broken; hence the pro war label on Bush i.e., bellicosity, was never fair.

   At the start of the election campaign it was largely believed that the war issue would decide the election. As it turned out, that was almost right. His stance on the war gave Obama the Democratic nomination. But in the course of the campaign, as the war news improved Obama’s negative Iraq references became rare, he turned to grudging approvals of the surge. He tacitly adopted McCain’s position. And to do McCain one better Obama started beating the drums for Afghanistan, about which McCain was always lukewarm. McCain’s poll numbers rose. He was four points ahead when the financial collapse did him in.
9. Bates Estabrooks says:

   January 14, 2009 at 7:00 am

   “contra” is right on target. Why is this the “comment of the day?” It’s meaningless.