Mission Accomplished: The Sequel

[howeird]

Last night President Obama announced the end of combat operations in Iraq, as if this was the fulfillment of his campaign promise to have our troops out of there 18 months after taking office.

There are still 50,000 - That's FIFTY THOUSAND uniformed US troops in Iraq. They all need to come home. I'm sure a handful would be happy to turn in their uniform for civilian clothes and stay to help the good people of Iraq, and I'm all for that, even at taxpayer expense. Especially with the unemployment rate in the US so high. But declaring the war over just because you have changed the labels is mendacious, whether it is done in a flight jacket on the deck of an aircraft carrier or in a business suit behind a desk.

Comments

[lironess.livejournal.com]

This also means that anyone else that gets sent over there will not have the same kind of benefits. Sigh.

[howeird]

I hadn't thought of that. Double whammy. :-(

[damiana-swan.livejournal.com]

If you're interested, there's a website (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/) tracking Obama's campaign promises and whether he's kept them. According to them, he's kept 121 and broken 81, with additional promises stalled, compromised, or in the works. FWIW, they consider that particular promise to be kept, as the combat troops are leaving on schedule and the remaining troops are there as peacekeepers, who are scheduled (realistically or not) to be out of Iraq within another 15 months.

[howeird]

Thanks for the link. I'm not that obsessive about it, and there are only a handful of promises he made which were important enough for me to vote for him. So far he has only kept one: the extension of unemployment/reduction of COBRA for those laid off.

He so far has not:
Integrated gays into the military
Brought all our troops home from Iraq in 18 months
Reduced the number of home mortgage foreclosures with targeted loans
Given Congress a comprehensive national health care bill
Worked to repeal DOMA
Doubled the number of Peace Corps volunteers and streamlined the Peace Corps' bureaucracy

He did make a token effort to enable human stem cell research, but it needs to be in the form of the repeal of laws, not by decree.

While he didn't actually promise it, he has totally failed to turn over the war in Afghanistan to NATO or UN forces. Smoke and mirrors - a huge number of the combat troops which had been in Iraq are now in Afghanistan.

I want to see him succeed, but it's just not happening.