I am ready for tomorrow's announcement. I am confident that the main crux of his speech will be about a whole new plan for Afghanistan and less about number of troops. I am also confident that a new plan will make sense and be clearly communicated. I do not think the president has spent this much time just discussing numbers of troops. I think he will present a whole new concept for the war and how we will eventually get out of there. So Dems need to be ready to support his plan against the distortions by the media and the Republican'ts. We all need to listen to the speech and take notes because I guarantee the media will not report his speech accurately and the Republican'ts will spin it even more.

But at least, after tomorrow, we'll hear the plan directly from the president and not from reported "leaks" and bullet-pointed babble.

Jennifer

and, of course, the "liberal" media let's the right wing get away with this.

I REALLY hope Pres. Obama can recast the mess that is Afghanistan in a way that decreases the cost in lives and points us down the right road toward leaving the place with some stability. However, I must admit, that the troop increase decision has disheartened me in a way that no other decision he has made had yet accomplished.

When he was campaigning, I knew he was being disingenuous when he said he'd withdraw from Iraq and close Gitmo immediately. Mainly because the simple logistics of said action and the political reality of legislative funding would not allow him to do anything with our military immediately. And still I voted for him. I believed that his stand against the original Iraqi invasion showed that he was a principled man and that those principles and good intentions could and would make a difference in all of his decisions.

Still even knowing and accepting the Pottery Barn principle (choking on it, really)....we are in an ugly position. I know he has an impossible decision to make and yet, this troop increase....it makes me sick to my stomach.

I believe the calls were made yesterday to the various commanders ordering up the troop increase.

I suppose in order to sell it to us he will have to lay out a strategy and an exit strategy.

He needs to blow off the rethugs because he ought to know by now they will do everything and anything to oppose him and appease their base.

I think politically he's done for 2012. I say that with great pain because I so hoped he would succeed. As I have said before, I think his advisors are giving him crappy advice and unfortunately he will be the one to take the heat.

Bob lists the many techniques used by the Republican Pathology. They all amount to a pattern of obstructionism.

Democracy simply cannot function in a defacto two-party system when only one of the two parties is interested in governance.

I don't really care why they are against this President or his policies. What I want to know is: Why do they HATE Democracy?

Jan: How do you figure he is politically done in 2012?

Why do people continually count Obama down and out?

What other President in history has had their presidency declared a complete failure in its infancy?

>>>They can't even be swayed by their own words.

Totally true. But it reminds me of a really fun game to play when you're conversing with any wingnut friends or family members you may have:

1) Tell them a quote by a prominent liberal, but misattribute it to a prominent conservative (E.g., if you're trying to make a point about the economy, take a Paul Krugman quote but attribute it to Rush Limbaugh or Peter Schiff or Ron Paul).

2) Listen as they wholeheartedly agree with the quote and the political proposition that the quote implies.

3) Inform them of your trickery, and watch as they instantly begin to backtrack and flail to portray themselves as ideologically consistent in any way.

As a side note, the game works equally well in the reverse - misattribute a quote by Rush Limbaugh to the liberal of your choosing (Rahm Emanuel is a good choice because conservatives don't know much about him or his political opinions), and watch as the wingnut tears apart the quote as ridiculous, "typical liberal bullshit."

You sure can't change a wingnut's mind, but you CAN have hours and hours of fun by exploiting their lack of knowledge and ideological retardation.

IF he increases troops, I will accept it if the strategy is different. If he just increases the number of troops but they keep doing the same thing, then I will not be OK with that.

I used to think that helping the people through building schools and clinics and providing help for food would be a good effort in combatting terrorist recruiting. But really, that won't solve it. We will always be too many steps behind. Terrorism moves to the vulnerable and we can't rescue everyone in the world from poverty and corruption in order to prevent terrorists from recruiting the vulnerable.

This is why I need to hear the speech tomorrow. I need to hear what his is planning. Numbers don't mean as much to me as the plan.

Jennifer

@Allonfla I'm not counting the Pres out. I firmly believe that he'll continue to make worthwhile changes. It's just that the three issues I really, really cared about (less corporate influence, the two-front war, and healthcare) have not turned out as I had hoped for. Perhaps unrealistic of me in the extreme, but I really wanted to believe that he could do it, especially with so much support.

Now, before anyone jumps down my throat...I'm referring to:
1) the many Bush appointees who are still in office and the Wall Street types like Geithner who have his ear, the Bank bailouts, etc
2) I wanted a PO, right now, not years from now and not so that my crappy wingnut state legislature could deny it to me
3) We never should have been in Iraq and the way we went into Afghanistan was a complete failure (anyone with any knowledge of history knows it, I still think somebody should get any one of the many excellent scholarly books written about Alexander the Great and beat former Pres. Shrub about the head and shoulders until he is black and blue--metaphorically speaking, snark!)

The 'thugs get away with it because the corporate-controlled media (a) lets them frame the discussion and (2) refuses to hold them accountable for their contradictions and misrepresentations.

While waiting at the dentist's this am, I was reading yahoo news on my phone. The lead article was "7 stories Obama doesn't want told". I knew immediately the source would be politico (I was correct). The "stories" are all negative bullshit that the right wing is trying to make stick and politico is simply reporting that they exist and not taking sides. Asshats.

@Jennifer: You're absolutely right. Of course, the MSM can't understand anything more complicated than a number, so that's all that will be focused on. Considering they were never able to grasp that McChrystal asked for more troops ALONG with a new strategy I don't see that changing. The entirety of the analysis will be how the political circle jerk plays out, not how this actually affects the lives of the many Americans, Afghanis, Pakistanis, and others involved.

they get away with it because IOKIYAR

As a retired Naval Officer and Viet Nam combat corpsman I support the President's "dithering" over Afghanistan. What I don't support is continuing to commit US lives to this losing cause. Nothing short of removing the troops from that hellhole is good enough for me.

During the run up to the first Gulf War I felt that the President should go down to the Wall and read the names etched in the granite. It should cause these leaders some pain to commit troops to fight and die on foreign soil.

I want to jump back in here for a minute. I am sitting here watching The Rachel Maddow Show and she had a frightening graphic. According to her numbers the US Army has 50,600 deployable troops. If we send 30,000 what does that leave us in reserve for some sort of real crisis?

If the neocons, Obaman's, and the other war believers want to continue this folly it is time for a DRAFT. If this war is so important then it is time for all of us to participate in this endeavor. Not to mention the $$$$ that is being flushed down the Afghan toilet. It is time that this is considered. How in the hell do we pay for this?

So yesterday on ABC the "usual suspects" were putting the kibosh on a tax to pay for this. So, it is wrong to spend money on this country but it is OK to piss it away in South Asia?

I hear loons from the right state that the reason the Depression ended was WWII, well then why does that reasoning not work here? We are spending huge sums of money on this. $1mil per soldier per year. That frightens me beyond belief.

It would be nice to be able to have a real debate about this without the craziness of the wingnutosphere.