Nathan Scandella (personal)

Promise Officially Broken

Well, it has now been exactly 16 months since Barack Obama became our President. And we're not even close to being out of Iraq. Promise officially broken.

During the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama and Hillary Clinton were extremely close, in terms of their experience and political platforms. There were only a few differentiators. One was the withdrawal from Iraq. Clinton gave a timetable of 18 months to withdrawal, but made clear that the number was approximate. Obama, on the other hand, went two months better on his promise, and made clear that 16 months was 16 months. For liberal Democratic voters, that's certainly what they wanted to hear. Obama delivered verbally.

But, as soon as the election was in hand, Obama broke his promise. Not more than a month into office, his 16 months became 19 months. And instead of a withdrawal, we would simply draw down to between 30,000 to 50,000 troops. Recently, that target has become 19 months and about 50,000 troops. We were recently still at more than 95,000 troops. Think we're still going to get there ... even to the revised target?

Gullible voters who took Obama at his word need to take a hard look in the mirror. They need to ask whether they did their civic duty selecting a leader based on legitimate qualifications, versus brightness of toothy grin. And they need to ask whether they're currently willing to call out their choice for all the promises he's broken so far, only 1/3 of the way through his term.

Republicans wouldn't do that with George W. Bush, until it became clear that he was a lame duck, and liberals criticized them (rightly) for it. Are those same liberals willing to take "their guy" to task?

Posted at 05:15PM May 21, 2010 by Nathan in Politics  |  Comments[0]