{"id":3268,"date":"2009-12-02T05:01:45","date_gmt":"2009-12-02T05:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=3268"},"modified":"2009-12-02T15:31:51","modified_gmt":"2009-12-02T15:31:51","slug":"president-obama-on-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=3268","title":{"rendered":"President Obama on Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I’ll be frank, as I am short for time until Dec. 7th,\u00a0so I riffed this straight from SWJ Blog<\/a><\/strong> \u00a0which also\u00a0posted a critique by Robert Haddick<\/strong> here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My reader’s digest take – the president split the difference between the myriad factions in the national security community in a way that ultimately leaves his options open. A cautious, calculating,\u00a0choice unless he gave General McChrystal<\/strong> carte blanche on new\u00a0black ops inside Pakistan<\/strong>. That would not be unimportant –\u00a0al Qaida<\/strong> safe houses in Quetta<\/strong> and\u00a0rural Baluchistan<\/strong>\u00a0blowing up would not be insignificant.<\/p>\n

For what it is worth, in terms of domestic politics, President Obama<\/strong> is well to the right of\u00a0the Democratic\u00a0Party<\/strong> on Afghanistan<\/strong>, at least in terms of the activist base. The self-described “progressives” are not happy tonight.<\/p>\n

That was my two cents. Fire at will in comments section….<\/p>\n

ADDENDUM:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Will there be a “Revolt of the Progressives?” Here is\u00a0one reaction<\/a>\u00a0to the speech from an important leftwing blog.<\/p>\n

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  I’ll be frank, as I am short for time until Dec. 7th,\u00a0so I riffed this straight from SWJ Blog \u00a0which also\u00a0posted a critique by Robert Haddick here. My reader’s digest take – the president split the difference between the myriad factions in the national security community in a way that ultimately leaves his options […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570,360,262,527,205,361,531,185,483,574,87,425,199,499,210,492,39,270,372,183,502,10,127,530,211,312,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-570","category-21st-century","category-4gw","category-afghanistan","category-al-qaida","category-america","category-barack-obama","category-democratic-party","category-extremists","category-failed-state","category-foreign-policy","category-government","category-insurgency","category-islamic-world","category-islamist","category-leadership","category-military","category-national-security","category-non-state-actors","category-obama","category-pakistan","category-state-failure","category-strategy","category-strategy-and-war","category-terrorism","category-tribes","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}