Fighting Evil-Doers!

Thomas Lindaman writes:

Remember a couple of years ago when the Left fell all over themselves to criticize General David Petraeus before he testified before Congress about the Iraq War? MoveOn.org even put out a full page ad in the New York Times calling him "General Betray-Us" because they disagreed with the war in Iraq and President George W. Bush's actions to get into it. Petraeus showed great restraint in dealing with pinheads like Hillary Clinton who indirectly accused the General of lying to the American people.

Now, in the wake of the General McChrystal situation, who does the Left turn to? General Petraeus.

Interesting pick, to be sure. After the Left hounded Petraeus, it has to be sweet vindication for him to be chosen to pick up the pieces and push ahead. In Petraeus, the Obama Administration will get a competent leader who will do what he's told and suck up any criticism, warranted or otherwise. He should serve the President well, just as he served President Bush.

But there's a part of me that isn't sure that the pick wasn't more political than practical. With the McChrystal situation adding to Obama's current mountain of woes, he needed someone who could help solidify at least some of his waning influence and that people wouldn't attack so readily. And, much to the Left's chagrin, people actually like Petraeus.

But here's the thing that the Left really can't stand to admit: Obama's copying George W. Bush again on the war. Time and time again, Obama has run to the Bush strategy when dealing with war matters, and after criticizing Bush during the campaign for doing the same things. Instead of promoting change, Obama's war strategy has been the status quo. The Left knows this and it eats them up inside because they supported Obama's change and bashed Bush's status quo. Now that the two have merged yet again, they may have to eat their "Betray-Us" words.

Ultimately, time will tell whether the Petraeus pick was for the purposes of winning the war in Afghanistan or winning the PR war at home. For the sake of the troops, let's hope it's the former.

The vast majority of "the Left" was not in favor of the MoveOn.org ad, and in fact that very ad is what caused "the Left" to stop taking them seriously. After they aired that commercial they essentially became persona non grata.

I supported Petraeus because he was in favor of Afghanistan over Iraq. Something you right-wingers were opposed to.

He campaigned on ending Iraq - not immediately, via a phased withdrawal.

He campaigned on escalating engagement in Afghanistan to finally beat the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces that remain, and then turning the country over to its lawful government. With all the mineral wealth discovered there recently it sounds like we now have a solid base to help them build an economy out of, American companies could train and employee local labor to mine those minerals. Finding something to base a modern economy off of in that country has been one of the biggest challenges to stabilizing them.

You can spin it however you want. While it's true many "Leftists" were opposed to both wars, most of us were in favor of Afghanistan over Iraq. Because, well, Afghanistan was actually relevant to 9/11. Obama's not reading from the Bush playbook, because he's not starting a war against the wrong country.

But what's the use in trying to discuss this with you, considering you're one of those crazy people that still think Saddam had WMD's after Bush admitted there weren't any.