>As far as the campaign pledge, I am guessing that once he was elected he started getting better and more complete information about what was really going on in Afghanistan, something beyond "all is well" and "stay the course." He clearly came to view it as a long term and very expensive quagmire, and he did not want to continue pursuing that strategy.
During the campaign candidates get "the briefing". During the campaign they also tell people what they think they want to hear. Some are better at it - and less principled about it - than others. ( vis JFK in the debates re Cuba )
Obama may be right about Afghanistan per se, in terms of long-term American interest and the cost-benefits ratio. I don't see a lot of future there in nation-building. Soldiers get pretty focused on accomplishing the mission as it is defined. The mission definers have to be more big-picture.
But I think there are strategic interests in that region that involve a nuclear Pakistan and if he thinks he's going to finesse that with charm or the force of his rhetoric he is deluded by the sound of his own voice. Iran, Pakistan, North Korea don't have a lot of middle-class guilt going around. Not sure what the answer is in dealing with them.
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
