I do not know who bothers me more, Republicans who are being consciously or unconsciously hypocritical or Democrats who adapt the stratagem I now associate with Arianna Huffington and the New York Times — the frequent substitution of nit-picking for serious consideration.
THE CAUSE FOR THIS COMMENTARY — THE POSSIBLE DEMOCRATIC ULTIMATUM TO PRESIDENT OBAMA TO ACCOMPLISH HIS OBJECTIVES IN AFPAK IN A CALENDAR YEAR — NYT DECLENSION
Serious consideration might take into one’s purview the following points:
1. It took Bush II eight years to ruin the notion of a rational opposition to terror. Should it take less than two or three years to actually arrive at a true evolution of the globe beyond the woes of fundamentalism cum opportunism run rampant?
2. The change in generals in Afpak signals a willingness to engage only in physical strategies that have a high probability of dealing firmly with the most determined and dangerous elements of the terror apparatus ranged not only against us, but against the whole world. This should spare us more sights of the ambush of NATO troops along treacherous stretches of Afghan roads, not to mention aborted efforts to “get” Al Qaeda of the very few attempted before Bush 11 obeyed his trainers and walked into the maelstrom of Iraq.
3. When will we understand that Obama is all process and unfolding, not single-bandaid solutions? This myopia on the part of allegedly intelligent observers is creating a brake on things and making the parlous state of journalism more and more a fate devoutly to be welcomed. A new journalism of process will emerge.
4. Other elements of the strategy that is unfolding will likely be a radical internationalization of the conflict accompanied by massive education regarding its nature and importance and the mobilization of a much more competent international apparatus for dealing with it than we presently have.
Terror, genocide and the deleterious effects of inhumane migration and refugee survival efforts are all linked, are all issues on the table, are all likely targets of a concerted Obama effort. For anyone in Congress to be nit-picking about time lines is a predictable but sad indication of the narrowness of vision that penetrates even the precincts of the marginally better party.
The fact is that Obama might well be out of Afpak in a year or at least on a time line that is acceptable to the American people. But this post is not about that. It is about biindness in the deepest prophetic sense.
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