Obama's Meaningless Surge in Afghanistan

Since President Bush left power there has been a noticeable drop in American media coverage of bombings, terrorist attacks, murders, and other mayhem going on in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The body count has in fact been higher in 2009 than it was in 2008:

And if we look at deaths from IED (Improvised Explosive Devices) the death count is markedly higher:

In fact, as the Summer of 2009 stretched onward and President Obama was announcing a withdraw of American troops from Iraq and not making a decision on Afghanistan, the deaths of American soldiers increased at a much higher pace than was the case in 2008:

Clearly we have yet another case of the American media not doing their jobs with fairness.  Under President Bush we heard nothing but war coverage and civilian and American deaths there.  Where are the headlines now?

President Obama, despite having a study in his hands on the day he took office in January of 2009, delayed for nearly 10 months before making a decision on Afghanistan.  When he did make a decision, he announced a Surge while also announcing a withdraw.  How is that for what the definition of “is” is?

Obama’s decision was entirely political in nature and had everything to do with trying to pacify his Liberal base while acknowledging that on the campaign trail he maintained that Afghanistan was a fight America had to win.

What we are seeing here are a couple of hypocritical forces at work.  Democrats and the American press have been largely silent on Obama’s strategy (if you can call it that) in Afghanistan while they were very critical and vocal of Bush’s conduct of those wars.  I have also not read much from former military officers commenting on the logic of announcing a Surge while also announcing a date to bring US forces home.  Clearly if you are the Enemy you will wait American forces out and attack once their numbers drop and re-deployment will not be politically possible.  We have also heard precious little about Obama’s decision to recall troops beginning in the Summer of 2011 when he will be running for re-election.

It might be going a little bit far to say that Obama’s strategy is putting American soldiers’ lives at risk, but casualties may increase as we have seen above and will we be reading about it in the press the way we were when President Bush was in office?

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Related posts:

1. Iraq, Afghanistan, and What the Left Ignores
2. Leaving Afghanistan?
3. Obama's Afghanistan: The Goldilocks War
4. Laying the Work for an Afghanistan Troop Withdraw?
5. President Obama on Afghanistan