I hate to say I told you so but, I told you so.
Had you read my post from yesterday you would have had all the high points of President Obama’s Afghan speech, in advance and without having to watch his strained, poorly choreographed event.
So, what did we get? We got some additional troops, he’s going to bang his shoe on the Afghan government’s table and he’s going to begin withdrawal in 18 months. All like I said yesterday.
I only have one question: “What took him so long?”
President Obama mentally gyrated for 3 months so that he could get all the best advice, understand the situation clearly, look at options and make a plan. After all that, he came up with a plan that I could have developed in 1/2 hour including two pee breaks?
Thing 1 and Thing 2 are in fifth grade. This is the first year that they are regularly getting homework. Mrs. Shoebox and I work with them to ensure that their first focus each day is to do their homework. Even if things aren’t due until later in the week, we encourage them to finish as much of their homework as early in the week as possible. The reason is simple, it’s easy for 11 year olds to forget about what they’re supposed to do and spend time on what they want to do. The corollary to this for adults is the old saying about the amount of work you have will always fill the amount of time you have to do it.
It’s clear from his speech this evening, that the extra time that President Obama spent trying to decide what to do in Afghanistan wasn’t invested in a higher quality product. It’s obvious that President Obama didn’t focus his effort at the beginning of his time and like Thing 1 and Thing 2, got caught slapping something together at the last minute.
One of the folks I follow on Twitter posted that he wasn’t going to be critical of President Obama, he wanted to wish him the best because he wanted us to win in Afghanistan. My response was that I too want us to win in Afghanistan but somehow I don’t believe that that is President Obama’s objective.
