OBAMA MADE HIS OWN BED - AT 9:02 A.M. ET:  Journalists write about President Obama's "dilemma" in Afghanistan, but the fact is that he made his own bed.  He made Afghanistan a "war of necessity" in a cynical attempt, during the 2008 campaign, to distance himself from the Iraq War, which he'd condemned, and yet appear responsible on national security.  Byron York, in an excellent reporting piece in the Washington Examiner, explains:

At West Point tonight, when Barack Obama formally announces he is sending tens of thousands more American troops to Afghanistan, he’ll be doing so against the wishes of an overwhelming majority of the Democratic Party. Sending more troops will fulfill a key Obama campaign pledge, but it will also expose a deep rift in the party — and highlight its habit of dissembling on the war.

Results of a recent Gallup poll:

Fifty-seven percent of Democrats want to reduce the number of troops, and another 10 percent want to see troop levels remain the same. That’s 67 percent — two-thirds — of Democrats who want the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to go down, or at least go no higher. Which means two-thirds of Democrats likely oppose the president’s decision to send more troops.

An explanation:

And yet, in the 2008 presidential season, from the Democratic primaries to the general election, Democrats felt required to promise to step up the war in Afghanistan. Was it because the Democratic base that now opposes escalation supported it back then? No. A Gallup poll in August 2007 — in the midst of the Democratic primary race — found that just 41 percent of Democrats supported sending more U.S. troops to fight in Afghanistan.

If the base didn’t support it, then why did candidates promise it? Because Democratic voters and candidates were playing a complex game. Nearly all of them hated the war in Iraq and wanted to pull Americans out of that country. But they were afraid to appear soft on national security, so they pronounced the smaller conflict in Afghanistan one they could support. Many of them didn’t, really, but for political expediency they supported candidates who said they did. Thus the party base signed on to a good war-bad war strategy.

Incredible cynicism.  But it reflects the notion proposed by the Marxist scholar Herbert Marcuse in the 1960s, that the truth is what supports "progressive" causes. 

...now, with Democrats in charge of the entire U.S. government and George Bush nowhere to be found, Pelosi and others in her party are suddenly very, very worried about U.S. escalation in Afghanistan. “There is serious unrest in our caucus,” the speaker said recently. There is so much unrest that Democrats who show little concern about the tripling of already-large budget deficits say they’re worried about the rising cost of the war.

A folk singer in 1960 called this "puttin' on the agony, puttin' on the style."

Mr. Obama, Byron York writes...

...had to make certain promises to get elected. Unlike some of his supporters, he has to remember those promises now that he is in office. So he is sending more troops. But he still can’t tell the truth about so many Democratic pledges to support the war in Afghanistan: They didn’t mean it.

COMMENT:  One of the big mistakes made by journalists today is to label the left-wing Democrats in Congress, especially the House, as "liberals."  They are not liberals.  They are leftists.  Liberals traditionally took a responsible stand on national security.  Hubert Humphrey was a liberal.  So was Henry Jackson.  So was Paul Douglas.  Leftists don't care much about national security, living the illusion that foreign threats are manufactured by the "industrial-military complex." 

Barbara Lee, the head of the Congressional Black Caucus, is not a liberal.  A fan of Fidel Castro, she's a leftist.  So is Dennis Kucinich.  So are many others.  Liberals would be offended to be associated with them.

December 1, 2009