Posted on 12/13/2009 7:36:46 PM PST by SeekAndFind
On This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, December 13, during the show’s Roundtable segment, liberal blogger Arianna Huffington argued that the war in Afghanistan is "the gold standard of a dumb war, immoral and unnecessary," during a discussion of President Obama’s recent speech at West Point announcing that he would send more troops to Afghanistan, and his speech in Oslo accepting the Nobel Peace Prize.
Huffington also criticized fellow liberal panel member John Podesta -- a former Clinton administration member who is now president of the Center for American Progress -- charging that, "You now sound like George Bush," after Podesta explained President Obama’s rationale for sending more troops into Afghanistan.
Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the December 13 This Week on ABC:
ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: I don’t think there are many people who would argue that there are no reasons for war. I mean, after all, this is the peace prize, it’s not the pacifist prize. So I didn’t quite understand all that big defense of the necessary wars. For me, the main problem is the same problem I had with his West Point speech, which is when he said that my job is to protect the American people from threats. Of course, everybody would agree with that. But he has not defined what the threats coming from Afghanistan are. And he did not define those threats in the West Point speech, he did not define them at any point. And that’s really, at the moment, the main problem with his credibility because: Where are the threats coming from? The Taliban? The 100 al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan?
And remember, in 2002 he gave this defining speech – that in many ways is responsible for his being President – which was against the war in Iraq when said I’m not against all wars, I’m against a dumb war. And right now, Afghanistan is the gold standard of a dumb war, immoral and unnecessary.
JOHN PODESTA: Well, you know, I think that, I find it ironic that the conservatives all embrace this speech. It seemed to me a repudiation of conservatism. They made the argument that because America was exceptional the rules didn’t apply to us. This was really rooted, I think, in post-World War II. This sounded like FDR, really, that he said he was that constraining that our following the rules of the road, not torturing people, applying the Geneva conventions, was the source of American exceptionalism that we led the world place at. With respect to Arianna’s point about what the threat is, I think he was fairly clear that in the context of both speeches that he gave, that we have to go after the people that attacked us. And I think that they’ve done that, they’ve done that. You could argue about whether this is the right strategy to do that. The fact that they’re using predators in Pakistan, they’re doing more in Pakistan over the last 10 months.
HUFFINGTON: You now sound like George Bush. You know the people who attacked us, the people who attacked us are not in Afghanistan.
PODESTA: That’s the first time I’ve ever been accused of that.
HUFFINGTON: But you know the idea that the people who attacked us are in Afghanistan-
PODESTA: Are in Pakistan.
HUFFINGTON: But they’re not going to Pakistan.
PODESTA: Well, I would beg to differ.
HUFFINGTON: They’re not sending 30,000 more troops to Pakistan.
PODESTA: I said you could argue about the tactics, but I would beg to differ that we’re not going to Pakistan. I mean we’re-
HUFFINGTON: The announcement he made was about 30,000 troops.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: And there was a drone strike just this week that took out the number four or five member of al-Qaeda in Pakistan.
HUFFINGTON: That’s right, but that’s not what he announced. The escalation was in Afghanistan.
—Brad Wilmouth is a news analyst at the Media Research Center.
Immoral and dumb? Sounds just like her. How could she not like that?
It’s Obama’s WAR!
barbra ann
Why do they legitimize this know-nothing moron by putting her on the air? Anytime she argues someone who isn’t completely brain dead she ends up embarrassing herself.
Zsa Zsa is incoherent. How did she become a pundit?
Ariana is terribly confused about everything.
I guarantee if you unwanted to waste the time you could find quotes from her prior to the 2008 election pushing the leftist/Obama talking point that the unnecessary war in Iraq was diverting resources from the “real” war in Afghanistan.
[At the time the cynical con of the left was to appear to support the war in Afghanistan as away of deflecting criticism that they were soft on terrorism]
I have asked myself the same question about Chris Matthews and or Keith Olberman or any number of leftist media loonies.
My conclusion.....the "progressives" that listens to them have a problem with coherent thought so incoherence makes perfect sense to them. Only they call it "nuanced thought".
When Bush was president, they all said we needed to be focused on Afghanistan and Iraq was a mistake and illegal to boot.
NOW they say Afghanistan is a mistake too. THEY ARE LIARS! They NEVER thought Afghanistan was the GOOD war, they were just ANTI-WAR but didn't want to get labeled as such. These are the same people who spit on our soldiers returning from Vietnam, they have just gotten older and have gotten more deceptive about their true feelings.
Afghanistan was a good war (or at least seemed like one) when the goal was a targeted campaign against those responsible for 9-11, namely Al Qaeda. When it became a perpetual nation building operation, however, to prop up anti-Christian Islamists like Karzai, it became illegimate. End Obama's War now!
Watch it: She will huff and puff and blow your house down.....
Who the f*uck is ARIANNA HUFFINGTON anyway . Outside of her blog that I always hear mentioned I don’t know who she is. Heard her on the radio one night and sounded like some sort of foreign moron blabbing about God knows what .You mean to tell me someone actually give a sh*t what this foreign broad thinks about anything ????
I’m serious here!
She can huff and puff and blow ...awwww skip it !
As a former Californian, all I know her to be is the former wife of a homosexual Republican congressman who herself was at one time a 'rabid right-winger'.
Now, either this helmet-haired dingbat was too damned dumb to know that her husband of eleven years was a sweaty nightclub-gyrating queer, or she merely played along with the phony marriage to acquire American citizenship from wherever the hell she came from.
Either case being true, what would anyone ever believe her about? She's either a liar or an idiot or both, but one thing's for certain: She the darling of the liberals.
Well, that's natural I suppose.
I marvel that this dimwit has a forum. She ran for governor of California and revealed breathtaking stupidity.
I guarantee that you are correct. The liberals have always said the Afghani war was the real war, because it was supported by the UN.
Unfortunately she not only has a following, that following is dumb enough to eat up her left-wing drivel.
Best answer of how Zsa Zsa Huffington gets to be a pundit is that she is a Soros paid whore. Soros pays for her media presccence.
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