Posted on 07/03/2010 11:43:46 AM PDT by EternalVigilance
I can think of many good reasons why GOP Chairman Michael Steele should resign. His recent remarks casting doubt on the viability of the Obama faction’s continued deployment of U.S. troops in Afghanistan are not among them.
Almost as soon as Barack Obama took up residence in the White House he declared an end to the war on terror. He thus destroyed the strategic context for the military activities to which President G. W. Bush committed American forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. In that strategic context Afghanistan was never intended to be the main focus of the war effort. By discarding it, Obama fundamentally altered the nature of the Afghan deployment. Afghanistan ceased to be one of several theatres in the war to destroy the terrorist infrastructure that produced the 9-11 attacks. It became instead a half-baked stab at so-called “nation building” in a region that has, throughout human history, been uniquely resentful of outside efforts to define the national identity of its people.
*snip*
Every day the evidence mounts that the Obama faction cannot be trusted to safeguard the national security of the United States. In the face of that evidence, on what grounds are we to conclude that they can be trusted to make life and death decisions about the deployment of American forces into combat? Sometimes it is necessary, right and just to ask citizens to endure the moral and physical vicissitudes of war to defend the nation’s life and liberty. It is never justified, however, to tolerate policies that cynically treat their lives as fodder for the grist mill of factional ambition, particular when those ambitions appear to leave America’s friends, its borders and its entire people, naked to our enemies.
*snip*
(Excerpt) Read more at loyaltoliberty.com ...
I think it’s simpler than Keyes is making it. Steele has about 100 things to attack Obama about where the vast majority of the public and 90% of the Republicans (at least) will be with him in the attack. He goes for some controversial area and pisses off members of his own party . . . for no gain, no value. He should be smacking Obama down and raising funds, not creating controversy within the party. I would like for him to resign.
I can think of better reasons.
One more Democrat mole out of the RNC works for me. We need a Churchill, not Michael Milquetoast.
He should resign because he is an idiot this latest is just more proof of his defective intellect...
So many reasons for him to resign exist and this is not one of them. I agree.
I am glad to see Keyes speaking out. He is right.
Steele was right to call Afghanistan Obama’s war — that’s what he “chose”, while bashing the Iraq war.
FLASHBACK: Obama (2007): The War We Need to Win (Steele is right)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2546168/posts
“When I am President, we will wage the war that has to be won, with a comprehensive strategy with five elements: getting out of Iraq and on to the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan”
If Steele had offered some detailed criticism of the way Obama is conducting the war, rather than blaming Obama for going there, saying America shouldn't have gone there and saying we can't win*, I would not be calling for his resignation. But he wasn't speaking truth to power, he was blathering Taliban talking points for a fast buck or two in donations to the pathetic RNC.
No conservative should be supporting this clown. No surprise we're seeing support from Keyes, a guy who has morphed from the very embodiment of conservative principle to the Clarabell of Conservatism.
*That's "we can't win," not "we can't win if Obama keeps fighting the war his way and holding Petraeus et al back." The latter is perfectly fair comment.
So, you really think people are calling for Steele to resign because he called Afghanistan Obama’s war, and not because he said we can’t win and shouldn’t have fought there?
Michael Steele is a very visible failure as RNC Chairman. He often sounds like a Democrat instead of a Republican spokesman. His comments on the political legitimacy of the now-attenuated war in Afghanistan were foolish, at best. Steele has become a liability and with the all-important November congressional election looming, he has to go before he does any more harm. Dump Michael Steele - now!
See :
Where ‘nice’ Obama has got us — Mark Steyn
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2546460/posts
Why would Ahmadinejad take him seriously when even Karzai flips him the finger?
“When people see a strong horse and a weak horse,” said Osama bin Laden many years ago, “by nature they will like the strong horse.” The world does not see President Obama as the strong horse. He has announced that U.S. troop withdrawals will begin in 12 months’ time. Karzai takes him at his word, and is obliged to prepare for a post-American order in Afghanistan, which means reaching his accommodations with those who’ll still be around when the Yanks are over over there.
If the Taliban return to even partial power in Afghanistan, the unctuous State Department spokesmen will make the best of it. But the symbolism will be profound, and devastating in what it says about American will.”
Excellent post, Mr. Silverback.
Steele has achieved the “Peter Principle”.
Our country can not afford incompetence.... not now, not on our side and not while we are faced with daily attempts to destroy our country and way of life.
If Steele has any honor within him, he will step down and shut up.
In any case, I think you're being too hard on Keyes, and misinterpreting what he's saying. Maybe you didn't read the whole article in context, and maybe you've paid no attention to the incisive critique of Steele that Keyes has offered right along. (BTW, the many articles in that vein that Alan has written are available on Keyes' Loyal to Liberty site.)
In any case, there's nothing garbled about what Keyes is saying, and what he is saying is hard to argue with:
In the context of a rational strategic approach to the war on terror, the sacrifices America troops endure in Afghanistan and elsewhere can be justified. But Obama and his faction have openly abandoned the war on terror. They can therefore have no strategic conception of it. Every day it becomes more evident that the deployment in Afghanistan is simply intended as political cover. It allows the Obama faction to put on a show of military firmness while pursuing an agenda that purposefully destroys America’s ability to defend its vital national security interests at home and abroad, along with its resolve to do so.Steele is right to suggest that Americans never chose or supported any such unconscionable waste of American lives.
I am glad to see Keyes speaking out. He is right.
####
So am I. Chairman Steele did not phrase his thoughts very well, ie. he “misspoke.” But the concept is true. This is Obama’s war. For years the people of the Statist Left criticized Bush for not fighting the Afghan war properly; that it was the ‘good’ war, and Iraq was the ‘bad’ war; and finding Bin Laden was the endgame.
That part of our recent history has been erased, just as Moveon has erased all of their criticisms of General Petraeus from their website.
This was so blatancy false, if he believes what he said, it borders on such idiocy that maybe Steele is not even qualified to vote much less lead the party.
This is not about a debate on the war, it's about a leader of the GOP who -if he can prove that he read newspapers or watched the news in the years 2001-2008, we are forced to conclude- can't comprehend reality or is too stupid to walk and chew gum or is suffering from early dementia.
He SHOULD RESIGN because he doesnt have the stomach for a switch-blade slashing alley fight with the ideological-leftist enemies of our beloved America.
Man up- or get out of the way!
Keyes is Billy Kristol’s former roommate. No surprise that he would join the lynch mob.
Steele had his chance, and he obviously isn’t working out. Time to move on.
No, it is blatantly true. Obama did indeed "choose" this war at every step of the process. Obama supported the war from the beginning, campaigned to escalate it, and once it office chose to escalate. He owns it lock, stock, and barrel because he made this "choice." On this issue, Steele is acting like a leader of a true OPPOSITION party. By contrast, Kristol, Liz Cheney, and the GOP leadership in Congress is shilling and covering for Obama's War.
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