As Obama's Hamlet like performance on Afghanistan continues, as General Biden pushes his "plan", and Jim Jones minimizes the Taliban threat, a friend emails this quote from Candidate Obama in New Hampshire on August 14, 2007:
"We've got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there."
Of course this was when Obama was trying to prove he was not George McGovern, that he was willing to stay and fight in Afghanistan as he argued for cutting and running in Iraq. Still, he could not help himself and chose to impugn the Americans fighting in Afghanistan who were most certainly not "just air-raiding villages and killing civilians." But more troops were needed then and are needed now to ensure U.S. and allied forces are not limited to the search and destroy missions and Predator strikes that are the central feature of General Biden's "plan." Obama seemed to recognize this in 2007 and even as recently as his August 17, 2009 speech to the VFW, when he spoke of the "need to protect the Afghan people." Now, when presented with a plan to do just that by one of our nation's great generals, he dithers and delays -- and he allows his vice president to champion a strategy for just air-raiding villages and killing civilians.
Update: Remember when Biden was for more troops and resources? From the VP debate:
PALIN: .....Now, Barack Obama had said that all we're doing in Afghanistan is air-raiding villages and killing civilians. And such a reckless, reckless comment and untrue comment, again, hurts our cause. That's not what we're doing there. We're fighting terrorists, and we're securing democracy, and we're building schools for children there so that there is opportunity in that country, also. There will be a big difference there, and we will win in -- in Afghanistan, also.
BIDEN: .......The fact of the matter is that again, I'll just put in perspective, while Barack and I and Chuck Hagel and Dick Lugar have been calling for more money to help in Afghanistan, more troops in Afghanistan........Barack Obama was saying we need more troops there. Again, we spend in three weeks on combat missions in Iraq, more than we spent in the entire time we have been in Afghanistan. That will change in a Barack Obama administration.
