The July 2011 date which the administration has occasionally presented as having something vaguely to do with a pullout from Afghanistan is a firm date. It is firm in the sense that if one has a calendar, they will see that there is in fact a month of July. Past that, officials are making very public their disagreements over what, if anything will happen in that month.
Vice President Biden recently promised a “whole lot of people moving out” of Afghanistan at that date, adding “bet on it.” Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel added today that the date was a firm one, and reiterated Biden’s sentiment on the size.
Yet in an interview on Fox News Sunday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates insisted that the pullout “absolutely has not been decided” upon. Gates added that he hadn’t even heard of Biden’s quote to the contrary and refused to address it.
Can the Obama Administration’s centerpiece war be so haphazardly run that the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense can not only publicly say exactly opposite things but be completely unaware of what the other has said? It seems the official narrative changes by the day, but does it really also depend upon whom you ask?
Officials began openly dismissing the July 2011 date just hours after President Obama announced it to the nation, and it seems that the position is little changed. When trying to assure those worried about an exit strategy, the date is still on. When trying to reassure hawks worried that the war might ever end, the date is aspirational, at best.
Much as has become the case with the August 2010 date in Iraq, which no one really believes is even theoretically achievable anymore but which the administration still trots out from time to time, the “firm date” has become a political football, something to distract people from the disastrous direction the war has taken and the rising death toll, but not anything officials feel married to in any serious way.
Indeed, "aspirational"– another one of those recent usages, pioneered by lawyers become politicos, no doubt, like Hillary Clinton, to be added to "Hate Boat", "existential threat" and "security closure".
Gates just called the Russians "schizophrenic" about their Iran policy. My, that was firm.
Merely by the way, Professor Morelli surely would make careful note of Gates' middle finger. Indeed, the whole arrangement of the hand and fingers may be used as a case study. It is a very common form of gestural communication among Right Wing fraternity boys and also fellows like Clinton. The gesture is sometimes expanded by touching the nose with the middle finger as if scratching an itch. One cannot recall if Rabelais has a discursus on the matter. One will take a look when one has the time.
It is in the interest of american people to pull out but will not happen as lobbies for war are too strong and america is being ruled by army and CIA, defence industry, oil industry and Multi concern. There is clash of interest e.g. defence budget and CIA budget is highest in the US history and no body is ready to give up these money back. Defence industry is all time top why they should not push for wars.__I love old america with intellectuals and scientist but the whole is changed with corrupt and inefficient congress and senate and president of America has no power.
Its BS….
In Vietnam, the phrase was 'Light at the end of the tunnel". After Gen. Westmoreland, no one will use that phrase again. But they are still pushing the idea.
They read polls. They know the American people want this war to end. They know the American people would rather spend $30 billion on unemployment benefits to our own citizens rather than spend $30 billion on a war for the most useless place on earth.
So, they spin this line of BS.. They announce a fake withdraw date. See, there's light at the end of the tunnel. Just hold out one more year. But its all BS.
And its exactly the same BS that Bush spun about Iraq. Bush was always talking about how there'd be some 'milestone' a year in the future at which time the US would start withdrawing from Iraq. Of course, the 'milestone' never came and was always eventually replaced with some other future milestone around which we'd begin leaving.
Obama is running Bush's playbook line by line.
Gee, another lie from the government. What a shock. Anyone with half a brain must realize by now that almost everything the government says is a lie. The things they say that aren't lies were probably meant to be lies but they screwed up the lying part. The only thing these scumbags are good at is betraying the American people.
Pretty weak leadership when your subordinates contradict you in public like that.