Michael Steel's Comment about "Obama's War"

Ok, republican chairman Michael Steele was making an off-camera comment about the Afghan war. Now a goodly number of people want his hide. The problem is that he is correct. He may have misstated or used a phraseology that was questionable but in essence, he's 100% right.

Remember back when Iraq was the bad war started by Bush/Cheney to resolve the family feud started by Bush 41 and Obama was going to deploy troops to fight the "good" war in Afghanistan? At that time, everyone was saying that the real war was in Afghanistan and that we had been diverted by those inhumane republicans by pursuing a losing conflict in Iraq. Well, well, well. Things have worked out a little differently than planed. Iraq is basically over. There're some skirmishes but there were those when Saddam was in power.

Obama wanted to go to battle in Afghanistan because Bush had basically implemented a counter-terror plan that focused on killing belligerents rather than looking at the conflict as an insurgency. It was working but it wasn't the "nation" building wanted by the democrats. So in a very real sense, the Afghan war is as much Obama's as the Vietnam war was Johnson's. Sure, Eisenhower deployed trainers and special ops like Frogmen and Special Forces types and Kennedy doubled down the deployment of Special Ops troops. But Johnson really escalated the war in 1965 with the massive build up of troops from all the services.

So desperate are democrats for anything that will take the spotlight off the incompetent actions of Obama that they will even exploit a minor incident. Republicans have become members of feeding frenzies in the sense that they are anticipating negative press and are trying to play politics by beating that press to the punch. They have become unwitting tools of their opposition. What a joke.

Maybe Steel should go as chairman. One always wonders whether he would have been chairman if Obama had lost the election. Politics and politicians are so cynical that the republicans, who are often viewed as a closed party, would have chosen him to "show" how inclusive they are rather than on merit. (I happen to think the guys pretty good. I certainly don't care about a few gaffes but overall, I want a system where people acknowledge race but respect those of different race heritage then their own.) I would hope that he really earned it by work in the party not by the color of his skin. If he really earned it, republicans should be backing him with all the fervor each can muster.

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