Quote(s) of the day

The history of this decision [on Afghanistan] is less important than the fact that the president is agonizing in public. A president ought to think long and hard about a strategy about war. There is nothing wrong with that.

But agonizing in public, leaving allies hanging — as we saw in the NATO meeting today, where all the others are waiting to hear what the United States is going to do — leaving the Afghans hanging, leaving everybody in Pakistan hanging … is a mistake.

If you want to have a private consultation, do it, but it's Obama's own strategy and he's responsible, and if he wants a reconsideration, it should be done in quiet …

- Charles Krauthammer

We don't necessarily agree. Victory in Afghanistan will be subtle and defeat spectacular and either way, we don't think history will remember the public nature of Obama's stalling tactics. Krauthammer's point is well-taken as applicable only to this very moment in time, though.


and...

I think the president could improve his poll ratings markedly if he simply took all the things he has said about Limbaugh, Hannity, Fox News, the town-hallers, and his domestic critics and instead applied that invective to Iran, radical Islam, Russia, and Venezuela, and, in turn, took all the outreach things he's said the latter and applied them to the former.

- Victor Davis Hanson


Hanson is spot-on. One of the most ironic and disappointing things about this administration currently is that the concept of reconciliation, unity and post-partisanship upon which he campaigned and how he and his administration have actually behaved and governed 9 months in are two things speeding away from each other in opposite directions at the speed of light.

H/T: NRO's The Corner