Let’s see if I got President Obama’s speech Tuesday night right:
We spent a trillion borrowed and printed dollars and 6,000 American lives in Iraq and Afghanistan on wars we could not afford based on an American economy he cannot fix.
What the president avoided to say was that the big winner in this war of lies was a shift in the Middle East balance of power in favor of Iran soon to be armed with nuclear arsenals he doesn’t know how to stop.
At least the troops who fought our battles and their families who equally suffered were duly honored.
Republican House minority leader John Boehner finally got something right:
“(Iran) is the true source of instability in the region, and we must not naively assume a nuclear-armed Iran would be containable.”
In Obama’s speech, he equally offended Republicans by not giving President Bush credit for brokering the withdrawal of 110,000 combat troops and Democrats by not eviscerating Bush for getting us into the nightmare.
It’s time to turn the page, Obama said.
Well, Mr. President, look what you are leaving behind:
A $53 billion nation building project with scant hopes of quid pro quo as outlined here by David Brooks of the New York Times;
The 100,000 estimated Iraqis killed during eight years of war notwithstanding, several more thousands who worked for the U.S. forces and now abandoned fear for their lives. This, according to Iraqi Saurabh Sanghvi, a third-year law student at Yale, and a student director of the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project, writing an op-ed article in the New York Times;
And, in Afghanistan we are dealing with a government so corrupt, soon there will not be an honest man still standing.
I heard the speech and read the advanced text. Obama teased us early with a specific reference to rebuild our economy.
Towards the end of the speech he finally outlined these broad outlines which, upon reflection, were code words meaning nothing we haven’t already heard:
Our most urgent task is to restore our economy, and put the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs back to work. To strengthen our middle class, we must give all our children the education they deserve, and all our workers the skills that they need to compete in a global economy. We must jump-start industries that create jobs, and end our dependence on foreign oil. We must unleash the innovation that allows new products to roll off our assembly lines, and nurture the ideas that spring from our entrepreneurs. This will be difficult. But in the days to come, it must be our central mission as a people, and my central responsibility as president.
(Photo courtesy Jim Young/Reuters)
Cross posted on The Remmers Report
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Jerry Remmers worked 26 years in the newspaper business. His last 23 years was with the Evening Tribune in San Diego where assignments included reporter, assistant city editor, county and politics editor.