12/2/09: TWD's Agenda For The Day- Speech Aftermath

Yeah, because the details, or lack there of last night, aren't going to be facile. At all. Take a look at this:

So we don't even know how many Afghan security forces there actually are. Let we know that we will start somehow training these forces not now, but in middle 2011. Those details aren't what we heard last night.

Glenn Greenwald said it perfectly here :

I've written many times before why, on security grounds alone, I oppose escalation and even ongoing occupation. The greatest cause of Terrorism is our endless wars, invasions, bombings, occupations and other means of interfering in the Muslim world, and our escalation will only fuel the anti-American hatred and resentment that -- as even our own Government has recognized -- is the primary fuel of the threat we're supposedly trying to arrest. For that reason, Obama's escalation is, in my view, more likely to subvert rather than promote the security goals he cites to justify it.

And Dan Froomkin points out that Obama would have been questioning himself last night if he was the Senate like in 2007

Just under three years ago, when another presidential administration was insisting that its military commitment in a faraway land was not open-ended -- but was refusing to explain what that really meant -- a young senator from Illinois asked the secretary of state some very good questions.

What if things don't go according to plan? What if the occupied country's government remains in shambles? What exactly are the benchmarks for success? And what are the consequences if they are not met? Is the United States really willing to walk away?

Those were the questions then-senator Barack Obama had for then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice about President Bush's decision to send 20,000 more troops into Iraq.

Rice didn't have any good answers. Now it's Obama's turn.

It sure is.