President Obama is now entangled in two quagmires. One in Afghanistan and one on the beaches of the Gulf Coast. Either one is bad and both together have continued to and will continue to drag down Obama's popularity with his Democratic base and the American people.
First, Afghanistan. Duffy believes that Obama had no choice but to fire General McChrystal. The general, while a true warrior with an outstanding war record, was truly not up to dealing with the political aspect of the job. The fact that he allowed a Rolling Stones reporter to get up close and personal for a month with him and his staff was both stupid and unforgiving. Obama salvaged what could have been a public relations disaster by appointing General Petraeus to take over the war in Afghanistan. But Duffy believes that the Afghan war is unwinnable if one defines a "win" as establishing a democratic peaceful pro-American country that has eliminated the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. It ain't gonna happen. Duffy has seen this movie before (see blog of September 2009) and feels that ultimately the U.S. will withdraw and declare victory with neither Al-Qaeda nor the Taliban completely defeated. Once again, thousands of American lives will be forfeited by death and injury. While Duffy also believed that the second invasion of Iraq was also a mistake, nevertheless "Bush's War" will probably end up with a somewhat democratic Iraq who will ultimately be, if not an ally, a neutral state in the Middle East. Obama has stated that Afghanistan is a "necessary war" and he has established ownership. The outcome is uncertain, probably prone to failure as defined by American public opinion and will cost Obama severely in the 2012 election.
Duffy also thinks that Obama has mishandled the Gulf oil gusher badly from the start. While he insists he was "on it from the beginning" facts and on the ground observations by the American people show otherwise. Duffy asks, why hasn't the president still not declared the four states affected a federal disaster area? Why hasn't he nationalized the National Guard in those states to assist in the cleanup? Holding BP's feet to the fire and forcing them to set up a 20 billion fund while appearing to show management of the crisis, is still not cleaning the beaches. As all of America can see every night on the news.
Obama clearly would like to be on to other things like passing a huge energy bill, selling his national health plan, cleaning up Wall Street. All big worthy goals have been sidetracked by BP and Afghanistan. For a narcissistic technocrat like Obama, it must be maddening that he is faced with two complicated, involved, never ending problems that just don't seem to be solvable by all the "experts" he can muster.
The American people are watching a frustrated, seemingly impotent president grapple with two quagmires that will both haunt him and define the rest of this term. The Obama phrase, "never let a good crisis go to waste" is delicious irony to the Republicans watching Obama's poll numbers sink week by week.
