Best accessorized military my ass, have you seen what some of those African Generals wear?
If that doesn't just scream fabulous, then I don't know what does.
And that's just their camo stuff. Can you IMAGINE what their mess dress looks like???
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Attn: El Homo's. El Presidente (aka CIC) says you're now SAT.
- Thread starter CAMike
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And that's just their camo stuff. Can you IMAGINE what their mess dress looks like???
I agree with this so much I don't even know what to say.
Obama needs to quit playing the popularity card with the butt pirates and give the troops what their asking for.
Do we really even know what this is? Has anyone done any scientific polling on the topic? I don't pretend to know what the answer would be, but I'll bet the results would surprise a lot of us. While it's still a generally conservative body, the enlisted ranks aren't nearly as political or partisan as the officer corps. And since when is the military a democracy? I'll bet if you asked the military if they wanted a 30 hour work week, they'd want that too, but would that be a good reason to give it to them?
There are a lot of good arguments for and against the repeal of DADT, but "because the troops want it" isn't one of them.
Brett
Not to put words in his mouth, sir, but I believe he was referring to troops desiring leadership, direction, or just, you know, some support in Afghanistan. Not the perpetuation of DADT.
The President is too busy doing commercials for George Lopez's new television show to make decisions about Afghanistan. IMHO he needs to focus on the tough decisions and forget the fluff. :icon_rage
Best accessorized military my ass, have you seen what some of those African Generals wear?
If that doesn't just scream fabulous, then I don't know what does.
Is that a set of Combat Aircrew wings that I see?
Where did this notion come from that our government/President is unable to perform multiple tasks at once? This seems like specious political rhetoric to me, and I know that it's used by both sides. At any rate, we can't pretend to know what level of attention the President is giving to the issues in Afghanistan, so to assume that it is somehow lacking leadership just because we may not agree with the direction that policy is going, or because we (as lay people) don't think it's progressing fast enough is the height of ignorance (and arrogance). Based on this, why would anyone assume that Afghanistan is taking a backseat to DADT issues? None of us are remotely qualified to make that judgment.
Brett
Baloney. We are all qualified to make that judgment. Every PFC in Afghanistan with internet access and CNN on at the barracks is going to make a judgment. All of the folks who say "perception is reality" and are able to make look at the events, and make a judgment. You might have read, our troops are not exactly feeling the love right now. It seems that these guys have made some judgments about how the progress is going over there and the levels of support they are getting.
The "notion that our government/President is unable to perform multiple tasks at once" comes from observing our government and president. How is that health care thing progressing? About as quickly as Obama's decisions on a course of action in Iraq. That's going about as well as the promise to close Gitmo, want me to go on?
As much as it may shock you this is not unusual and it certainly is not unprecedented in recent times. It took several months of internal deliberations within the Bush administration to decide on the troop surge in Iraq. There is apparently significant internal debate in the administration on the course that we should take in Afghanistan, even among the military leadership there is some apparent disagreement. So the the leadership is hashing it all out, there is nothing new or unusual with this.
I would rather see a real debate within the administration and the military than have a handful of people make ill-informed decisions without the benefit of hearing all of the arguments. If you want to see an excellent example of that you should read Brigadier General H.R. McMaster's Dereliction of Duty, in which he details the exclusion of the JCS and others from the decision-making that led to our deeper involvement in Vietnam. The debate should not go on interminably but having a healthy one is a good start.
And I don't get where you all think the President is wasting his time on overturning DADT. There has been very little real effort on his or Congress's part to overturn it yet, he was just merely restating his previous promise to do so eventually.
This is precisely the kind of ignorance and arrogance I'm talking about. We have no idea what may or may not be going on behind the scenes along with the sensitive timing issues at invariably go into this kind of thing. To suggest that "any Private on the ground knows what we need to do" is ridiculous and irresponsible. Either way, the President's responsibility is to make policy that furthers his idea of what's best for this country, not to make the troops happy. The link you posted talks about troops being disillusioned with the mission (as established by President Bush, BTW), not President Obama. In fact, I would regard the linked story as evidence that the overall mission is in need of change - something Obama is open to, unlike his predecessor.
Brett
The bar for being a moronic simpleton were just a little too low for me, but I see you are taking up the slack.......
I could give two shits what is going on "behind the scenes". What is going on for all the world to see is that the hand picked general who is leading the fight in Afghanistan has requested a serious upgrade in troop strength and he is not getting the resources he requested.
Fine. Go back and read what I wrote one more time. Better yet, why the hell did you put this:
in quotes? That's not what I said. If you are going to quote me, fine. It is pretty lame misinterpret what I said and try to pass it off as a quote.
My point was that the guys on the ground are going to make their own judgments just like 99% of population at large even though they don't know what is going on "behind the scenes".
Sure about that? Go back and look at the time frame that the troops have been in country.
I think that the folks in the article are frustrated with the LACK of mission or objective.
Clearly. I realize this may come as a shocker to you, but there's just a bit more to carrying out US foreign policy than what you (or the troops) are aware of in the media.
RE the troops on the ground: I wasn't quoting you per se, but the jist of what you were saying seemed to be that some troops are demoralized, so we should drop everything and give them a mission worth fighting for. If I've misread you, please clarify.
My point about Bush vs. Obama was simply that the mission hasn't changed from one leader to another, so I don't understand how you can attribute the morale of these troops to a lack of leadership from Washington. Either way, I don't think you can make an assessment of the overall state of morale in Afghanistan based on a single press piece, especially one from the dreaded left-wing media. My read of the article was that the current mission, as it's being prosecuted, wasn't working. I would contend that the current administration is probably more open to examining all the possible options in Afghanistan so that our mission matches our interests and desired outcome.
My own personal view is that, unlike Iraq where a surge (coupled with several other important factors) eventually led to increased stability & security, the same is not likely to occur in Afghanistan. That said, nobody thought the surge in Iraq was going to work, so who knows, but I'm betting that some of the options that folks are looking at for Afghanistan is a diminished ground presence, not a surge. This is precisely why the issue is being mulled over so thoroughly and why the President isn't just handing Gen McChrystal his 40K troop plus-up. While McChrystal may have the big picture in Afghanistan, the administration (at least one hopes) has the big picture in a global sense.
Brett
The previous administration.
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