Jack & Jill Politics

Black folks (generally speaking) love a conspiracy theory. I know I do. I just can’t shake the feeling that all of this NYC mosque ridiculousness is coming has some curious timing.

Remember way back during the 2008 campaign when the war in Iraq was a pretty big deal? When Democrats had to choose between one candidate, Clinton, forced to defend/explain her (bad) choice to approve the war and another, Obama, who had spoken out early and often against the war. We know who won that fight. Then America was asked to choose between Obama and McCain – who advocated sticking with Bush’s war until we “won”, whatever winning meant. We all know who won that fight too.

Today, one of the hottest topics of the campaign is meriting seemingly little national discussion as Barack Obama has kept his promise to end the war in Iraq. No Republicans on TV are lambasting him for this action or saying we should stay. Fox News is eerily quiet on the successful withdrawal of troops from Iraq, which btw, will not only save lives but will end a huge drain on our national pocketbook. No, instead we’re obsessed all of a sudden with whether Muslims count as Americans protected under the same 1st Amendment rights as the rest of Americans. Even the Daily Show with John Stewart gave zero time last night to the end of the war, choosing to focus again on the mosque debate. Ending the war successfully, carefully and calmly is so uncontroversial, you’d think it was something we all agreed upon almost 2 years ago.

Anyway, yesterday was mighty historic and those of us who worked hard to elect a man like Barack Obama to the nation’s highest office should be proud. I just hope that he can use the same sensible approach to Afghanistan/Pakistan.

Eugene Robinson has a great piece in WaPo listing some of the Prez’s most recent and encouraging accomplishments — his “winning streak”. I may not agree with 100% of Obama’s decisions. But I do believe that Americans made the right choice in him. He’s got a tough job — facing some of our country’s most serious crises in our short history. But it would be hard for me to think of anyone else in the public political arena that I’d rather have in charge right now. Here’s Robinson’s take:

This is a radical break from journalistic convention, I realize, but today I’d like to give credit where it’s due — specifically, to President Obama. Quiet as it’s kept, he’s on a genuine winning streak.

It’s hard to remember that the inauguration was just 19 months ago. Expectations of the new president were absurdly high. If Obama had done back flips across the Potomac River, when he reached the other side he’d have faced probing questions about why it was taking him so long to cure cancer, solve the Arab-Israeli conflict and usher in an age of universal peace and prosperity.

“Last U.S. combat troops leave Iraq”: Obama campaigned as an early and vocal opponent of the Iraq war, calling it a distraction from the more important conflict in Afghanistan. When he took office, there were about 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq on the heels of George W. Bush’s combat surge. Obama said he would bring our combat forces home and he did — ahead of schedule.

Before dawn on Thursday, the last U.S. combat brigade crossed the border into Kuwait, effectively ending the military misadventure that Bush named Operation Iraqi Freedom. About 50,000 American military personnel remain in the country to train Iraqi government forces, protect U.S. installations and conduct special forces operations. We leave behind a messy, uncertain political situation, which the Iraqis will have to sort out. We also will have to deal with the most disturbing geopolitical consequence of Bush’s elective war: The theocratic dictatorship in Tehran, its ambitions no longer checked by Saddam Hussein, is much closer to its goal of making Iran a nuclear-armed regional superpower.

But Obama did as well as anyone could have with the situation he inherited. Even his scorched-earth Republican critics, by their silence, are acknowledging that the president has fulfilled his campaign promise to be “just as careful getting out of Iraq as we were reckless getting in.”