George Romney, for one, was pissed: “Why in the world do you go to the people that you are fighting with and tell them the day you are pulling out your troops? It makes absolutely no sense.”
The problem for George is that one of the prime movers for the 2013 departure date is none other than Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai. Which means that, as in the case of Iraq, the people whom we’re saving are the ones telling us to get the hell out.
I suspect that, George’s outrage to the contrary withstanding, nothing would make him happier than to take office in Jan 2013 with a December 2013 departure date for American troops already set in stone. “Hey, I wanted to stay, but that Obama guy, he ruined everything,” he’ll say, a couple of times, before heading out to the links.
I’ve been wrong too many times before to trust my judgment, but Leon’s trial balloon looks to be on the ascendant. Not with a bang but a whimper? Hey, I’ll take it.
Afterwords
This, hopefully, is my last chance to make fun of Fred’s previously expressed enthusiasm for the War in Afghanistan, and for the U.S. Army’s fabulous Guided Multiple-Launch Rocket System, which, Fred’s enthusiasm to the contrary, I am sure no one ever called “the 70-kilometer sniper round.” Fred’s support for the war, which approached its apogee around October 2010, has in the last few months been asymptotically approaching zero, also known as the “I never understood why we were there in the first place” node. Welcome to the club, Fred, welcome to the club.
