And From the Left

NPR's supposedly liberal, left-leaning Dan Schorr weighs in on Obama's escalation of the war and occupation of Afghanistan on Weekend Edition Saturday:

Simon: "President Obama appeared at West Point, send 30,000 or more U.S. troops to Afghanistan by next fall. How would you characterize the speech?"

Schorr: "I would characterize it as being a statesmanlike speech trying to deal with two disparate problems. One of the problems is they need to send more troops to Afghanistan. The other problem is that that does not go down very well with a great many liberals in the Democratic Party [seriously, click on this link to see my Republican representative's stand on Afghanistan]. And what he's done in effect is to say here we come and there we go, 18 months later, hoping that he managed to get both groups. He may succeed, but not entirely.

Simon: "Of course the concern was raised by a number of people this week - in Congress, commentators - that if you a put time stamp on a commitment, it doesn't impress anybody and it allows the Taliban to say we'll just hold onto the ropes for 18 months, and for that matter, as some people suggested, it's hard to ask U.S. troops to risk their lives for that kind of exit."

Schorr: "Well, you're right. It's not really a very wise thing to do if you want to get the Taliban and al-Qaida out of there. You don't say just hang around, we'll be leaving in 18 months, it's not a very good idea. But he had a very sticky problem that what would work internationally would not work with public opinion at home, and he tried to straddle that.

With "liberals" like these who needs conservatives?