The Worst Presidential Speech of My Lifetime

Updates below.

Their faces say it all. There was no enthusiasm for their CIC last night from the West Point cadets, even though they were told minutes before he came to the podium to give Barack Obama an enthusiastic response. What I saw was polite golf-clapping, and my guess is, they were only polite because they had to be.

And as Commander-in-Chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.

Literally, in the same breath as he was telling the country that he will increase troop strength, he told the enemy that all they have to do is wait us out--in a couple of years, we'll be gone. Has there ever been another president who told the enemy, straight up, "Don't worry, here's the timetable for when we're going to leave--regardless"? I heard a lot of nonsense after the speech, of pundits saying that Obama temporized his exit timeline, depending on events on the ground. Oh, BS. What I heard, clearly, was that in 18 months we will begin to leave.

I don't understand commentators who are bending over backwards trying to find a reason to pat Obama on the back. Their attitude seems to come from some displaced sense of needing to "support" our president in a time of war. In my estimation, it's immoral to support a war that we're not in to win. NOT ONE MORE soldier or marine should lose his life or lose a limb for the sake of Obama's war. Obama said not one word about winning or victory last night. What is our mission in Afghanistan? What is our purpose? We heard nothing of that last night. The only thing we heard from Obama was that he would send in more troops, only to turn right around and bring them home--just in time for the 2012 elections.

He told the cadets last night: "As your commander-in-chief, I owe you a mission that is clearly defined and worthy of your service." The only thing that Obama clearly defined last night was his timetable for cut-and-run. That's hardly a worthy mission for United States soldiers, nor is it a mission that people of the United States ought to support. President Obama, clearly you're not in this fight to win it, so bring our troops home--now.

Here's a video from unclejimbo.com that pretty much says all I want to say, except for this: July 2011? Well, Champ, November 2012! Also this: pray for our troops.

Update. Dr. Zero is one of my favorite writers at HotAir. I always read his stuff (I assume it's a "he") and I'm almost never disappointed. Dr. Zero has written a post at HotAir titled "The rhetoric of failure." Obama’s Afghanistan speech last night would have been adequate for a department store manager, informing the staff that extra help would be hired for the big Going Out of Business sale next year. It wasn’t very inspiring as a war speech. Inspiration is very important in warfare. As a modern liberal with an academic background, Obama sees military operations as unpleasant administrative chores, to be resolved rather than won… but Afghanistan is more than a distraction from the fun industry-nationalizing, trillion-dollar aspects of the President’s job, and resolution is never as inspiring as victory.

Read all of Dr. Zero's post here.

Update #2. Someone I know who has been in the military and who has also been deployed to the Middle East said this, and in an odd way, it makes sense: Obama telling the enemy when he is going to bring home the troops may have the ironic effect of saving the lives of American soldiers, since our enemy in Afghanistan will likely sit back and wait for the U.S. troops to withdraw. That point of view is shared by others, particularly a poster called "McQ" at Blackfive.

Update #3. However, as this someone (Update #2) also pointed out, the point of what our soldiers are doing in the Middle East is to take the bullet for us over there, if need be, so that civilians don't have to take it here. As he said, he would rather see 500 soldiers die in Afghanistan that 10,000 civilians die here. Because that's what they sign up for. Today we heard Lt. Col. (ret) Ralph Peters say on the Glenn Beck show, "Afghanistan is over. It was over the minute Obama said he was bringing the troops home in 18 months."

One of my favorite commentators/columnists is Charles Krauthammer. He always speaks his mind. He has a column in the Washington Post: "Uncertain Trumpet." Here Krauthammer evoke's Churchill's speech after Dunkirk: "We shall fight in the air, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields, we shall fight in the hills--for 18 months. Then we start packing for home." He points out that on the one hand, Obama says that what's at stake is nothing less than "the common security of the world," but we're going to bring troops home in 18 months. As he says, one of the elements of success in war is the will to prevail, and this speech didn't have it. Obama doesn't have it. "Obama's speech wasn't that of a commander in chief, but of a politician." Ay, there's the rub. "Go and fight," Obama says to the cadets, some of whom may not come home from this war, "but I may have to cut your mission short because my real priorities are domestic."
 
You gotta love these West Point cadets. They deserve better than what they heard on Tuesday night. A U.S. Army cadet reads a book entitled "Kill Bin Laden" as he waits with other cadets for U.S. President Barack Obama to deliver an address on U.S. policy and the war in Afghanistan at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York December 1, 2009.