Obama never had a chance with the GOP on Afghanistan

Obama never had a chance. In giving the generals exactly what they wanted, he's being torn to shreds by the right wing. "We must end this now," they cry. But I'll ask you to be truthful... what would they have said if we pulled out immediately?

He literally never had a chance. He inherited Bush's war and was set up to fail. Not in the mission, mind you, but in the perception. The right wing HATES him and will do whatever is necessary to see him hurt him.

Watch the video clip. In the first minute Rush Limbaugh, the leader of those saying that we don't criticize the president in a time of war when Bush was in the Oval, now abandons that scenario. They have no scruples, no sense of honor, and are seemingly all about hypocrisy for power's sake.

(Media Matters)

It didn't matter what decision he came to regarding troop levels in Afghanistan, or what he said about the ongoing conflict there, because Fox News and the rest of the conservative media had already reached two conclusions. First, he took too long. Second, he was wrong.

Since the Bush administration stuck him with the untended-to mess in Afghanistan, Obama had to make a choice -- more troops, fewer troops, withdrawal. When Obama signaled that he actually wanted to consider his options before making a decision, the Fox News followed the lead of Dick Cheney -- one of the primary authors of the Afghanistan debacle -- in accusing the president of "dithering" and "inaction." Glenn Beck, never one to be subtle or reasonable, accused the president of "letting our troops literally bleed and die" and said Obama would "pay for it" in the hereafter.

Of course, Cheney's idea of "dithering" is another man's idea of a "substantive discussion" that came as part of a "good" process. That other man just so happens to be Gen. David Petraeus, who was asked by MSNBC's Joe Scarborough on December 2 if Obama had been "dithering" as Cheney alleged. Petraeus responded: "This process was actually quite good, Joe. It was a very substantive discussion. Everybody's assumptions and views were tested. I think out of this have come sharpened objectives, a very good understanding of the challenges and the difficulties and what must be done in a much more detailed and nuanced fashion."