More ambiguous than audacious.
Check.
“(That) pledge also has been laced with loopholes all along, caveats that the mainstream media and his opponents (excepting Bill Richardson) have ignored or avoided until now.
Indeed.
Then he adopted the safe, nonpartisan formula of the Baker-Hamilton Study Group, which advocated the withdrawal of combat troops while leaving thousands of American counter-terrorism units, advisers and trainers behind.
And, as for Obama’s “refining,” Hayden calls him out on that right away.
“I intend to end this war.”
Beyond that, Hayden notes that the whole thrust of Obama’s speech is to buck final responsibility to the military. If Petraeus says, “too dangerous to bring them home,” well, who is Civilian Obama to overrule that?
Read the whole column; Hayden is spot on. Hayden concludes with four talking point “demands” for Obama to show his progressive peace talker bona fides.
I e-mailed Josh Marshall at TPM and he said Hayden is not exactly “whom he goes to for sage advice on this kind of stuff.”
And, that’s why people like you, Josh, are enablers. (Maybe I can get booted from TPM, like I did from Enabling Those We Choose earlier this year.)
I said it before, I almost hope Obama wins just to watch him break all the non-promise promises that he hasn’t already broken.
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