by Gene Healy
Gene Healy is a vice president at the Cato Institute and the author of The Cult of the Presidency.
Added to cato.org on June 23, 2009
This article appeared in the DC Examiner on June 23, 2009.
There were echoes of Bush-style "deciderism" in President Obama's peremptory announcement of an Afghanistan troop "surge" in February.
Likewise, it was hard to miss the Iraq parallels in last week's House vote for "emergency" funding to continue the nearly eight-year long Afghan war. Several skeptical Democrats switched their vote to "yes" at the last minute, citing loyalty to their party's president. (The more things change….)
"Quagmire" probably isn't the right metaphor for arid Afghanistan, but once again, we seem stuck in a costly, dangerous foreign adventure. And Obama's strategy for success, such as it is, is heavy on the "hope," light on the "change."
At the outset of the Iraq War, Gen. David Petraeus famously asked an embedded reporter, "tell me how this ends." Last year, Petraeus inherited oversight of the Afghan war when he became head of U.S. Central Command. READ MORE.
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