Friday, 6 November 2009

G W Bush and President Obama...confronting the cost of war...

...with the passage of time a more realistic assessment of the qualities of President Obama and his predecessor are being made. When I began this blog in July last year, I wrote ...I offer this link from The American Interest magazine to a well articulated argument that (arch buffoon/war criminal/warmongerer) GW Bush, is in fact likely to be remembered as a great president who rolled back jihadism and defined the struggle against terror in terms that the terrorists could understand. I stand by that...Consider too, this recent reflection from DefenseTech re left wing criticism of Bush regarding a lack of empathy with grieving families of war dead...
...Yes, President Obama's Oct. 29 trip to Dover Air Force base in the dark of night to greet a C-17 car­ry­ing fallen Americans killed in Afghanistan was a vivid exam­ple of the real­ity of that war and should pause to those who call for increased com­mit­ment there. And it was hon­or­able of Obama to see for him­self the human cost of his deci­sions — as every com­man­der and chief should. But to reflex­ively defend the photo op engi­neered to cre­ate news about the president’s “sober­ing reminder” by claim­ing that the man who got us into Afghanistan in the first place never faced them is just plain bunk.
I had the honor to speak with nearly a dozen fam­i­lies of Marines killed in Iraq and Afghanistan a few years ago as part of a project with the Military Times news­pa­pers. We wrote a wide-ranging inves­tiga­tive piece on the con­duct of the ser­vices dur­ing the killed-in-action noti­fi­ca­tion process and the sup­port they pro­vided along the way.
It was an intim­i­dat­ing assign­ment, but one I cher­ish to this day. For, unlike Dowd, who I doubt has ever spo­ken with the fam­ily of a fallen ser­vice­mem­ber, I was forced to con­front the world I obliquely reported from afar — to hear the qua­ver­ing voices of moth­ers whose sons had been oblit­er­ated by road­side bombs.
And you know who else did that very same thing dozens of times in his eight years as pres­i­dent? The same man Dowd falsely accuses of declin­ing to con­front the real­ity of his war dead.
In my con­ver­sa­tions with those who sac­ri­ficed a son, a hus­band, a brother, or a boyfriend, all were uni­ver­sally grate­ful for George W. Bush’s sin­cere — and pri­vate — con­ver­sa­tions with them either before or directly after an event or speech at a mil­i­tary base. As a rou­tine, Bush would meet behind closed doors with fam­ily mem­bers who’d lost loved ones as part of his stop at mil­i­tary installations.
These were not sim­ply pro-war, anti-war, pro-Bush or anti-Bush fam­i­lies — they were all of the above. Some were against the Iraq war; oth­ers were stead­fast, despite their unimag­in­able sac­ri­fice, for vic­tory there. But to a man and women, these griev­ing Americans appre­ci­ated the president’s heart­felt com­pas­sion and deep under­stand­ing of their sac­ri­fice — and of the weight of the deci­sion to send poten­tially more of America’s young to their deaths.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not related to this topic, but you
might enjoy
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/13/paleocene_hot_jungles_were_ok/

On the subject - no chance of peace or a decent society there
while islam dominates - flag it now.

Anonymous said...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/13/paleocene_hot_jungles_were_ok/

Anonymous said...

ot_jungles_were_ok/

Your_brother said...

Bravo, brother. One for the Dom or the Herald and all their adolescent 'reporters' who don't know what's happening in the world. And you know that I am not a fan of US military adventurism...

MathewK said...

George Bush may have made some mistakes in his presidency, but he is far more of a man that obama ever can be. He understood the price of sending America to war, and more importantly George Bush understood the greater price for not going to war.