I get emails.
Martin —
Last night, President Obama laid out his plan to defend our national interest by refocusing our efforts on three clear goals: defeating al Qaeda, stabilizing Pakistan, and breaking the Taliban’s momentum in Afghanistan.
To achieve these goals, the President has authorized the rapid deployment of 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan, with a firm commitment to begin bringing our troops home in 2011.
It’s a clean break from the failed Afghanistan policy of the Bush administration, and a new, focused strategy that can succeed…
…Thank you,
Vice President Joe Biden
The fascinating part of this is how boldly the Obama administration is attacking the Bush administration in their sales pitch for this policy. In fact, the president was so harsh in his speech last night that Donald Rumsfeld crawled out of his forced retirement to defend himself (with some success). Here we have the vice-president of the United States sending out a blast email to Obama’s supporters where he calls the policy a clean break with Bush’s failed policies. Most of us are not inclined to see it as anything of the sort. I do recognize that the new policy will be implemented by more competent people and that it involves a shift of approach, including major civilian and agricultural elements, and a more cooperative Pakistan (we hope). But it doesn’t look like a clean break. It looks like not enough change.
I don’t know how well the tactic of blaming the Bush administration for everything is going to work in the future. Even though it is true that Bush has so far screwed up everything he’s touched in his life, people get bored hearing about it.