South Dakota Politics: Marching in and out of Afghanistan

Concentrating on its parts last night, I thought the President's speech was pretty good. I still like a lot of it, but a criticism is surfacing today that is hard to get around. Here is an example from Der Spiegel:

It was the least truthful address that he has ever held. He spoke of responsibility, but almost every sentence smelled of party tactics. He demanded sacrifice, but he was unable to say what it was for exactly.

It was as though Obama had taken one of his old campaign speeches and merged it with a text from the library of ex-President George W. Bush. Extremists kill in the name of Islam, he said, before adding that it is one of the "world's great religions." He promised that responsibility for the country's security would soon be transferred to the government of President Hamid Karzai -- a government which he said was "corrupt." The Taliban is dangerous and growing stronger. But "America will have to show our strength in the way that we end wars," he added.

And here is how Richard Just puts it, in the New Republic:

[A]s much as I agreed with Obama's essential argument, something bothered me about the speech. It had less to do with Afghanistan than with the larger principles involved. The speech may have been, as Mike pointed out, remarkably consistent with an earlier Obama address. But it was also weirdly inconsistent with itself.

In a speech dedicated to explaining why our national security depends on our ability to help provide safety and good governance for people half a world away, Obama nevertheless felt the need to take not one but two swipes at the concept of nation-building…

Having attacked nation-building and strained unconvincingly to cast his Afghanistan policy in opposition to it, Obama then reversed course and offered this paean to human rights at the end of the speech: "We must make it clear to every man, woman and child around the world who lives under the dark cloud of tyranny that America will speak out on behalf of their human rights, and tend to the light of freedom and justice and opportunity and respect for the dignity of all peoples. That is who we are. That is the source, the moral source, of America's authority." In the course of a few paragraphs, Obama had gone from the rhetoric of quasi-isolationism to the rhetoric of democracy promotion.

That's all pretty devastating. Obama is marching boldly into and out of Afghanistan at the same time. It is hard to do that sort of thing with grace. I am not sure the President pulled it off.