Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele blasted Obama’s Afghan troop surge last night at a Connecticut fundraiser.
Steele asked: “If [Obama’s] such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that’s the one thing you don’t do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? Because everyone who has tried, over a thousand years of history, has failed.”
Steele’s comments shirked Republican responsiblity for starting the war – but even a brief moment of candor on this subject is a shock.
Steele’s comment produced indignant responses from Democrats and from neo-conservative laptop bombardiers.
I expect this controversy will be good for another couple laps over the holiday weekend.
Steele is a knucklehead, but the DNC’s response is just plain hilarious. It’s as if they’d taken down Bush’s talking points verbatim. It just goes to show you: these ridiculous wars are an institutional problem, and the institution that is the problem is the State.
It is difficult to detect the learning curve on this subject from either party…
Brendan O’Neill has a good piece online on how the Afghan war is now simply a PR scam…
http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2010/06/29/dying_for_a_pr_win_in_afghanistan_99038.html
And it continues well past the holiday now, with back-peddling and all manner of slicing and dicing. Another lark from a baffled political mercenary, once again proving the nearness of our politics to
cannibalism. In particular, that banquet of sanguinary delight known as imbecility wed to cannibalism.