As Democratic supporters or supporters of Obama did a year ago after Obama won and as they did for most of 2009 if not all of 2009, Democratic Party supporters and supporters of Obama are willfully adopting a wait-and-see attitude to Obama's speech tonight.
The motivation is that maybe something he says will convince me that I am wrong to have reservations about sending more of young men and women off to war, perhaps I am operating misconceived notions when I doubt our nation's ability to afford this intervention, and it's possible that I do not know something about how Afghanistan threatens our security that the Pentagon and President Obama knows.
But, there is scarcely more than 50% who support any kind of escalation at all. There are more people willing to consider withdrawal than an expansion of this intervention to continue nation building in Afghanistan.
This has been the case since February when Obama first escalated the war by sending 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan without outlining a clear strategy or set of mission objectives for his newly inherited war.
So, this is the second surge and that he is giving a primetime speech should send a signal to everyone that like the speech he gave in Cairo on the Middle East, like the speech on race that he gave, and like a speech he gave on national security he understands that he has to use his power to persuade Americans.
His power to persuade is required if we are to move forward as a nation. And so, we will see on the stage tonight a man employing talking points aimed at propagandizing a people into believing we are wrong to think ill of this ??good war ? in Afghanistan.
We are wrong to question generals like Gen. Stanley McChrystal who have ??served ? our country well even though they exploited the deaths of soldiers like Pat Tillman to increase support for wars in the Middle East.
We are wrong to question the sacrifices our soldiers are making and we must let them continue to sacrifice and we must support the troops even if they never succeed at the folly they are engaged in.
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