Day83 Saturday 11/20/10

ran 3.1 miles

• President Obama officially said today, for the first time, that he wants U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014. This approximate time is when he and NATO leaders will move the Afghan military into the lead role of fighting the Taliban.

“My goal is to make sure that by 2014 we have transitioned, Afghans are in the lead and it is a goal to make sure that we are not still engaged in combat operations of the sort we’re involved in now,” Obama said in a news conference at the NATO summit in Lisbon, Portugal.

So the question is, will the Afghan army be capable of continuing to suppress the Taliban without the help of America are will the insurgencies prevail and turn Afghanistan into a fully chaotic, uncivilized state with the primary objective of training terrorists and planning acts of terrorism? It is a curious act to give your enemy the date when you plan on leaving their country to stop fighting them. Things in Afghanistan will more than likely quiet down and appear to get better over the next two years. But the Taliban has a “Save the date” card sitting on the rocky mantles of their caves, which we sent them.

• President Obama has been globetrotting since the Mid-term elections and holding foreign affairs as a far greater priority than the domestic gridlock of decisions that America needs to start defining as soon as possible. The GOP has criticized most of the issues Obama has been taking on during this lame-duck session, arguing that extending the Bush-era tax cuts should be the top priority.

It stands to Obama’s advantage to reach important decisions on views he deems to be critical in Congress during the lame-duck session because all of the Republicans who were voted in on November 2 have no vote on these issues and all Democrats who were voted out are still in power until the session ends.

• Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and eight other Republican senators who were elected on November 2 composed a letter last week to President Obama requesting a delay in signing the U.S.-Russia nuclear arms treaty until they were sworn into office. The ten Republican senators are backing Arizona Senator Jon Kyl’s demand for a delay due to the fact that no arms pacts with Russia have ever been ratified under a lame-duck Congress.

As usual in politics, allowing the newly elected senators a vote on this important issue would be far too logical, rational and fair, considering they are the voices America just elected to represent them concerning important political issues. Instead, our president wants to cram everything he can into the lame-duck session he can. And most of what he is pushing are obviously issues he will have little confidence in passing once the newly elected officials are in place.

1,855 miles to go.