Enough with the pandering, please

So the president makes a decision, the orders are given, it’s done.? Cue the cowardly pandering.

Nothing says “courage” quite like waiting for the precise moment that your “principled” position is literally an impossibility before you run out to tell us all that NOW, yes NOW, after the troops are literally on their way, NOW we must withdraw from Afghanistan, NOW.

I respect the anti-war position in the Democratic Party base. It makes me happy to be in the Democratic Party. I even respect loud disagreement with the policy after it was announced on Tuesday night. In fact, I would rather pressure come from the LEFT than from the RIGHT, and I applaud it.

What I do NOT respect is politicians, bloggers, organizations like MoveOn, candidates for office like Lee Fisher in Ohio, using the occasion to pander incessantly to a legitimately upset base of our party.

This is what Republicans do. They lather up the base in pursuit of policies they know for a fact are not going to be implemented, and then they milk that base for all its worth.

Barack Obama listened to the arguments, and made a decision. That decision ENDS THE WAR. Maybe not fast enough, but certainly faster than anyone else’s decision would. If Lyndon Johnson gave the same damn speech in 1965, and the Vietnam war ended 3 years later, it would have been a good thing, and would have ended the Vietnam War even before Woodstock.

To watch our party’s base get pandered to like this makes me ill. It’s pathetic.