American Blog

Written by Michael Vass

Since there seems to be plenty of time before President Obama takes any action in the war America should be fighting (Afghanistan according to his campaign promises), I thought I might take a look at who is doing something there.

There are 39 countries with troops in Afghanistan. That includes the U.S. But there is also: Demark, Canada, England, Romania, Australia, Poland, France Italy, Turkey, Bulgaria, Spain, Norway, Czech Republic, Croatia, Sweden, Hungary, Slovakia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Latvia, Azerbaijan, New Zealand, Albania, Greece, Finland, Estonia, Slovenia, Portugal, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Ukraine, Luxembourg, Iceland, Ireland, Jordan, Austria and Georgia. (though 8 really don’t count since they have 10 or less troops)

The U.S. of course has the most troops. And there is a standing request for 40,000 more troops waiting for President Obama. He may get to that request sometime before Christmas, but don’t count on it. He’s put off the answer for more than 90 days now and there seems to be no rush to give an answer. Besides, we don’t want to interupt his trips to Europe and Asia for something as silly as being Commander-and-Chief.

But without the leadership of America, which almost sounds like an oxymoron these days, Germany decided to move forward with it’s plans to stay in Afghanistan, and add more troops (about 3% more). It may not be much, and it isn’t, but it is more than what America has done.

Britain has suggested adding 500 to 5,000 more troops depending on what America does. That’s on top of the 900 they added earlier this year along with Spain and France adding troops. Though France will not add more (probably a good thing since the last time they won a war was… Napoleon?).

So since many of the allies of America have enough balls to step forward and either commit to staying in Afghanistan or adding troops I was wondering what was on the mind of President Obama. He campaigned like he had the balls to lead a war. He promised to take the war right to Osama Bin Laden. He made it clear beyond question this was the fight he wanted to win.

Now unlike others on the net I will not say that President Obama is a coward that only made empty promises so he could be elected. I will say that the cowtowing to foreign leaders (how low can you go in Saudi Arabia and Japan) - minus our biggest ally England (the Queen obviously didn’t deserve the respect given lesser allies) - does give the impression that America is weak with Democrat leaders at the helm. The recent examples of President Carter (Iran fiasco) and President Clinton (wouldn’t take out bin Laden or Saddam when he had the chance) mirror the apparent frailty of President Obama.

Perhaps this is just a big plan. Maybe President Obama wants other countries to fight our war, using his rockstar status and apologetic nature to make them feel bad for the nerd across the seas. Maybe he thinks that cowering in a corner hoping no one will notice he can’t make a decision without the Liberal left telling him what to do, will force Al Quaeda to come out of hiding from the sheer boredom of waiting.

I don’t know what is motivating President Obama. For all I know it could be that he doesn’t want to miss out on getting more frequent flyer miles and a couple of extra international stamps in his passport on taxpayers money. But the net result is very clear. President Obama is not the Commander-and-Chief that he puffed up for cameras during the election campaign and proclaimed to be.

At this point I think President Obama should be honest. He should take all the troops out of Afghanistan and say that he does not have the stomach to lead a nation at war. He should ask, bowing optional, Al Quida and other terrorists to wait for him to leave office before killing more Americans. He’s a friend to radical fanatical Islam, so it would be the nice thing to do.

At least if he did that, we all would know what to expect and wouldn’t have to worry about our brave soldiers overseas. We could just worry about the next plane hitting innocent Americans somewhere down the road. And for the Obamaaniacs, I’m sure there would be a way to blame President Bush for that too.