Is Afghanistan Obama's Legacy? (New York Review)

The New York Review of Books:

Most presidents start wondering--or, more often, worrying--about their "legacy" well into their first term. Or, if they have a second term, they worry even more feverishly about what posterity will think of them. Obama need not wonder about his legacy, even this early. It is already fixed, and in one word: Afghanistan.

Read the whole story: The New York Review of Books

Comments

[toocoldout]

07:23 PM on 08/08/2010

I think he's been an excellent president EXCEPT for Afghanistan. Everyone admired him for the wisdom he showed in opposing the Iraq war that it breaks my heart to see him ruin it by expanding in Afghanistan. On the other hand, once a war starts it's very hard to just end it without creating even more problems. Look what happened when America left Vietnam.

[Sergeant]

06:58 PM on 08/08/2010

I agree but it is not news.

I, along with other bloggers here, said the same thing for some time now. The signs are all there. A liberal president who turns out to be hawkish on a war. All the good works get overshadowed by the consequences of war including the loss of support by the american people in general and the antiwar branch of the democratic party. It happened to Johnson. The antiwar members of the democratic party are not mobilized or organized. But they will be. And now they will find allies in conservatives and independents who believe we should look out for our own country.

[Beau2]

04:09 PM on 08/08/2010

Debt, deficit, Iraq, Afghanistan, unemployment, under employment, Gulf mismanagement, health insurance debacle, how long does the need to be before we hear Hillary say, "I am a candidate for our nomination in 2012.?"

[hillsarealive2010]

05:49 PM on 08/08/2010

Your post is full of complete g..a..r..bage and you know it.

The ficit was inherited from the last administration and considering the complete demise of the financial services industry, there is no way anytime soon the Obama administration could have done anything to recover from it.

Under employment - all symptons of the car and banking industry failure. Banking obviously historic failures of both dems and repubs

Gulf mismanagement - All bush administration and if you want to challenge that go ahead, just wait on my rebuttle.

Health insurance - anytime wrong with trying to shave the increasing cost of health care cost for all Americans and shaving health care costs from 33% of most corporations balance sheets

If you want to blame someone for this mess, why not look at the administration that inherited a surplus and squandered billions on 2 wars to benefit the likes of Halliburton with poor intelligence.

Or have you been voting republican all your life and can't use your common sense to look at what is so obvious. BUSH AND HIS WASTEFUL SPENDING GOT US IN THIS MESS.

[Sergeant]

07:04 PM on 08/08/2010

Ever read history? Take a look at the Carter presidency. Kennedy tried to unseat a sitting president and ran against him in the primary. It has happened before.

Apologists are running out of excuses. This author knows it and many progressives also know it.

[toocoldout]

07:24 PM on 08/08/2010

What health insurance debacle? Passing health care was one of the greatest achievements in American history and now it's a debacle? Talk about spin.

[IM4REAL]

07:40 PM on 08/08/2010

Exactly, the story it not completed yet. So how can anyone say how it is going to end? We will base his legacy one how it ends (in 6 years). A whole lot of speculation going on, is about all you can say right now. Until we see the end results, the rest is just speculation.

[Beau2]

03:49 PM on 08/08/2010

Sorry Obambi, pundits have been warning you for months that "blame it on Bush," had run its course. Your traning wheels are gone and you are flailing.

[hillsarealive2010]

05:51 PM on 08/08/2010

What a load of rubbish.

[Sergeant]

07:05 PM on 08/08/2010

The people will issue their opinion in November.

[hark]

03:41 PM on 08/08/2010

It's his legacy. It's not his legacy. What difference does it make? How does it get us out of there and give us the wisdom to stop attacking other nations for no reason? What problem does it solve to write essays pointing out whose legacy the horrible mess is?

[jeb50]

02:59 PM on 08/08/2010

I have to agree now. Instead of getting us out he has gotten us in deeper.

[Beatriz09]

03:01 PM on 08/08/2010

WHAT argument did you find in the article that convinced you of that idea ... ?

[Mafdet]

02:42 PM on 08/08/2010

Unless Obama starts defining his presidency in strong and honorable terms, these failed wars and the fleecing of America by Wall Street will be the sum of his presidency and he will ultimately be viewed as a worse president that W.

The reason he will be viewed as a worse president than W is that the patina of graft never attached to W personally. It is generally assumed that W was a puppet and dupe. But the growing perception of Obama is that he has not only been knowingly complicit in Wall Street's fraud but is promoting it, and that he has not only escalated the war in Afghanistan, but is doing so for a group of financiers, Jamie Dimon included, who want the land cleared.

Obama is delivering for big business like no president ever has. The problem is, the big business he is delivering for, flourishes the more America founders. And history will place this footnote on his presidency.

[muck-raker]

02:57 PM on 08/08/2010

Mafdet: But how is Barack Obama going to repair the titanic damage which his vicious, lying predecessor has perpetrated around the globe and within the US itself? John F Kennedy once said that "the United States, as the world knows, will never start a war". After Bush's fear-mongering and Rumsfeld's "shock and awe" and Abu Ghraib and Bagram and Guantanamo and secret renditions, how does Obama pedal his country all the way back to Camelot? Our own dear Gordon Brown's enthusiasm to Hoover up the emails of the British people is another example of how Lord Blair's sick relationship with Bush still infects our own body politic. Only days before the wretched president finally departs from us, new US legislation will ensure that citizens of his lickspittle British ally will no longer be able to visit America without special security clearance. Does Bush have any more surprises for us before 20 January? Indeed, could anything surprise us any more? AND I think Obama is trying but the party of NO is stopping any change....balance of article below:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-obama-has-to-pay-for-eight-years-of-bushs-delusions-1001092.html

[Eddie Sengola]

03:01 PM on 08/08/2010

Agree!

[daisy111]

02:33 PM on 08/08/2010

So is the health care fiasco.

[Beatriz09]

03:07 PM on 08/08/2010

122 American lives saved a DAY and you call it a fiasco ... ?

You must be a Republican ... :-)

[Beau2]

03:45 PM on 08/08/2010

Where did you get that "talking point?" Daily kos?

[hark]

03:42 PM on 08/08/2010

You mean because you don't want to buy health insurance, or pay your fair share for the implicit coverage you do have through a tax, or penalty? Is that why it's a fiasco?

[Beau2]

03:46 PM on 08/08/2010

It is a fiasco because it does not improve care or reduce costs.

[sculptor]

02:09 PM on 08/08/2010

Afganistan will certainly be a significant part of his legacy. However, other things might turn out to be more significant. For instance if he can manage to address climate change effectively or if the healthcare reform is the beginning of a solution rather than the last gasp of a dying system.

[kimleehan]

02:07 PM on 08/08/2010

According to Republicans President Obama is whatever it take for you not to vote for him in 2012, he's a appeaser and weak on terror and a war monger, We should not set a withdrawal date but he should have pulled out of Afghanistan long ago, He's in bed with Corporate America and he's a socialist, The stimulus was too big and the stimulus was not big enough, He is spending our children's future and we need to cut middle class america's benefits and give the rich a tax cut, He's a racist and he's uppity.

[Yurdelite51]

02:05 PM on 08/08/2010

This is one of the reason's the media has zero credibilty...

[leftcoastindy]

01:29 PM on 08/08/2010

I'm sorry but the idea that BO's 'legacy' is fixed before he gets 1 and 1/2 years into his first term is uttterly rediculous. Dozens if not hundreds of things can happen or go wrong, even if he only serves one term. Health care could turn out radically good or bad. The debt could go up to $18 or 20 Trillion; He could get to appoint 2 or 3 more Supremes; Afghanistan could turn around in 5 or 6 years and be percieived (by some) as some sort of positive.
This reminds me of some blaming BO for the econony in April and May of 09 when at most he had a very minor effect.

[Foxrocks]

01:41 PM on 08/08/2010

yes, there could be more to come, but this is one big slice of pie that is going to be on his plate when he leaves office one way or the other.

[leftcoastindy]

02:01 PM on 08/08/2010

Reasonable. Surprising from a presumed winger. Keep it up and maybe you'll be my first fanned con.

[Frank Bourne]

01:46 PM on 08/08/2010

Obama has been treated with kid gloves so far. He's now coming up on his 2 year in office and there's really no more excuses. People are soon going to painfully come to the realization that Barack is just as much a bumbling idiot with foreign policy as was his predecessor.

He's a campaign managers dream but has no leadership qualities worth admiring.

[Beatriz09]

03:10 PM on 08/08/2010

You can repeat this 'idea' all day, that won't make it become true ... :-)

[Candw1]

01:26 PM on 08/08/2010

The US has not won a war since World War 2 and will most likely never win another one. For the life of me I do not understand why we get involved in these conflicts if we are not going to try and win and get out. It is a terrible waste of human life and trillions of dollars for nothing just nothing.

[Frank Bourne]

01:32 PM on 08/08/2010

"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

- U.S. Marine Major General Smedley Butler

[Fairie Dust]

01:36 PM on 08/08/2010

A few people get very wealthy during "wartime." Follow the money.

[BluWoman]

03:37 PM on 08/10/2010

That's right. W@r Inc.

Somebody(s) is becoming wealthy over it.

[walkawayfrombanks]

01:06 PM on 08/08/2010

this article shouldn't surprise anyone.

more exposure and leaks are coming every day.

[Beatriz09]

01:24 PM on 08/08/2010

Exposure of what ... ?

Of a historian who is against the war and who likes to tell the whole world that he has been invited by Obama and had the guts to tell him he's against the war.

That's surely very nice for him, but I wouldn't call this 'information' a 'leak' .. :-)

[Fairie Dust]

12:47 PM on 08/08/2010

This has gone on too long already.

Reagan meets with Afghan Muj. in 1985.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3f9mlUQzJA

Taliban leaders in Texas to talk to oil execs. in 1997.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/west_asia/37021.stm

Please stop deleting this post. Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.