I have to admit that I’m a little peeved with the president right now. For the record, I voted for the guy, but now he’s gone and put me in the uncomfortable position of having to watch him actually follow through on a campaign promise. As rare as it is, a politician keeping a campaign promise should be cause for a celebration of some kind. But no. Of all the hundreds of promises Barack Obama made on the campaign trail, he had to follow through on this Afghanistan thing. I don’t think I’m alone when I say that what I was hoping for when I voted for the guy was that he meant it when he implied that he’d get the US out of Iraq, and that he was kind of fudging a little when he said he’d be a man of action in Afghanistan. In fact, I know I’m not alone. Even the usually liberal-friendly Der Spiegel suggested that Obama’s Afghanistan speech sounded like “a campaign speech combined with Bush rhetoric“. A stance I can’t argue with personally; Obama’s feeble justification that we’re still going after that rascally al Quaeda is patently absurd. Current intelligence suggests there are only around 100 of them in the entire country. That means we’re spending $300 Million per terrorist to deal with each of them. Which sounds a bit pricey to me. And frankly, sounds like bullshit. The president only used the phrase “status quo” twice in his speech, but he could’ve left it out altogether. In my opinion, his speech clarified that he has in many ways completely adopted the Bush era status quo, and is continuing the “War On Terror”. Very convenient for any world leader, because as Monty Python member Terry Jones pointed out back in 2002,  It’s hard for abstract nouns to surrender. Aside from the current domestic economic situation, there are many reasons I vehemently oppose the direction Obama is taking regarding US military presence around the world. Amongst them is the fact that I have a nephew that like thousands of other soldiers is being pulled away from his family here at home after two voluntary tours because of the US military’s continued stop loss policies. An atrocious way to treat a young person that has already risked their lives for our country. It’s a shame that this will probably be remembered as Obama’s mess, but he has choices. I personally think he’s making bad ones, but what do you think?