At least this distinction, one could argue, is earned.
Prior to 2008, Barack Obama was considered the man most destined to save this country from his predecessor’s failures, the man who would end (if not win) wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and end terrorism. This was going to happen, moreover, just because of who he was.
Nowhere was that expectation more apparent than when the president was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, which even many of his staunchest defenders conceded was based on no tangible accomplishment.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
In honoring the president, the Nobel committee wrote, “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.”
That “better future” didn’t quite pan out in regard to American deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq.
A new report indicates that 2,500 Americans have died in Afghanistan and Iraq under President Obama, and the United States has now been at war longer under his watch than that of any other president in history.
Via Rolling Stone:
In Barack Obama’s keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention — the speech that catapulted him onto the national stage — the bright-eyed, loose-limbed senator from Illinois spoke of America’s responsibility to its soldiers.
[…]
In that spirit, here are some of those numbers.
—2,499 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq so far under President Obama, according to the independent Iraq Coalition Casualty Count.
—Of those, 1,906 have been killed in and around Afghanistan, and 593 in Iraq.
—Under Obama, the United States has been at war for 2,687 days. That’s longer than under George W. Bush — or any other U.S. president, for that matter.
—Obama has conducted airstrikes on seven countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and Syria. (That’s three more countries than George W. Bush bombed.)
—U.S. combat forces are deployed on the ground in three countries: Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. That’s one more war than Obama inherited, and which his successor will likely have to contend with.
Where is the drumbeat of the anti-war left nowadays? Where are the images of Obama with blood dripping from his fangs, the same images that George W. Bush was made to endure? Where is the wall-to-wall coverage of the latter-day Cindy Sheehans of the world?
After nominating Obama for a Peace Prize just weeks into his presidency, the Nobel committee wrote, “Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts.”
Why did the President abandon his preferred instruments?
Cross-posted at the Mental Recession
