Lockdowns Are Probably Permanent Because Politicians Have Painted Themselves Into A Corner and Don't Know What Else To Do

 Gee, ya think?

There wasn’t time to gather that sort of evidence: Faced with a poorly understood and rapidly spreading pathogen, they prioritized saving lives.

Five months later, the evidence suggests lockdowns were an overly blunt and economically costly tool. They are politically difficult to keep in place for long enough to stamp out the virus. The evidence also points to alternative strategies that could slow the spread of the epidemic at much less cost. As cases flare up throughout the U.S., some experts are urging policy makers to pursue these more targeted restrictions and interventions rather than another crippling round of lockdowns...

Yet at the outset, their goals were unclear, a confusion aggravated by the multitude of terms used. Officials sometimes said their goal was “bending” or “flattening the curve,” which originally meant spreading infections over time so the daily peak never overwhelmed hospitals. At other times they described their aims as “mitigation” or “containment” or “suppression,” often interchangeably.

“There have been few attempts to truly define the goal, and partly it’s because policy makers and epidemiologists haven’t thought well enough about the vocabulary to define what they mean or want,” said Dr. Mina, the Harvard epidemiologist.

We've long since left the reality of science! and are operating purely in the realm of politics and "doing something".  The lockdowns have been "overly blunt and costly".

Were the unintended but entirely predictable consequences of lockdowns justified?

When policymakers across the country decided to “lock down” in response to the March outbreak of the novel coronavirus, they took a leap into the unknown. Not only did we know little about COVID-19 itself at that time, but we knew almost nothing about how shutting down nearly all of society would affect people.

Policymakers focused on their models predicting how lockdowns could help limit the spread of COVID-19; an important factor, to be sure. So, too, many acknowledged the negative economic ramifications of lockdowns. But in the months since, we’ve seen many other dire consequences stem from the unprecedented shutdown of society.

Future public health policy should take these four life-threatening unintended consequences of COVID-19 lockdowns into account.

If the press were ever truly interested in government mistakes, they need not look far for the biggest story of the century thus far.   Some might argue that the biggest mistake of the century so far was the belief in WMD in Iraq, but I've addressed that enough in the early years of this blog that I don't need to rehash it here.  Bottom line:  worldwide government responses to the 'rona were hamhanded, flawed, and not scientifically justified.  Freedom, including that to live your life and make a living, has been seriously curtailed around the world.  Do we live to do what government wants, or is government supposed to do what we want?

If, in trying to excuse the damage that's been done, someone were at least to admit that "mistakes were made", my response would be "No feces, detective."

Now fix the mistakes.  But they can't, because to do so they'd have to admit that they made mistakes.  Politicians don't do that.

Great Way To Screw People

This just makes me sick:

Short of troops to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan a decade ago, the California National Guard enticed thousands of soldiers with bonuses of $15,000 or more to reenlist and go to war.

Now the Pentagon is demanding the money back.

Nearly 10,000 soldiers, many of whom served multiple combat tours, have been ordered to repay large enlistment bonuses — and slapped with interest charges, wage garnishments and tax liens if they refuse — after audits revealed widespread overpayments by the California Guard at the height of the wars last decade.

Investigations have determined that lack of oversight allowed for widespread fraud and mismanagement by California Guard officials under pressure to meet enlistment targets.

A decade later? Really?

It's clear those bonuses were what was necessary to get the soldiers to reenlist--and fight. To take that away now should be criminal. It's certainly unjust.

With A Third of Iraq Belonging To ISIS....

I just want to remind you that this is what the president was bragging about 6 years ago:

Video of the president and vice president bragging about Iraq is here.

My post from a year and a half ago, detailing what a disaster the president has been regarding just foreign policy, is even more true today.

Legitimate Bias, or Not?

It's entirely reasonable for women not to prefer men ob-gyn's or massage therapists; is it reasonable for a veteran not to prefer a Muslim counselor?

Jeremy Rawls is a student at Mississippi College. He’s also a Marine, having spent two combat tours in Iraq. Rawls suffers from PTSD, a condition which affects many veterans.

The college just suspended him for a reason many, including Rawls himself, are calling dubious.

Why did they suspend him? Rawls requested to see a non-Muslim counselor as part of his PTSD treatment.

He discussed the situation with Campus Reform, noting that he was paired with a female counselor who wore traditional Muslim dress:

“It’s not that I didn’t want to participate,” he said. “I didn’t want to traumatize her and it wasn’t a good environment to be talking about [my disabilities] with that specific person.”

Rawls claims that his requests for transfer were continuously ignored, until he received a letter alerting him of the suspension:

“Their response was suspending me pending a mental evaluation which I provided and then they put me on further restriction and a reintegration program,” he said.

The letter also labeled the two-tour Marine as a threat to campus safety.

Comments?

Now That Ramadi Has Fallen...

Just go here for a reminder of Biden's and Obama's bragging about how peaceful Iraq was in 2010, about Obama's 2008 statement that preventing genocide would not be enough of a reason to keep our troops in Iraq (I guess brown-skinned people don't matter to him, and he was warned), and other salient commentary and videos providing damning evidence of just what an incompetent president we have.

Where Are The Howls From The Left?

If this turns out to be true, it's more than a little sick:

San Francisco sheriff’s deputies arranged and gambled on battles between County Jail inmates, forcing one to train for the fights and telling them to lie if they needed medical attention, the city’s public defender said Thursday.

Since the beginning of March, at least four deputies at County Jail No. 4 at 850 Bryant St. threatened inmates with violence or withheld food if they did not fight each other, gladiator-style, for the entertainment of the deputies, Public Defender Jeff Adachi said.

Adachi said the ringleader in these fights was Deputy Scott Neu, who was accused in 2006 of forcing inmates to perform sexual acts on him. That case was settled out of court. 

This happens in San Francisco and there's no protesting in the streets.  I'm reminded of a far less physically abusive situation at Abu Ghraib prison, which obviously generated a different response.  Why might that be, do you think?

Iraq

A round-up of Iraq topics--including video, so no one can challenge what was really said--is available here.  It's nice to have all that information available in one place.

You can't get clearer evidence that this president has been a disaster.

Reverse Midas

Can you come up with one foreign policy success of the Obama Administration?

It certainly wasn't his Grand Apology Tour.

Iraq, which in 2010 had been touted as a success (video here), is now run partly by IS and partly by Iran. 

President Obama thought Afghanistan was the right war and Iraq the wrong one.  How are things going there?

Remember when the American Left was going nuts over President Bush's mythical preemptive war against Iran to keep it from getting nukes?  Is that worse than a fake deal that would essentially allow Iran to develop nukes?

President Obama backed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt's elections.  That didn't turn out well for the US, for Egypt, or for the Muslim Brotherhood. President Obama offered to meet with the incoming president of Egypt but couldn't bring himself to make a phone call of congratulations to Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel this past week after he won the election there.  After Morsi was overthrown the standing of the US in Egypt was greatly diminished.

President Obama chose to "lead from behind" in Libya and then wanted to tout our great success.  That hasn't turned out well for the US or for Libya, which isn't even a real country anymore.

President Obama asked Russian president Medvedev to let Vlad Putin know that after the 2012 election he would have more "flexibility" to deal with the Russians because he wouldn't have to run for election again.  That hasn't turned out well for the US or for Ukraine.  A missile defense system sound like a good idea right now, especially to Eastern Europeans.  And remember this comment from the 2012 debates?  It was a witty zinger--but who ended up being right?

President Obama drew a "red line" in the sand regarding the use of chemical weapons in Syria.  Syria used such weapons, Obama responded with silence.  Actually, no, not with silence, he denied ever having made the "red line" threat in the first place and tried to say that the world did so by passing a "no chemical weapons" treaty--when, after World War I?  Anyway, his stance hasn't turned out well for the US or for the Syrian civilians who were killed with chemical weapons.

President Obama, a mere 6 months ago, touted Yemen as an anti-terrorist success story.  That hasn't turned out well for the US or for Yemen, which this past week fell to Iranian-backed rebels.  All that was missing from the US withdrawal was an iconic picture of a helicopter on the roof.

Where in the world is the US better off today than it was in 2008, when this disaster of a president was elected?  Where in the world is the US more respected and more valued today than it was in 2008, when this disaster of a president was elected?  Where in the world have US actions contributed to peace, stability, and a better life since 2008, when this disaster of a president was elected?

Where has our stature been diminished?  The list above is a good start.  The Instapundit has been saying since 2009 that a "Carter rerun is a best-case scenario" and, sadly, he could not have been more correct.

But I've Been Told "Bush Lied, People Died"

There's a difference between believing something that's wrong but that the CIA told you, and knowingly touting something wrong.    President Bush didn't lie.  He wasn't wrong, either:

The Central Intelligence Agency, working with American troops during the occupation of Iraq, repeatedly purchased nerve-agent rockets from a secretive Iraqi seller, part of a previously undisclosed effort to ensure that old chemical weapons remaining in Iraq did not fall into the hands of terrorists or militant groups, according to current and former American officials.

The extraordinary arms purchase plan, known as Operation Avarice, began in 2005 and continued into 2006, and the American military deemed it a nonproliferation success. It led to the United States’ acquiring and destroying at least 400 Borak rockets, one of the internationally condemned chemical weapons that Saddam Hussein’s Baathist government manufactured in the 1980s but that were not accounted for by United Nations inspections mandated after the 1991 Persian Gulf war...

A New York Times investigation published in October found that the military had recovered thousands of old chemical warheads and shells in Iraq and that Americans and Iraqis had been wounded by them, but the government kept much of this information secret, from the public and troops alike...

In confidential declarations in the 1990s to the United Nations, Iraq gave shifting production numbers, up to 18,500. It also claimed to have destroyed its remaining stock before international inspectors arrived after the Persian Gulf war.

No clear evidence ever surfaced to support Iraq’s claim, which meant that questions about whether Boraks remained were “carried forward as one of the big uncertainties,” said Charles A. Duelfer, a senior United Nations inspector at the time who later led the C.I.A.’s Iraq Survey Group. There was “a big gap in the information,” he said.

I've referenced the Duelfer Report more than once on this blog.

What's the left's story now that their own mouthpiece, the NYT, shows that Saddam did have unaccounted for chemical and biological weapons?

This Is What Happens When You Elect An Idiot For President

You know, the Lightbringer president who's going to end the war in Iraq?  The one who's been in office for 6 years now, and who is proud of his achievements in Iraq? 

Well, that's not how it's turned out, is it?  I remember just a few weeks ago he sent 300 more soldiers to Iraq, promising "no boots on the ground" and no combat role.  Now this:

President Barack Obama is sending up to 1,500 more soldiers to Iraq to train Iraqi and Kurdish forces to fight ISIS, in a deployment that would almost double the total number of American troops there to 2,900.

The White House said in a statement that it will also ask Congress for another $5.6 billion to fund the fight against ISIS. The troops will not have a combat role, and will operate from bases outside Baghdad and Erbil.

The president didn't want our troops to stay in Iraq.  He didn't negotiate with Maliki at all on the SOFA and used that as an excuse to withdraw, and now we have to risk more Americans just to recover ground that was gained when President Bush first sent our military there.

This man is an idiot.  He's a dangerous, arrogant idiot.

Leadership

Leadership is a topic that consumes a lot of time at West Point.  Sometimes it's taught explicitly in leadership classes, sometimes it's merely modeled, but the concept is omnipresent.  That doesn't mean that every West Point graduate is an ideal leader, far from it, but it does mean that every West Point graduate has had some of the best leadership training any person could hope to experience.

Some people are natural leaders, some learn how to lead.  Any leadership skills I have are of the latter variety.  And, contrary to the opinions of some, not everyone can be a good leader.  I would assert that, with good training, anyone should be able to improve his/her leadership skills, but good instruction doesn't guarantee a good outcome.

Things we were taught in order to make us better leaders include:
1.  Officers eat after the soldiers.  It's a sign of leadership to take care of your people before you take care of yourself.
2.  Don't ask your soldiers to do something you're unwilling to do.  That should be obvious.
3.  Take more than your fair share of the blame, and less than your fair share of the credit.

It's that last one that I'd like to focus on here for a moment.  Nobody respects someone who takes credit for other people's work, and people do respect those who give them credit for the work they've done.  It's just common sense.  And if you give a little less blame than is merited, and a little more credit that might be merited, people appreciate and respect that.  Making people feel valued is a key component of leadership.

It should come as no surprise to readers of this blog, then, that today's example of lousy leadership comes from Barack Obama.  The Instapundit's commentary on "IN" is pretty much an abdication of the my third point above:

OUT: President Obama is “among the most sophisticated consumers of intelligence on the planet.”
IN: Obama: Intel officials underestimated ISIS. When things go well, it’s always “I, me, mine” with this guy. When things go badly, it’s always “they” who screwed up.
Related: Former DHS chief: Obama made mistakes on ISIS.

The buck stops anywhere and everywhere except with him.  No one respects that.

Back To Iraq

Our genius president pulled us out of Iraq before the Iraqis themselves were ready.  As a result we have to go back there and cover some of the same ground (literally and figuratively) that we covered from 2003-2011.  This will result in more American deaths, and now that my son is a soldier I take that concern even more seriously than I have before.  And that's saying a lot.

As the U.S. expands its war against the Islamic State, the Army is preparing to deploy a division headquarters to Iraq.

Officials have not identified the division that will deploy — the first division headquarters to go to Iraq since the U.S. withdrawal in 2011.

An official announcement is expected in the coming days. But Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno recently confirmed the Army “will send another division headquarters to Iraq to control what we’re doing there, a small headquarters.”

It’s unclear how many soldiers will be sent, or how long they will deploy. Division headquarters average between 100 and 500 soldiers and deploy for one year.

It's reasonable to wonder if, after sending a division headquarters, sending an entire division would be such a stretch.

Here's a comment from my West Point mailing list, which I received permission to repost here:

Yes, but since they will not be wearing any boots, then it doesn't really count...and besides, even if they are wearing boots, they will not be touching the ground...even if they touch the ground, it will all be good as long as they don't cross any red lines...

The president's an idiot.  His sole capability is fundraising, at everything else he's an abject failure.  Can anyone believe a word he says?

Iraq

With Iraq falling to pieces you can expect a lot of revisionist history coming so that it won't seem that President Obama carries a large share of the blame.  Don't fall for it.  Instapundit has everything you need here, including:
What Democrats were saying about Iraq before the 2003 invation
Administration bragging about how peaceful Iraq was (under Obama's watch)
Obama saying that preventing genocide would not be a reason to keep US troops in Iraq
An Obama tweet bragging that Obama kept his promise to bring US troops home, and mocking Mitt Romney for calling the decision "tragic"

What's This? WMD in Iraq?

I've been told for over a decade that there are and were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  But if that's true, how can this be so?

The weapons that remain are probably useless

Militants who have advanced across large swaths of Iraq in the past week seized a complex that was once Saddam Hussein’s top chemical-weapons production facility.
The facility still contains a stockpile of old weapons, but they are contaminated and hard to transport, and officials don’t believe the militants could make a chemical weapon out of them, the Wall Street Journal reports. In the aftermath of the U.S. invasion a decade ago, the U.S.-impaneled Iraq Study Group determined that the facility was sufficiently dismantled and that the remaining chemicals were useless.

Huh.

Don't Let The Liberals Erase and Rewrite History on Iraq

Notice the clips from 1998--when Clinton was president.  Some are now saying that Democrats believed the "lying" President Bush; if you want to go that route, perhaps the evidence says that President Bush believed a lying President Clinton.

I don't think those politicians lied, I think they truly believed what they said.  Every intelligence community on the planet believed it, too, which means the only liar was Saddam and his gang--and they paid the price for their lies.  The lying is taking place now, by Democrats who want to rewrite history so that President Obama doesn't look like the failure that he is.

Here's video of what President Obama said in 2009, after The Surge's success, and what both he and Joe Biden were saying when it was introduced by President Bush.

I say again:   The lying is taking place now, by Democrats who want to rewrite history so that President Obama doesn't look like the failure that he is.

Update, 6/19/14: Here's Slow Joe in 2010:

This President Could Screw Up Boiling Water

From the Washington Post, hardly a conservative mouthpiece:

In 2011, the situation in Iraq was so good that the Obama administration was actually trying to take credit for it, with Vice President Joe Biden declaring that Iraq “could be one of the great achievements of this administration.”

Now in 2014, as Iraq descends into chaos, Democrats are trying to blame the fiasco on — you guessed it — George W. Bush. “I don’t think this is our responsibility,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, declaring that the unfolding disaster in Iraq “represents the failed policies that took us down this path 10 years ago.”

Sorry, but this is a mess of President Obama’s making.

When Obama took office he inherited a pacified Iraq, where the terrorists had been defeated both militarily and ideologically.

Militarily, thanks to Bush’s surge, coupled with the Sunni Awakening, al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI, now the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS) was driven from the strongholds it had established in Anbar and other Iraqi provinces. It controlled no major territory, and its top leader — Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — had been killed by U.S. Special Operations forces.

Ideologically, the terrorists had suffered a popular rejection. Iraq was supposed to be a place where al-Qaeda rallied the Sunni masses to drive America out, but instead, the Sunnis joined with Americans to drive al-Qaeda out — a massive ideological defeat.

Obama took that inheritance and squandered it, with two catastrophic mistakes:

First, he withdrew all U.S. forces from Iraq — allowing the defeated terrorists to regroup and reconstitute themselves.

Second, he failed to support the moderate, pro-Western opposition in neighboring Syria — creating room for ISIS to fill the security vacuum. ISIS took over large swaths of Syrian territory, established a safe haven, used it to recruit and train thousands of jihadists, and prepared their current offensive in Iraq.

The result: When Obama took office, the terrorists had been driven from their safe havens; now they are on threatening to take control of a nation. Iraq is on the cusp of turning into what Afghanistan was in the 1990s — a safe haven from which to plan attacks on America and its allies.

It did not have to be this way.

Since I've Been Gone

It's been over a week since I've heard any news of the outside world.  I get back to the land of the fast internet and what do I find that I missed?

1)  Iraq, the war touted in 2010 as an Obama success story, is crumbling with shades of 1975 Saigon.
2)  The IRS doesn't have 2 years' worth of Lois Lerner's emails?  Really?
3)  Hillary Clinton beclowns herself.

If ours were a banana republic we'd be laughing at the absurdity of its ruling class.  Sadly, though, this is serious.

I'm home :-)

Obama: Also Against The Iraq War Before He Supported It

The man knows partisanship and little else:

Today, President Obama came full circle, explicitly defending the Iraq War in a speech in Brussels as he tried to counter arguments by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin has used the example of American intervention in Iraq (among other places) in an attempt to justify Russia's intervention in, and annexation of, the Crimea.

Moreover, Russia has pointed to America’s decision to go into Iraq as an example of Western hypocrisy.  Now, it is true that the Iraq War was a subject of vigorous debate not just around the world, but in the United States as well.  I participated in that debate and I opposed our military intervention there.  But even in Iraq, America sought to work within the international system.  We did not claim or annex Iraq’s territory.  We did not grab its resources for our own gain.  Instead, we ended our war and left Iraq to its people and a fully sovereign Iraqi state that could make decisions about its own future.

Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post is quite outraged by the remarks above, and responds point-by-point to the president's defense of the war with familiar left-wing arguments.

You don't have to agree that the entire effort was an attempt to enrich Halliburton in order to feel a small amount of empathy for Grim and the serious-minded "progressives" who took Obama at his word. (Only a small amount--they were quite eager to be duped.)

Yes, Obama still notes that he opposed the Iraq war. But there is no longer any philosophical or practical basis for his opposition, at least judged by his own actions in office.

What is left of his anti-war stance--such as it was--is pure partisanship, the same calculation that saw him rail against raising the debt ceiling as a Senator, then, once in the White House, insist that Congress raise it repeatedly.

He's a failure and an embarrassment.

"Let Me Be Clear"--Our Economy Is In The Crapper Because Of This President's Policies and Beliefs

As I've had a busy day and need to go rest and recover, let's just string together a few different articles I've read and see what picture they form as a result. First, from the Daily Caller:

A cascade of bad economic and political news knocked President Barack Obama off his game today, and prompted him to revive his 2008-style criticism of his predecessor, and also to suggest that investors, consumers and even the media are responsible for today’s stalled economy.

The blame-game rhetoric – which pollsters say is counterproductive – came during the White House’s joint press conference with Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel. “It is just very important for folks to remember how close we came to complete disaster,” he told the watching TV cameras and reporters...

Obama’s misstep at the Tuesday press conference followed several days of bad news showing the economy produced only 54,000 jobs in May and spiked the formal unemployment rate to 9.1 percent. His economic adviser resigned, and a new poll showed his economic record getting record-low ratings and that he was trailing Gov. Mitt Romney by a few points among registered voters.

Let's remember, this guy his been president for 2-1/2 years and up until a half a year ago, his political party had run both houses of Congress for 4 years. Charlie Cook agrees with me: Obama owns this debacle:

While I generally loathe press releases, I have to admit that one caught my eye on Monday morning. The e-mail release from the Republican National Committee simply said, “They Own It.”

As I expected, “They” referred to President Obama and Democrats, and “It” referred to the economy. Within the first six months or even a year of a new administration, it’s fair game to blame predecessors for any problems. Indeed, it’s a legitimate and time-honored tradition by presidents of both parties. But such arguments get much less convincing as the second year comes to an end. Once into the third year, such claims sound downright silly. Gradually, any president and any administration take ownership of the problems facing the country.

And Charlie's liberal enough to think to that the stimulus was too little!

Well, let's look at that three-quarters of a trillion dollar stimulus--as much money as has been spent on the Iraq war!--and see what we were promised and what we got:

Back in January 2009, Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein produced a report estimating future unemployment rates with and without a stimulus plan. Their estimates, which were widely circulated, projected that unemployment would approach 9% without a stimulus, but would never exceed 8% with the plan. The estimates, along with real unemployment rates, are posted below:

You can blame President Bush all day long, lefties, but this is on you. You got what you wanted, with a grand total of 3 Republican votes (if memory serves) in the entire 535-seat Congress, and this is the result.

History tells us how to fix this, but it's you liberals who are too hellbent on your ideology to see reality and fix the problem. Your failed beliefs are dragging out a recession far beyond when it should have ended, just like Roosevelt's policies dragged out the Great Depression for 7 extra years.

And wishing it weren't so doesn't change the facts.

Update, 6/9/11: This New York Post column doesn't pull any punches, either:

The growth in GDP declined to a measly 1.8 percent in the first quarter of 2011 as consumers hung desperately onto their wallets. Job growth has completely collapsed. Fully 60 percent of the electorate thinks the country is on the wrong track. No wonder the daily economic briefing, once on a par with the intelligence briefing, has vanished from President Obama's schedule.

Heckuva job, guys.

And now Obama says he's not worried about a double-dip recession. Easy for him to say: For Americans not feeding at the government trough, the first recession never ended.

We are witnessing the total failure of academic Keynesian economics, with its heavy emphasis on high taxes and exorbitant government spending. Yet Obama sails blithely on, already in full campaign mode and still blaming George W. Bush and the Republicans (admittedly no models of fiscal restraint or responsibility) for everything.

Here on this blog I used to criticize President Bush and the Republican Congress for "spending money like a drunken sailor in a Southeast Asian port", but they were models of fiscal restraint and responsibility compared to the Pelosi/Reid Congress and President Obama.

Update #2, 6/10/11: Here's another chart, and the Keynesians aren't going to like it.

Again, I won’t pretend this proves anything, however, it does suggest to me that continued massive government spending is not going to turn around the job market.

Libya and Iraq

I'm hard-pressed to argue the spirit of these points:

Obviously, the biggest problem with Bush was sending the military into an Arab Muslim country that hadn’t even attacked us. Among the several things that made that offensive were
* the rush to war – it was only several months after the possibility of military involvement was raised that combat operations began
* lack of United Nations sanction – only 17 relevant resolutions were ever passed before they were enforced
* lack of Congressional oversight – the President authorized the use of military force based on the flimsy pretext of a bill passed by Congress titled “Authorization of the Use of Military Force”, rather than seeking a document that had the words “declaration of war” in it; that’s every bit as bad as getting no Congressional approval at all
* obvious financial motives – clearly no one approved of the murderous dictator or sought a normal working relationship with him besides the French; at the same time, one couldn’t help but be suspicious of the fact that the population we were ostensibly protecting was located conveniently near the oil fields
* stretching our military – we were overburdened as it was, and our brave military despite its courage lacked the resources for yet another operation
* inflating our military – the only way to keep the bloodthirsty Pentagon beast fed was to give it the hordes of jobless young men who had no prospects in an economy that saw unemployment skyrocket above 4% in most states
* ignoring our generals – the decision to go to war was made by political hacks who had never worn a uniform
* inflaming the Arab Street – despite some touchy-feely talk about Islam, it was impossible for the Muslim world not to notice how the President made repeated, insistent proclamations of his Christianity, how he only ever used the military against Muslim targets, and how at the time the war started he’d kept the concentration camp at Guantanamo open for over a year
* wasting money – it was completely irresponsible to commit the military to an expensive mission when the President’s fiscal mismanagement had resulted in a budget deficit of over $150 billion in 2002

Update, 3/20/11: Just came across this entertaining tidbit, just to needle the lefties: Barack Obama has now been responsible for firing more cruise missiles than all other Nobel Peace prize winners combined.

Update, 3/21/11: Candidate Obama v. President Obama on the subject of military attacks.