For someone who is constantly referred to as "naive" by his opponents, Senator Obama seems to be making quite an impression on his trip to Afghanistan and the Middle East. In a statement that shocked many people, Iraq's Prime Minister al- Maliki publicaly voiced his support for Obama's withdrawal timetable.
It isn't that I disagree with Senator McCain's strategy for Iraq, I just don't know what it is. Certainly, violence has waned over the last few months, but how will success be defined? Against whom are we fighting in Iraq and what is our objective there? The senior Senator has also been strangely mute on Afghanistan despite the fact that the situation seems to have devolved into chaos.
Obama has been consistently declaring the need to focus on Pakistan as elements there are the main backers and funders of militant groups in Afghanistan. In today's LA TImes, I saw a photograph of thousands of mourners in Pakistan of a senior Taliban commander who was killed between the two countries. I sound like a broken record, but why isn't Pakistan in our lexicon?
As our fiscal crisis' balloons, many in America seems to not want to think about the fact that we are engaged in multiple conflicts overseas. Perhaps if we weren't and our priorities were straight from the beginning, what we are dealing with economically might not be so severe. Instead, we are close to a trillion dollars into a war in a country that had no WMD's to begin with and losing ground in one that we should have focused on at the start.
Our leadership really dropped the ball, people should have been fired.
If you don't want to take my word for it, that's ok, do some more research and find out for your self.
After being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Obama has continued his record of support for animal protection laws. He voted to end the federal funding of horse slaughter in 2005, and he is currently a co-sponsor of new legislation to stop horse slaughter and the export of horses for human consumption. He co-sponsored legislation which was enacted this May to upgrade the federal penalties for dogfighting and cockfighting, and he is a co-sponsor of new legislation to ban the possession of fighting dogs and being a spectator at a dogfight. He signed a letter requesting increased funds for the enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act, Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, and the federal animal fighting law, and he also sent a letter to the National Zoo expressing his concern for the care of Toni the elephant.