No, actually, I think not. A "herring" (by which I think you mean, red herring?) is a ploy to divert attention.
I honestly think Obama doesn't understand Totten's fundamental point. He sees the war in Iraq in isolation from the war in Afghanistan; and he clearly doesn't understand Iran's role in worldwide terrorism, nor the dangers Iran actually poses to the world (think oil, for one thing).
To put it in McCain's words, Obama doesn't understand the difference between a tactic and a strategy. I think it's worse than that: he doesn't even understand the real issues behind this war, nor the true stakes involved.
He's an ambitious, self-aggrandizing fool.
“He sees the war in Iraq in isolation from the war in Afghanistan; and he clearly doesn’t understand Iran’s role in worldwide terrorism, nor the dangers Iran actually poses to the world (think oil, for one thing).
To put it in McCain’s words, Obama doesn’t understand the difference between a tactic and a strategy. I think it’s worse than that: he doesn’t even understand the real issues behind this war, nor the true stakes involved. “
The war in Iraq become unpopular because Bush administration lost the communication war (actually they acted like they have no idea what the info-war is and that it was waged against us from outside and by own useful-idiots on the left). So, people conveniently forgot that Saddam’s regime presented a danger and after 9/11, when unimaginable became the reality, could not be tolerated anymore. There was low-level war with Iraq all these years after his surrender in 1991, and he defied sanctions every chance he got. If left unchecked, he would continue development of WMDs and already was proven willing to use them and displayed lack of constraint and judgment. All conveniently forget the fiery speeches by prominent Democrats against Saddam and that Clinton did see him dangerous enough to bomb on ocasion.
Iraq war is treated now like absolutely unnecessary choice. 2 things are missing. First: while there were definitely mistakes in the nation-building stage of this war, these mistakes are trivial comparing to mistakes in previous wars. That it took so long, is our impatient perspective - conditions should have ripened properly, things should have percolated like they did, bad guys needed to be killed, Sunnis should have experienced Al-Quada’s atrocities until they believed them to be enemies. Our enemies are much more patient. All that above took time. Now, the second point: if Saddam was left in power for all these years - would we still continue low-level war with him? If left unchecked, would the danger from him suddenly evaporated? Why?
Our wishful-thinking-useful-idiots friends on the Left forget that we don’t act in vacuum, that our enemies plan and act, and consequences of our inaction are as real as of our action.
Gosh, I’d love to be magically transported into the perfect world of our leftist lunatics and sing kumbaya peacefully somewhere....
But, He is no stranger to the use of taqiyya, as in "I am not a Muslim," or Brer Rabbit, "Please don't throw me that Briar Patch," or Heinrich Himmler, "Repeat a lie enough times and it becomes the truth."
The allusion to Himmler and Hitler is not really a stretch after seeing "Obama's Youth Movement"on YouTube.
"Yes we can?"
How about, "No, you don't!"
He's an ambitious, self-aggrandizing fool.
And about as dangerous as it gets.