{"id":9685,"date":"2012-03-14T09:19:31","date_gmt":"2012-03-14T16:19:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=9685"},"modified":"2012-03-14T09:19:31","modified_gmt":"2012-03-14T16:19:31","slug":"ruthlessness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2012\/03\/14\/ruthlessness\/","title":{"rendered":"Ruthlessness"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Republican Presidential hopefuls are simultaneously out-hawking and out-doving President Obama on Afghanistan<\/a>. <\/p>\n

In an interview Monday on NBC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Today\u00e2\u20ac\u009d show, Mr. Santorum, long among the most hawkish Republican candidates on Afghanistan, signaled that it was time to review America\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s options. One option, he said, was to leave even sooner than called for in the timeline laid out by the Obama administration, which would turn over security to Afghan forces by 2014 and end the leading combat role for American troops by next year.<\/span>
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We have to either make the decision to make a full commitment, which this president has not done, or we have to decide to get out, and probably get out sooner,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Mr. Santorum said.”<\/span>
One day earlier, Mr. Gingrich, who had previously voiced concern over the direction of the Afghan war, declared on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Face the Nation\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that it was time to leave the country.<\/span>
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We need to understand that our being in the middle of countries like Afghanistan is probably counterproductive,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Mr. Gingrich said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not prepared to be ruthless enough to force them to change. And yet we are clearly an alien presence.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/span>
He added on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Fox News Sunday\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that he feared the mission was one \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to discover is not doable.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/span><\/p>\n

The phrase that pays here, from Mr. Newt Gingrich “We’re not prepared to be ruthless enough”.<\/p>\n

And cue this item:<\/p>\n

The comments by Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Santorum came after news that a United States Army sergeant was suspected of walking off his base in southern Afghanistan and killing 16 Afghan civilians, many of them children.<\/p>\n

This is one of the components to Obama’s sudden slide in approval numbers — so perhaps he has a point on the American public psyche opinion.  If American opinion could be tied to approve or accept this — Newt would be all “Full Speed Ahead”.
It bears mentioning, Obama’s Afghan policy has always seemed in part an effort to out-hawk flank against his out-dove visa vie Iraq and the “Dumb War”… politically speak-wise.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Republican Presidential hopefuls are simultaneously out-hawking and out-doving President Obama on Afghanistan. In an interview Monday on NBC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Today\u00e2\u20ac\u009d show, Mr. Santorum, long among the most hawkish Republican candidates on Afghanistan, signaled that it was time to review America\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s options. One option, he said, was to leave even sooner than called for in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9685"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9687,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9685\/revisions\/9687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}