The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
News of the Tautological
“Band of Robbers Breaks Into New Jersey Apple Store, Stealing Laptops, iPhones and iPods”–headline, FoxNews.com, Sept. 3
9/11 and 9/9
America is at war, and next week the president will address a joint session of Congress.
The president’s speech comes at a time of both military and political adversity. August was the deadliest month for U.S. troops in the nearly eight-year Afghan conflict. Military leaders are expected to ask for more troops to combat a resurgent enemy, but the president’s political advisers are divided over whether to grant the request. The president has been losing support for the war both within his own party and among the public. A prominent Democratic senator has flatly called for withdrawal, while one poll shows that 57% of Americans now oppose the war effort.
The timing of the president’s speech is also symbolically important. Next week marks the eighth anniversary of the attack that provoked the war–a terrorist assault that killed some 3,000 people, mostly civilians, on American soil. There could hardly be a better time for the president to rally the public, to remind Americans why this is, as he has said, “a war of necessity . . . not only a war worth fighting,” but one that “is fundamental to the defense of our people.”
Will the president even mention Afghanistan in next week’s address to Congress? The question alone exposes the topsy-turvy priorities of Barack Obama’s Washington.
According to news reports, the primary purpose of the president’s address to Congress is to make a sales pitch for his proposal that would vastly expand government involvement in the health-care industry–a proposal that has already sparked a nationwide popular revolt.
Because Obama insisted on launching a war that should have never been waged, and then doubling down on a failed strategy, the war in Afghanistan has been ignored. If Afghanistan burns while the president is fiddling with health insurance, he could be remembered for one of the greatest abdications of responsibility in the history of the American presidency.
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