The War, Obama and His Acolytes - A Flip Of Unimaginable Cynicism

David Limbaugh writes: What the Obama Cult Factor Portends

Excerpt:

Given the nation's Bush fatigue -- no matter how unjustified from a broad historical perspective -- and Bush's very low approval ratings, it only made sense for Democratic presidential aspirants to make themselves the anti-Bush.

Because the Iraq war was perceived as Bush's greatest sin and almost all other sins flowed from Iraq or were somehow conflated with it -- Abu Ghraib, rendition, waterboarding, "unilateralism," NSA surveillance, Halliburton, Gitmo, etc. -- Obama was uniquely positioned to be the anti-Bush.
...
Although Obama certainly articulated policies that were contrary to the status quo under President Bush, many of his supporters didn't care or weren't the slightest bit informed about the specifics of his policies. They were just swept up in his personality cult and nebulous promises of hope and change.

So it should be no surprise that Obama's series of head-spinning reversals so far have been met not with outrage from his supporters (fringe leftists excepted), but with glib rationalizations.

His newfound vacillation about Gitmo and NSA surveillance, his flip-flop on withdrawing from Iraq in 16 months, and his announced Cabinet appointments -- particularly Gates and Clinton -- are not being criticized as betrayals, but lauded as evidence that he is open-minded, adaptable, wise and, of course, presidential.

He's facing nary a shred of accountability for his anticipatory breaches of campaign promises. His flock is just happy that he will be implementing these policies -- not President Bush.

All of this says so many things about our electorate and the coming climate for the Obama presidency, but I'll just leave you with two quick ones. First, it shows that most of the hatred for Bush was not based on his policies, but on the eight-year hate-filled propaganda campaign against him.

Read the whole thing.

Limbaugh makes a very important point that should be repeated time and again as we go on: if Obama continues Bush’s policies on Iraq after denouncing them during the campaign, and his supporters do not denounce him for doing so, we have incontrovertible proof that BDS – whipped up by the media and academia – is not just a hypothesis but a fact. It also shows that Obama’s followers are not issue oriented but personality oriented. But we knew that, didn’t we?

UPDATE: 'Muted by Reality' Now that Obama has won, we could be in Iraq for a hundred years.
From Best of the web in the Wall Street Journal we read

Barack Obama was elected president a month ago and does not take office for another 6½ weeks. But his most fervent supporters already have reason to be disappointed in him. Witness the headline of a "news analysis" in today's New York Times: "Campaign Promises on Ending the War in Iraq Now Muted by Reality."

"As he moves closer to the White House," the Times reveals, "President-elect Obama is making clearer than ever that tens of thousands of American troops will be left behind in Iraq, even if he can make good on his campaign promise to pull all combat forces out within 16 months." That itself is a big "if," as the Times acknowledges:

That status-of-forces agreement remains subject to change, by mutual agreement, and Army planners acknowledge privately that they are examining projections that could see the number of Americans hovering between 30,000 and 50,000--and some say as high as 70,000--for a substantial time even beyond 2011.

We may be in Iraq for a hundred years! The Times notes that "there always was a tension, if not a bit of a contradiction, in the two parts of Mr. Obama's campaign platform to 'end the war' by withdrawing all combat troops by May 2010":

To be sure, Mr. Obama was careful to say that the drawdowns he was promising included only combat troops. But supporters who keyed on the language of ending the war might be forgiven if they thought that would mean bringing home all of the troops.

Hmm, here is what the Times editorial page said about the subject when it endorsed Obama back in October:

The unnecessary and staggeringly costly war in Iraq must be ended as quickly and responsibly as possible.
While Iraq's leaders insist on a swift drawdown of American troops and a deadline for the end of the occupation, Mr. McCain is still talking about some ill-defined "victory." As a result, he has offered no real plan for extracting American troops and limiting any further damage to Iraq and its neighbors.
Mr. Obama was an early and thoughtful opponent of the war in Iraq, and he has presented a military and diplomatic plan for withdrawing American forces. Mr. Obama also has correctly warned that until the Pentagon starts pulling troops out of Iraq, there will not be enough troops to defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

It is awfully generous of the Times to forgive Obama's supporters for believing what they read in the Times.

It must be said that not everyone is surprised to find Obama's campaign promises "muted by reality." Those of us who were paying attention to reality before Nov. 4 never took Obama's pledge to flee Iraq seriously. Although it is especially repugnant to seek political gain by promising to lose a war, it is also common for presidential candidates to make unrealistic promises, especially on foreign policy, and disregard them once elected. (Remember how George W. Bush was going to stop "nation building" and Bill Clinton was going to get tough on the Red Chinese?)

Obama thus is carrying on a long tradition of making empty and irresponsible promises. While he may deliver victory in Iraq, his war against cynicism has already been lost.

This incredible back-flip by the NY Slimes and the rest of Obama's acolytes is simply staggering. It is evidence that they did not believe their own propaganda at the time they were writing it. and give us not reason to believe a word they say now.