What Not To Do in Foreign Lands

Those 'lecturing' on deficit helped get us here in the first place: Paul Krugman

(NEWSER) - More and more people have been telling Paul Krugman that the budget deficit is the people’s fault: “Weak-minded politicians catered to the electorate’s foolishness.” But that viewpoint is not only “self-serving, it’s dead wrong,” writes Krugman in the New York Times . Instead, we can thank “policies championed by small groups of influential people—in many cases, the same people now lecturing the rest of us on the need to get serious.” They’re behind the deficit’s key factors: the Bush tax cuts, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the Great Recession. More»

But 44 needs to make his case to America

(NEWSER) - When it comes to war, Presidents Bush and Obama really aren’t so different, writes Stephen Carter in Newsweek . While Obama was perceived as the peace candidate, “the office of the presidency, once assumed, transforms the outlook of its holder.” To wit: Obama is essentially recycling Bush's Iraq strategy for Afghanistan, and has expanded the targets in the fight against terror. He's "adopted wholeheartedly what we might call the Bush doctrine's political science" of preemptive strikes. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are "his wars now, nobody else's." More»

... while denouncing the Democrats for doing the same

(NEWSER) - The controversy keeps on flowing from the pages of George Bush's memoir . The top Republican in the Senate urged the president to "bring some troops home from Iraq" to help prevent the party from taking a beating in the 2006 mid-term elections, Bush writes in Decision Points. At the same time, Mitch McConnell was publicly slamming the Democrats for calling for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, Salon notes. More»

Pundits underwhelmed by 'grim' war-end speech

(NEWSER) - The verdicts are in on President Obama's Oval Office address to mark the end of major US combat operations in Iraq, and he apparently didn't please many people.

• The president just wasn't entertaining enough for Bill O'Reilly. The president seemed like a "boring professor," the O'Reilly Factor host complained, criticizing even the way Obama held his hands. "You can’t get him on substance, so you go over his style," guest Alan Colmes retorted.

President declares end of combat operations in Iraq

(NEWSER) - President Obama stuck to the script tonight in declaring the end of the 7-year US military operation in Iraq. "Our combat mission is ending," he said. "Our commitment to Iraq's future is not." But Obama also acknowledged George W. Bush's stewardship of the war, along with his own personal opposition to it as an Illinois senator. "It’s well known that he and I disagreed about the war from its outset," he said. "Yet no one could doubt President Bush’s support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security." (He made no mention of the troop surge ordered by Bush.) More»