'Dithering' Obama--Are They Serious?

If you haven't had a chance to look at the video of President Barack Obama greeting fallen soldiers as they are carried in their flagged-draped coffins by six white-gloved soldiers, I suggest you do so.

The president is often a role swathed in pomp and circumstance, so it's easy to forget that the commander-in-chief moniker is not just another honorific.

These young women and men were killed, because the president of the United States authorized sending them overseas to fight in a difficult war. It is a decision that can end with a soldier being transported home in a casket. It is a decision that has resulted in thousands of soldiers' deaths and hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths since the United States began engaging in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Whether you agree with the war, it is difficult to see those caskets carried off of that cargo plane.

That's why it agitates me when people, such as former Vice President Dick Cheney (who is more conspicuous now than when he was in office) accuse President Obama of "dithering" on his decision about whether to send more troops to Afghanistan.

"Make no mistake, signals of indecision out of Washington hurt our allies and embolden our adversaries. ... It is time for President Obama to do what it takes to win a war he has repeatedly and rightly called a war of necessity. ...The White House must stop dithering while America's armed forces are in danger," Cheney said in a ceremony where he accepted an award from the Center for Security Policy, a conservative think tank.

Would Cheney rather Obama behave like former President George W. Bush, who infamously dubbed himself the "great decider"? Bush notoriously made snap decisions based on his gut feelings, such as whether to invade Iraq, and then impulsively and ridiculously declared the war over after hopping out of a fighter jet. Or how about his decision to keep Donald Rumsfeld in charge at the Pentagon despite signs that he had failed?Those are the types of issues I want my president to deliberate about for a minute or two. Maybe it would be wise for the president to seek counsel from those with greater expertise on the subject matter and then hear opposing arguments.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, charged with leading the war in Afghanistan, has requested anywhere from 40,000 to 80,000 additional troops. Hundreds of thousands of Americans will be affected by those deployments or, in many cases, redeployments. To me, that sounds like good decision making, not dithering.

And I want the president to be especially deliberative when it involves sending Americans into harm's way.

One writer argued that the president does not have the leeway to be deliberative about his decisions, because the nature of war requires quick decisions:

While President Obama continues dithering in his deliberative way, Americans continue to die in Afghanistan, the Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies continue to grow in strength, and more ordinary Afghanis wonder whether it might be time to throw in with the insurgents as the strongest side.

This isn't some two-bit disaster movie, where the president decides the fate of all humanity on a whim because we are about to be destroyed by aliens. There are times when quick action is needed, and I think President Obama is capable of doing so. President Obama is expected to make a decision about Afghanistan in less than a month. It's less than a year since he took office. As the president's chief of staff points out, we are in this predicament in Afghanistan precisely because Bush ignored the situation in favor of pursuing an invasion of Iraq:

Mr. Emanuel said the decision facing the president was more complex than simply whether to send in more soldiers."When you go through all the analysis, it's clear that basically we had a war for eight years that was going on, that's adrift, that we're beginning at scratch," he said.

Since the Bush administration left this important issue unfinished for so long, Obama has not only the right, but the obligation, to be thoughtful about how to proceed. In fact, it seems that Bush's self-formation as "the decider" may have been a myth.

The former president dithered on issues, such as Iran, North Korea and the Arab-Israeli conflict. I can throw in a couple more. How about how clueless and indecisive the president looked on the morning of September 11? Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has based a run for president, and possibly for the governor of New York, on the fact that he looked like he was in charge on that terrible day.

And then there was Bush's "swift" and decisive decision making when it came to the federal government's reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The Great Decider could have decided not to let American citizens sit stranded for days by making a decision to be prepared for these types of disasters or making a decision to expedite aid.

President Obama already deserves the title of "the decider" more than Bush (although I'm not sure why anyone would want that title), because he is making important decisions about how to deal with the mess Bush left behind on everything from the economy to health care.

More importantly, President Obama has decided that some decisions are too important too rush.

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