Obama does Lincoln: Why doesn’t he just grow a beard and buy a top hat?
What struck me most about the president’s speech is not that he plans to cut the American presence in Afghanistan but that he committed us to staying there for several more years. And again, the Lincolnesque rhetoric. Obama last night: “Now, let us finish the work at hand. Let us responsibly end these wars, and ...
What struck me most about the president's speech is not that he plans to cut the American presence in Afghanistan but that he committed us to staying there for several more years.
What struck me most about the president’s speech is not that he plans to cut the American presence in Afghanistan but that he committed us to staying there for several more years.
And again, the Lincolnesque rhetoric.
Obama last night:
“Now, let us finish the work at hand. Let us responsibly end these wars, and reclaim the American Dream that is at the center of our story. With confidence in our cause; with faith in our fellow citizens; and with hope in our hearts, let us go about the work of extending the promise of America — for this generation, and the next.”
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
(HT to RF)
Thomas E. Ricks is a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy. Twitter: @tomricks1
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