A very disappointing and very difficult to respect speech last night from the President.  Is there any reason not related to partisan politics why over twenty thousand American troops are being withdrawn timed to September of next year (still during the fighting season) rather than winter?  Why not just synchronize a withdrawal with Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention?  I can't think of the right words to describe the awful reality that yesterday's speech made no reference to the drawdown being conditions-based, but did include a (thinly veiled) plug of Obama's proposed green energy subsidies. 

But let us also give bitter applause to President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.  It was their mismanagement of the occupation phases of Iraq and Afghanistan and their mismanagement of the military's force structure that helped bring this to pass.  Even when Bush (rather late) realized that the circumstances required a counterinsurgency strategy, the force was too small and too stressed to fully and simultaneously resource counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.  It is not for nothing that the full Afghan counterinsurgency strategy was implemented by Obama.  It is too bad that Obama seems to be cutting it off too early and taking dangerous risks for a terrible reason.