Barack's Iraq

One of the complaints of the left leveled at George W. Bush during the height of the war in Iraq was that Bush went into Iraq with the idea that he could just throw a bunch of bombs into the country, send in the troops, overthrow Saddam and that would be the end of it.  The charge was that there was no real strategy going in and once there, no real strategy to get out.

While Obama has several potential Iraq's (Afghanistan being one of them), General Motors is shaping up to be a big problem. This has been brought to light with the big announcements made this week by GM. It is clear, at least to me, that General Motors is still making the same mistakes that has taken them down a 30 year path to get where they are today.

The administration's attitude seems to be that they can just throw money at GM without a plan, without accountability and without an "exit strategy", so to speak. And just as, month after month, the war in Iraq seemed to go on costing money with no end, keeping GM afloat has the same potential. 

If that were Obama's only challenge, we could probably live with it. It isn't, of course. As I said, there are several other problems that have the potential to become more "Iraqs" for Obama. We still have the situation in Iraq which seems to be deteriorating, the situation in Afghanistan, which is also worsening, nukes in Pakistan which the Taliban is getting closer to, North Korea getting ready to launch missiles, escalating violence spilling over from Mexico, pirates in Somalia ... and I haven't even mentioned the economy.

The reason that these have to potential to become big problems is that it seems the Administration has no real strategy for dealing with any of these problem.

Afghanistan may be the exception.  Obama seems to have committed to dealing with Afghanistan. We'll see whether he has the stomach to stick it out.

When it comes to the other issues, though, it appears Obama is burying his head in the sand.  Ignore it and maybe it will go away. 

For all the complaints leveled by the left about how Bush was dealing with world problems, at least he was dealing with them.