To tweak the punchline of an old joke -- what's this talk of invading, paleface?
Unleashing the bellicosity that's been kept corked since MSNBC put the kibosh on his "Psycho Talk" segments, Ed Schultz has weighed in at The Huffington Post in an op-ed titled "Why I Support President Obama's Decision to Invade Libya."
Psst, Ed -- we haven't invaded Libya, at least not yet. And I'd venture to say that most Americans don't expect we will, at least if Obama is to be believed. Remember how he said American troops would not be sent there? The president was pretty emphatic about it, as I recall. Agreed, it was all of eight days ago, distant enough that it slipped down your memory hole.
What's most amusing about Schultz as shill for Obama's exercise in foreign-policy resume building is that Schultz vilified Sen. John McCain during the 2008 campaign as a "warmonger." It brought considerable attention to Schultz at the time, which was surely his motivation for saying it, and Schultz has repeated it ad nauseum ever since. Now Schultz is gushing about actions taken by Obama that are indistinguishable from those that President McCain would have taken.
Correction -- this isn't amusing. It's pathetic.
Schultz writes at HuffPo that after nearly a decade of war in Afghanistan and eight years in Iraq, "I think many of us have war fatigue. I think we all deserve clarity on this issue. However, it's important to note, President Obama explained this won't be a long-term operation. Matter of days, not a matter of weeks. Not even months."
Obama, and Schultz, believing this based on the confident expectation that wars always go according to plan.
Republicans, Schultz writes, "are hammering the president not because he is not invading the entire Middle East, but because he's not doing it the way they would want to do it.'" (italics in original).
Wow, talk about getting tied up in nots. As for those shadowy Republicans who want to invade "the entire Middle East" -- insert frantic Maddow hand-waving here -- Schultz cites exactly none.
"This president, President Obama, has made his choice," Schultz writes. "And it is his leadership. He inherited Iraq. He inherited Afghanistan. And now, he has made a decision to invade Libya."
Enough with the hand-me-downs, he wants his own splendid little war.
