It should probably be a warning sign to President Obama that MSNBC is slamming one of the administration’s proposals for our role in Afghanistan after 2014 for being too dovish. On a conference call with reporters yesterday, deputy national-security adviser Ben Rhodes was asked whether the administration is contemplating a full withdrawal from Afghanistan. His answer? “That would be an option we would consider.”
That did not sit well with the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus, no war monger, who spoke about the zero option on MSNBC earlier today. “The zero option is something that should scare not just President Karzai, but should scare us,” she told a nodding Andrea Mitchell, “because, in my view, it basically says ‘we give up,’ ‘we quit,’ ‘the progress that we made is untenable and we might as well not even try to keep it,’ because from the military officials that I’ve spoken to, they don’t need tens of thousands of soldiers, but they need a force, maybe it’s several thousand to 10,000, to maintain the progress that has been made, and if you give that up, you’re giving up a lot of things . . . including the progress that’s been made for Afghan women as the Taliban returns.”
This is a time when the term “war on women” might be a little more appropriate. As far as President Obama is concerned, though, when you’re getting to the left of MSNBC, it may be a good time to pause and take stock. Then again, there’s always Al Jazeera.
