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Tomorrow, President Obama and other world leaders will commemorate the 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France. There are still living survivors of that "longest day," but they are getting fewer and fewer with each year's anniversary. Even the youngest of those on the beaches that day are now in their 80s, and they won't be with us much longer.
When one usually speaks of the "fog of war," the term is generally understood to mean the disorganization of combat. When battles are fought, it is often unclear as to what is going on, whether you're a private in the trenches or a rear-echelon officer trying to keep on top of a developing situation under your command. What is also understood is that after a while, the fog usually clears somewhat. Things which aren't immediately apparent become clarified when enough time has passed for accurate reports of the situation to come in.
President Obama's job approval ratings continued to improve, slowly, in the month of May. In five out of the last six months, in fact, Obama's numbers have gotten better. He is now roughly where he was right before the impact of the Obamacare website rollout hit his approval rating. This is still not fantastic territory for any president's approval rating to be in, but it does represent a steady increase as Obama has won back people he lost in the Obamacare website disaster. However, this trend may now be flattening out, meaning June's numbers may not be as positive. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's start with a look at last month's chart:
It has been a momentous week, with the resignation (read: "firing") of a cabinet secretary, a presidential speech on America's foreign and military policy, and the announcement of a timetable to bring home the remaining troops in Afghanistan. Plus all the usual Washington squabbling. But one story risks being buried among all this other newsworthy stuff, and that is the vote which happened late last night in the House of Representatives. Because, with a healthy bipartisan majority, they just voted to end the war on medical marijuana forever. If the Senate follows their lead, this could be one of the biggest turning points in ending the federal War On Weed altogether. In other words, it is a momentous event.
In the past month, the Obama White House has found itself at the center of two new scandals. While one is being (so far) treated as a minor matter, it may later grow in importance once Republicans wake up to the political embarrassment potential for the president. The second scandal is systemic and entrenched, and is going to require a lot of drastic action to fix. How Obama reacts to both the "outing" of the C.I.A. station chief in Afghanistan and the ongoing problems at the Veterans Administration will wind up reflecting on his presidential legacy, for better or worse.
Today President Barack Obama announced the beginning of the end of America's longest war. This announcement was fully anticipated and therefore came as no surprise, seeing as how Obama was elected in large part to end two wars. He successfully withdrew all American troops from Iraq in 2011, and he announced today the schedule for withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan. From 32,000 current troops, we will draw down to 9,800 by the end of this year. This number will then shrink by half (to roughly 5,000) by the end of 2015. By the end of 2016, they will all be out (except possibly for a small force left for security, in the range of 1,000 troops or less). Thus will end a 15-year-long war effort -- the longest in American history.
I was all set to write an original Memorial Day column today, and had a subject lined up and everything, but then the subject matter and research just got too depressing. So instead, I'm re-running a column I wrote last summer, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg (and the larger 150th anniversary of the Civil War, which we are still in the midst of).
Before we begin, our sincere condolences to the George W. Bush family for the loss of former White House pet Miss Beazley, who died this week. As always, we are strictly non-partisan in our love for "First Dogs" and "First Cats," because we feel the president's (any president's) humanity can only be improved by having a pet to play with on occasion (the photo of Bush with Miss Beazley which accompanies that article shows exactly what we're talking about). As Harry Truman famously put it: "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog." Our thoughts are with the Bush family in their time of loss.
Today we're turning over the whole talking points section to the president, because he certainly deserves a victory lap after announcing this week that -- against all odds, and against all the slings and arrows of misfortune -- 7.1 million people signed up for health insurance on the Obamacare exchanges.
Today -- the first of April -- Vladimir Putin announced that Russia has officially reabsorbed Alaska. "The Russian territory which has been mistaken referred to as 'the state of Alaska' has now been returned to its rightful and legal owner, Russia. It would be foolish for anyone to ever refer to the Russian Alyaska again as being any part of the United States."