Through First Hundred Days New Boss Seems Same as Old Boss

Running on a platform of change, President Obama stated that if elected his actions would be different than those of the previous President. The direction of his administration would be one-hundred and eighty degrees from that of his predecessor. Previous policies would be changed to suit the ideological style of President Obama’s administration. However, since Obama’s election the bearing of his administration, at least on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, has been anything but a distinctive change. For example, during the 2008 presidential election campaign Obama promised to withdraw troops from Iraq over a certain shortened time period. Now President Obama has stated that a large number of troops will remain in Iraq for nineteen months, which is longer than promised in the 2008 election, and many for an undefined amount of time after that. In regards to Afghanistan, Obama has actually increased the amount of troops within Afghanistan by 21,000. Strange tactics for someone so different from the previous president.

The way in which Afghanistan and Iraq have been handled through the first one hundred days has disappointing for some of those who supported President Obama during his campaign. Most change that has occurred has been simply semantic in nature. Instead of calling the actions taken against terrorism by the Bush administration label “war on terror”, Obama’s administration calls them “overseas contingency operations”. Instead of calling attacks or actions by rogue groups terrorist attacks Obama’s administration calls them “mancaused disasters”. While we no longer indefinitely hold “enemy combatants”, we do still hold those we catch on the battlefield who do not use the laws of war, which is the definition of enemy combatant, indefinitely. With such little change occurring in the realm of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq between administrations, former supporters have begun to become disillusioned by President Obama. Some have called his administration merely an extension of Bush’s more accommodationist second term. Yet, the similarities do not only come in the way in which manpower and troop movements are used; spending on the war effort has also changed little to none.

Recently Obama requested $83.4 billion in order to prevent abrupt troop withdrawals. This request brings the total amount spent on the two wars to close to $1 trillion since their beginning in 2001. This request is meant to cover the remainder of operations in 2009. Previously Obama has criticized such supplemental spending moves due to the belief that war spending should be handled by the Pentagon. Yet, once in office the necessity for such supplemental spending bills has become apparent to Obama it seems. Reality has struck President Obama. Now that he is actually in office he is starting to see how difficult it is to operate the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq the way in which he had stated during the campaign. Strategies, tactics, and spending have stayed relatively consistent from the last President to this one.