The Right Backs Obama, Sort Of

When it was launched in March, the Foreign Policy Initiative ‘s mission was always to back robust, whatever-it-takes operations in Afghanistan. I see that FPI’s founders Bill Kristol and Dan Senor are living up to their promise. In a remarkably snide write-up, Kristol spends a lot of time saying “I told you so” but a little, more important, time praising President Obama for having “empowered his general, Stanley McChrystal, to fight the war pretty much as he thinks necessary to in order to win.” In a Republican National Committee conference call before the speech, Senor backed the president’s move and urged him to “make it clear this will not be the last speech on the subject, but the first of many.”

Republican messaging on the decision is still in the early stages. Rep. Doug Lamborn, a conservative House Republican from Colorado, answered Obama with a statement praising the decision but hitting the president on two issues — floating a possible start to withdrawal in 2011 and having the audacity to talk about how the war must be honestly funded. “This President has shown no fiscal restraint whatsoever for the past year and now he is pushing for an unaffordable healthcare scheme,” said Lamborn. “His concern for the costs of this war seems insincere at best.”