THERE'S CONTAINMENT, AND THEN THERE'S "FREEDOM CONTAINMENT," I GUESS

The current lead story at Fox Nation is this:



There's a clip at the link if you want to watch it, but here's the (wordy) key quote from Charles Krauthammer:

There was agreement among the top advisers of Obama himself, his top notch security advisers, that he was indecisive, that he let opportunities pass, the most important one of course is the one that Obama disputes, and that is the abandonment of Iraq, the withdrawal of all our troops, when the military and all the advisors, including two Democrats and one Republican, his highest advisors were telling him to leave behind a residual force so that we could influence the government in Iraq as we had before and to prevent the sectarianism which led to the renewal of the civil war, and the renewal of involving us again. That was all predictable.

So this a way of his advisers saying he made the wrong choices at a time when we were at a crucial crossroads and he has been afraid. I think what we're seeing now with his inability and unwillingness to help in the fight in Kobani, to a very critical fight where ISIS now has the upper hand, Obama seems to want to contain the situation until the end of his term and then hand it off.

Okay, here's what I don't get: What's the difference between leaving a "residual force" in a country (presumably for up to a hundred years, or a thousand years, or a million years, as John McCain said in 2008) and "contain[ing] the situation" until the end of your term, after which you "hand it off"? I guess it's Kenyan Muslim Socialist Containment if we do it Obama's way, but if we do it the Republican way it's Reagan Containment!, or Freedom Containment!, or something like that, so it's totally different.

Krauthammer, of course, is echoing that great military theorist Sarah Palin, who said this recently on her cable channel:

If we do decide that ISIS is a direct threat to our security, then of course we must go in -- we must defeat them over there. But we have to be in it to win it!

... We defeat them, and then we get out. Only this time, let's listen to those on the ground, top brass of military, the experts, who are saying, mmm, we do need a residual force, staying there to make sure this doesn't happen again.

As Wonkette's Dan Weber says:

How would we both "get out" and also leave behind a "residual force, staying there?" Jeez, you Dumbocraps just don't get it, do you? That you could even ask such a question shows the depth of your contempt for the military.

Damn straight! FREEDOM! MOLON LABE! BREITBART LIVES!