It is oft said, "Good men don't start fights or run from them." Plenty of Americans exemplify such cowboy virtue in their personal lives, but American presidents are now establishing a tradition of abandoning such wisdom for the reprehensible extremes of bullying or cowardice. George Bush was barely engaged in a crucial defining struggle in Afghanistan, when he felt compelled to turn his attention to opening a 2nd front in Iraq, for reasons that were (at best) poorly defined. Barack Obama felt compelled to publically announce an arbitrary date for an Afghan withdrawl (what men who care about victory call retreat). This made both pacifist supporters and Taliban enemies feel much better.
