Hume: Obama ‘Prefers To Have His Failures Become Manifest’ After He’s Gone

WALLACE: “All right, let’s turn to another big subject, big news this week, and that was President Obama, who made a big reversal on Afghanistan after pledging for months that he was going to pull all U.S. troops out Afghanistan except for about 1,000 that would have been at the U.S. embassy as a contingent to safeguard that.  He announced this week that he is going to keep 9,800 troops in Afghanistan, basically through next year, trending down to 5,500 by the time he leaves office.  Here is the president.”  
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OBAMA: “While America’s combat mission in Afghanistan may be over, our commitment to Afghanistan and its people endures.  As commander in chief, I will not allow Afghanistan to be used as a safe haven for terrorists to attack our nation again.” 
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WALLACE: “Brit, why do you think the president changed his mind and like Goldilocks, is it too much?  Is it too little?  With the 9,800, or is it just right?”  
HUME: “On point No. 1 in your question, I think he changed because he’s afraid we’re going to have an obvious catastrophe on our hands in Afghanistan and end up back where we started while he’s still president. That is something to which he is very averse. He prefers to have his failures become manifest most clearly after he’s gone. On the second point, we are losing ground now over there, our mission, our cause, our hoped-for results is fading with about 10,000 troops present.  So what he proposes to do is to continue that troop level, which isn’t enough, but it may be enough to stave off an utter collapse. It’s not enough. If he wanted to fix this or to change the fortunes, he would have to do more. He doesn’t want to do that.”  
WALLACE: “You talk about the fact he doesn’t want to see a disaster.  In a sense, wasn’t it two competing legacies? On the one hand, he really wanted to be the president that brought everybody home, but on the other hand, he didn’t want to be the president who saw another Iraq in Afghanistan.”
HUME: “Exactly. And Afghanistan has been repeatedly categorized by the Democrats as a good war.  That was the one where John Kerry said we took our eyes off the ball in Afghanistan in order to go fight in Iraq. So there’s a certain attachment, political attachment to the Afghanistan effort that does not exist in his mind, I think, and other Democrats, for other parts of the world.”