Obama Honors West Point Cadets Who Have “Died For Our Freedom” In What He Once Described As A “Dumb War”

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Written By:
Rob Port

May 22, 2010
8:23pm

Huh?

Listen closely:

At one point Obama references the 78 West Point cadets who, during their subsequent service in our military, died “for our freedom” in Iraq. That’s an interesting choice of words for a politician whose original campaign for the Senate, and subsequently the Presidency, was based on a speech given against the war in Iraq.

That speech, delivered in 2002 by then-Illinois State Senator Obama, described the war in Iraq as “dumb” and “rash” and against an enemy that posed “no imminent threat.”

Here’s an excerpt:

What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income — to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.

That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

Now let me be clear — I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.

He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors…

So which is it, President Obama? Did our West Point cadets die for our freedom? Or did they die in a “dumb”, “rash” war against an enemy that posed no imminent threat to the United States?

Seems to me the President can’t have it both ways.

Whatever your position on the war, if the President truly believes that the war in Iraq is “dumb” and “rash” and hasn’t at all improved our national security then what business does he have telling the West Point Cadets that those who graduated before them died “for our freedom?”

Our troops deserve better than empty, dishonest platitudes.