I recently read a New York Times op-ed about how Obama has been abandoning his progressive supporters and courting support from the Right side of the aisle, leaving him to reach both ways at crucial times from the center. But that’s where he’s always been. His promises to progressive causes have not received nearly the attention that the supporters behind those causes wanted, and that will have to be sorted out at the mid-term and ultimately his second-term elections. I’m not thinking it will be pretty, but the reality is that he has 2 ½ years left to be President and a lot of things to do and fight for. He just may swing back to his progressive causes, you never know, and show himself to be a powerful politician, spending the first half of his term fighting for big legislation like health care, financial reform, and climate change, then losing seats in Congress, then fighting losing battles for more progressive causes in the second half- two years of those fights would re-energize his base and get them to the polls for him for his second term, and for the Democrats to get a second round of power come 2012. But that is all speculation- what we have right now is Obama dealing with a war, a bad economy, and a whole lot of voters who don’t like him like they did 2 years ago.

He made a promise to end the war in Iraq, and as Reuters puts it, he is: “winding down major combat operations there this month.”

"As a candidate for president, I pledged to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end. Shortly after taking office, I announced our new strategy for Iraq and for a transition to full Iraqi responsibility. And I made it clear that by August 31, 2010 America's combat mission in Iraq would end. And that is exactly what we are doing -- as promised, on schedule," said Obama to a group of Veterans.

So, more troops in Afghanistan, but he is finishing up in Iraq.

He’s doing what he said he would do in Iraq, ending the major offensive portion of the war, but there will still be transitional troops there to train Iraqi troops, and of course he has no final say in whether there will be a new government there or not. Right now there isn’t. Which means we are pulling troops out of a place where there is no official government and the troops are not fully trained. So are they better off than they were when we got Hussein out of there? Probably. Are they still in danger? Yes.

He admits that "the hard truth is we have not seen the end of American sacrifice in Iraq."

The bottom line is that they are not stable and the U.S. is not going to stick around and keep fighting a war that has no real win. Figure out who your Prime Minister is going to be and govern your own country- that’s the message I hear Obama sending, and we’ll see how it is heard and plays out.

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