180 degrees

The address comes over seven years after President George W. Bush gave his infamous “Mission accomplished” speech onboard USS Abraham Lincoln, declaring that major combat operations in Iraq had ended.

But never mind pesky details.

Sarah Palin, the losing 2008 Vice-Presidential candidate and a former Governor of Alaska, is champing at the bit to hear Obama’s speech.

Now a celebrity author and public speaker after resigning her post as Governor, Palin posted on her Twitter account on Sunday:
 

“Tues:Obama Iraq speech;poor leadership if this fierce opponent of the surge can't give credit where credit’s due.Credit due GW,McCain,troops”

(Palin is as much a fan of Obama as she is of spaces between words).

Attempting to set an agenda and highlight Obama’s opposition to a 2007 troop surge in Iraq, Palin and her preemptive criticism is not surprising.

Obama, targeted by Republicans during the 2008 election campaign for having little military experience, has been in the intriguing position of leading the country at a time when it is embroiled in two complicated wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which he opposed when a senator.

According to a report in the New York Times, Obama told a meeting with military commanders on his first day in office: “Guys, before you start, there’s one thing I want to say to you and that is I do not want to screw this up.”

Unlike his predecessor, who reveled in wearing a fighter pilot leather jacket and an image as a warrior President, Obama was slow to embrace military ways. 

Meeting a room full of generals as Commander-in-Chief, he reportedly told the officers as they stood to greet him: “Come on, guys, you don’t have to do that.”

Obama learned how to salute and, apparently, surfed the Internet at night to personally research how the wars were affecting his troops.

As well as updating her Twitter account last weekend, Sarah Palin spoke at a rally organised by celebrity conservative radio and TV host Glen Beck held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.

Beck is extremely popular in some quarters and depending on who you asked, the rally drew between 80,000 and 500,000 people.

This event, billed as “Restoring Honor” was originally promoted as a civil rights rally to honor Martin Luther King Jr, then a salute to the troops, and finally as a quasi-religious reclamation of America from a supposed Godless government big on high taxation and imminent Communisation.

Oh, and a chance to sell some advertising.

Palin used her moment to speak about her noble son, emphasising she had raised a combat veteran, but forgot the other part about raising a daughter to be a teenage single mum living the dream as a tabloid magazine cover star.

Meanwhile, on his first trip to Afghanistan as President, Obama met a teenaged American soldier who had lost three limbs in combat.

It was a personal encounter that, rightly, hit home on his role as Commander-in-Chief: This was not a game.

When office politics and infighting seeped into the higher ranks of the military earlier this year, Obama offered them a reprimand that could play to a wider audience.

“We have a lot of kids on the ground acting like adults and we have a lot of adults in this room acting like kids,” he said.

Subtle but cutting, on many levels, that was offering credit where it really was due.