Skimming through the text of President Obama’s Labor Day speech yesterday in Cincinnatti, a few days before the anniversary of 9/11 and with the president facing a decision about sending more troops to Afghanistan, I was struck by Obama¹s failure to mention the war, or our servicemen and women. Not that they would be central to a Labor Day speech — but, surely a fair number of the audience at the AFL-CIO picnic in Cinicinatti have relatives in the service, and they might have appreciated a mention. I wondered whether President Bush routinely mentioned the military in his Labor Day remarks. His 2006 Labor Day remarks came up first when I googled “Bush Labor Day speeches.” Near the end of his remarks in Maryland, Bush says:
Obama barely mentions the war, or the troops fighting it, at all these days. There’s been lots of speculation as to why support for the war in Afghanistan has plummeted over the last few months. The rising casualties are certainly part of the problem. Another reason might be that many Democrats were never really committed to winning the war in Afghanistan in the first place, but found that war to be a convenient cudgel for beating up a Republican administration that was focused on Iraq. But I suspect that some of this erosion in support comes from the fact that Obama seems so unwilling to make the case that this fight does deserve the full support of the American people.
