According to the Times, the original plan had been for Obama and a campaign advisor - sans photographers and journalists, as is Army policy - to tour the facility and meet with troops. However, the campaign cancelled the trip at the last minute when the Army decided that the campaign advisor set to accompany Obama, a retired Air Force major-general, was told he could not go along. Here's how Obama spun the decision to pull out of the visit:
That triggered then a concern that maybe our visit was going to be perceived as
political, and the last thing that I want to do is have injured soldiers and the staff at these wonderful institutions having to sort through whether this is political or not or get caught in the crossfire between campaigns. So rather than go forward and potentially get caught up in what might have been considered a political controversy of some sort, what we decided was that we not make a visit and instead I would call some of the troops that were there.
I admit I'm really not sure what to make of all this. However, in general I would say that this excuse seems like utter crap. How could visiting some troops minus reporters (thus no handy photo-ops) possibly be viewed as politicizing wounded soldiers? This excuse seems especially lame since Obama had already visited wounded soldiers in Afghanistan the week prior without any handwringing about politicizing their injuries.
That said, I'm sure that Obama cares about wounded soldiers. Which just makes the fact of the cancelled visit all the more puzzling. It makes him look like a schmuck. It's almost impossible to spin the cancellation in a way that comes off as positive. So why cancel?
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