Actually he pulled them out, AGAINST the advice of all of the generals, they wanted to leave a 30,000 troop force, and Obama specifically went against their wishes. He then went on to celebrate this choice as one of his best foreign policy decisions. Nice attempt to rewrite history though.
History is being rewritten all the time given how fluid it is. If, for example, Reagan et al hadn't screwed things up so badly thirty years ago, we would be in a very different situation now, or there might not be a "situation" at all. Or one could go back to our support of the Shah (we'll ignore our support of Hussein and the Afghan militants). Or we could go all the way back to the interference of the West in the region after WW1. Or further. To blame any given individual for the current situation, whether Obama or not, is short-sighted.
Using the logic that Todd isn't qualified to provide analysis because he has never seen military service one would have to conclude that Obama isn't qualified to be running the military at all. Further, I never hear any squealing from the left as the same inexperienced people give their opinion when as things go as planned. What we know for sure is that Obama's eagerness to declare "mission accomplished" is coming back to haunt him. Of course he always has the fall back excuse of, we shouldn't have been there to begin with, and his idiot constituency will always buy that as good enough. When all else fails, blame Bush or cry racism.
So I guess former presidents are the only ones qualified to critique a sitting president? Probably true and a standard that will never apply, but the whole point of our discussion in this thread is the hypocrisy of the left when it comes to critiquing the president. Again, there was no squealing from the left when Obama makes the occasional good military decision, and the left had no issues with non military persons slamming Bush. Obama's main problem on foreign and domestic policy is that he makes his decisions based upon the world he wishes for instead of the world as it actually is. That ideology is the Achilles heal of leftism.
I disagree that former presidents are the only ones qualified to critique a sitting president. Bush never saw any action. Cheney didn't serve at all (there are those who view him as co-president). Nor did Clinton. However, those who act as "journalists" ought at least to go over there and observe and interview the people, the tribal leaders, the elected officials, the military leaders. For talking heads to criticize anybody about anything if of no value whatsoever.
I suppose Chuck Todd had better be updating his resume. His days are numbered. This is one reason why the media are so biased. They can mock conservatives all they want, they can make unfair criticisms of them, they can demonize them as they did Bush and tried to with Reagan. Make a mild observation about a clearly incompetent and indolent obama and suddenly people are pointing out that you didn't graduate college. Funny how stupid Todd got over night. He was brilliant when he was slanging Bush or Boehner. Now, not so much.
correct... they got rid of the editor of NYT for a comment about the lack of transparency. other people have lost access. they tried to do that to fox news. its how fascists try to manage things.... and we have drones like db and fc paid or unwitting on et supporting that?