(Image source: BBC)

BY MALLORY PERRYMAN

ANCHOR CHRISTINA HARTMAN

You're watching multisource US video news aanalysis from Newsy. 

In outlining his plan for winding down the war in Afghanistan-- President Obama stuck to the middle- which made him a clear target for both sides.

Bill O’Reilly (Fox News): “That’s why he’s withdrawing more troops quicker than the commander in the field, General Petraeus wants...and that is not good.”

Rachel Maddow (MSNBC): “He has narrowly defined it, narrowly and explicitly and repeatedly defined it as going after Al Qaeda. When you describe a war repeatedly that way and then you kill the head of Al Qaeda, understandably people think that maybe we can leave that war.”

Mr. Obama plans to withdraw 10,000 of the so-called surge troops by the end of the year-- and another 23,000 by September 2012.

With a drawback plan falling short of any extremes-- the president didn’t make anybody too mad. But-- he didn’t make anybody too happy either.

Chuck Todd (MSNBC): “Sort of right down the middle is what most of the reaction was because nobody seems thrilled with the idea that there’s still going to be 70,000 troops there at the start of 2013 but at the same time, everybody is concerned about slip-ups.”

Kate Balduan (CNN): “Some, including liberal Democrats, they think it’s not fast enough. They want to see a more aggressive timeline, more troops being pulled out at a quicker pace.  But others, including some very influential Republicans, they’re calling this plan maybe too aggressive.”

The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza wonders--in steering clear of both sides, did Obama land himself on a lonely island?

“Being in the middle is generally seen as the safest course, but opinions about war tend to the extremes... As the GOP presidential field does its best to appeal to those extremes...they may actually find a more significant base of support than the president has right now in the middle.”

A commentator on Fox News says- this was obviously a political move intended to reinforce his base.

“He got the anti-war, peace-loving base of the Democratic party, they came out for him not Hillary Clinton and so he needs to shore them up in order to get reelected in 2012.”

But MSNBC host and former GOP Congressman Joe Scarborough counters, the president may be playing politics, but so is the other side.

Joe Scarborough: “Barack Obama knows, like all of us know, that when our troops leave Afghanistan, bad things are going to happen.  Regardless of when we leave, it is going to explode again and he doesn’t want it to explode on his watch. On both sides, Republicans and Democrats alike, this is a political calculation.”

After all surge forces are drawn back, there will be slightly fewer than 70,000 US troops in Afghanistan.

 

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Transcript by Newsy.