Something that can easily be said about Barack Obama, and something than even myself took into consideration when choosing whether or not to support him, was that during his campaign he had little to no idea what the limitations of being the president of the united states would be.
Him saying that in 18 months he would end the combat mission in Iraq can easily be argued that he did not complete it within his own given time limit, it can even more simply be argued that he made the date of August 31st because it gave citizens a sense of closure while also evading the fact that he had already missed his previous deadline (A distraction if you will)
However one thing that greatly bothers me about this entire conversation is that Barack Obama did as he promised in ending the combat mission in Iraq, something that many presidents have failed to do in the past with their own international conflicts.
Yes we have troops there, however for the last several months orders have been circulating to allow the local guard handle any issue's within Iraq (AKA their own police force) The point being that we are easing our way out of Iraq to make sure that the government we have set up does not completely collapse in on itself.
Again it is reasonable to complain that he did not complete his promise in his given amount of time, but the fact that nearly everyone in the nation was aware that Obama did not actually know his resources, and the fact that upon taking office he gave us a new, and very concrete date (That was not to far off in either direction) leads me to believe that "nitpicking" the fact that a president did not complete one of his campaign promises on time is very idiotic. Frankly because campaign promises are not officially recorded as presidential statements (Because at that moment they are not president) the American citizen is going to have to be flexible, he is only human, and no matter what candidate you put forth, they are bound to do something wrong, even if it is not in a timely fashion.
So if i may be so bold as to say, the simple fact that he is actually taking a campaign promise into action is causing me to double take. His presidential address to the nation impressed me in a time that i was very strongly beginning to dislike Obama.
So please, in this one situation, out of all the things we could choose to complain about, can we please just look at this one as a win, even if it was not done as quickly as we may have wanted?