President Obama and his 18-month Afghani Projection

Another Cassandra moment as it's sometimes called, altho it's really the insight that comes from spending some time corroding my soul in ad agencies learning to see what is really meant behind and below the boardroom doors and the published statement.

The scenario -- General McChrystal decided to play a nasty power game by leaking his report requesting 40,000 more troops to the press instead of adhering to the chain of command and presenting it DIRECTLY to his superior officer, the Commander-in-Chief.

Maybe he and the rest of the generals (like Petraeus)  miss their pushover butt-buddy George W Bush whose lack of knowledge of and/or respect for the Constitution shitcanned the part about civilian control of the military and went straight to "Gee -- you guys have such snappy uniforms ... you make my heart sing.. I'm the leader. I'm the leader. Where are we going?" 

So McChrystal decided to force the president's hand by taking his case to what H. L. Mencken so aptly called "the boobocracy."

Not quite as much of a potential court-martial case as that which Dugout Doug MacArthur* handed to Harry Truman, but still, a direct violation of chain of command.

And the President spent several weeks with advisors trying to find any acceptable alternative to giving McChrystal what he wanted.** (Army guys always seem to not understand the ability of the Marines to conduct a no-holds-barred fight.)

And without finding any other way to proceed that didn't present a worse alternative, he said "18 months."  It was not a message to Taliban and the world. It was a message to McChrystal that said, quite clearly:

 "OK, hotshot, I know what you're doing. You've got 18 months to succeed or retire with your failure chasing your ass through history."

For all that many progressive types are dismayed by the troop increase, it's because they don't understand the difference between the traditional Presidential game of football (formerly baseball) and Obama's game of basketball. Sure, football offers the occasional sidestep to throw the defender off balance, but basketball is a continually shifting fake-out game --  shift and reverse and fake out the big guy between you and the basket.

When he ran for office,  I was delighted.
"FINALLY -- a president who knows how to drive to the hole."

Instead of a trash-talking blowhard who mouths off from the safety of the bench, which is what we had for 8 years of the Bush presidency -- and now have from his former puppet-master sidekick, Dick Cheney.

I have no doubt that anyone ruthless enough to become a general knows enough about power and politics to know EXACTLY what President Obama meant.

And oh, yeah, to re-state:

Not quite sedition, you arrogant lifer, but damn close.
Watch your step -- that's PRESIDENT Obama you're fucking with, and if he needs to, he'll run right over you to get to the basket.

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* "I shall return --- when the shooting stops."

** Essentially, it was McChrystal's implicit admission that he couldn't do the job he was assigned to with the troops he had.

The bizarre, but reliable attack on anything involving new ideas as "Attempted Power Grab."

So now the "wasted time" expended on trying to make certain those 50,000 people who die each year from lack of access to health care is, once again (Keerist, don't they ever change their act?)  -- "An attempted power grab."

Which of course means
 "We have the power.
  We've had it for a long time. 
  We absolutely refuse to share it with anyone not on our profit-motivated team.
  Anyone who is NOT on our team and who wants some of it is a subversive anarchistic communistic fascist monster."

So the bought and sold senators and congressmen are -- unbelievably -- resurrecting racist cartoon images from the 30's -- the evil darkies in the executive branch who want to ooga-booga throw you in the cannibal pot and 'eat em up yum-yum.'

AND bringing up the specter of evil women who scare the little boys in suits as much as their mommies did. (Oh no -- I LOVE YOU Mommy -- it's Nancy Pelosi I hate. And Michelle Obama. And...")

AND warning of the hideous prospect of homosexuals TEACHING your little boys and girls to get horny over people with the same physical equipment, thereby negating the possibility that gay people's marriages could be based on something personal, spiritual, intellectual, cultural and/or any actual values other than horniness. 

(That last one, featuring life and/or death criminal sentences for gay people is being Beta-tested in Uganda - bastion of democracy and REAL cannibalism -- oh have we forgotten Idi Amin Dada so soon?)

And each day we find out how more and more of those pointing fingers in the above-mentioned manner,  who are opposed (in this instance) to allowing THEM to have regular doctors and medication, those people are the proponents of an amazingly perverted version of Jesus, held as sacred truth by THE FAMILY, that his "secret inner teaching" was that the people who HAVE power and wealth SHOULD have wealth and power, because, it comes directly from God so who are YOU to question it (except when THOSE OTHERS get power, that it must be illegitimate and stolen because God couldn't have wanted the likes of Barack Obama to have some since insisting on medical care is to commit blasphemy and deny the Holy Spirit, because it's saying that God can't heal you with divine power.

The fact that aside from the loathesome Charles Grassley (a man who, in all likelihood has NEVER been able to get a date), most of the other devotees of the Family's secret inner no-one-knows-but-us teachings of Jesus seem to be doing a lot of extra-marital porking, usually of people on their government payroll (i.e., using taxpayers' money), but when THEY do it, that's ok.

Because they forgive themselves.

AND in the chaotic rough and tumble of the shifting social, political, economic order, these folk have solved the problem of "Who should we hate/blame for all this turbulence?"

Muslims?
Gays?
People of color?
Women?
Jews?

Their simple answer -- ALL OF THEM.


The gorge rises.

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