Obama needs a “good” war. Electability in fin de siècle America hinges on projecting strength around the world—an American leader has to aspire to protect borders and people not his own. In other words, Obama needs a war he can call his own. In Afghanistan, Obama has found such a war.
By promising to broaden the scope of operations in Afghanistan, Obama has found a “good” war to make him look the part. By staking out Afghanistan as his preferred theater of war—and pledging an uptick in operations against the Taliban—Obama achieves two things: He can cleave to the Iraq policy that excited his base. While winding down one war, he can ratchet up another, thereby demonstrating his commander-in-chief credentials.
Okay, so Woodward has framed as dovish “the president’sdecision to order a surge of 30,000 additional troops late last year — 10,000 fewer than what top military leaders had been strongly pushing — with a withdrawal date of July 2011.”
The bottom line is that the president pushed for enough of a commitment, in blood and treasure in Afghanistan, to make him the presidential pick of a blood-lusting public.
Talk about triangulation—BHO was able to shed just enough blood to give the left a foot in the door, while pacifying the murderous neoconservatives (Repbulicans in all permutations).
Calibration: that was the genius of the cunning Obama.
It was interesting to hear Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity, two oft-closeted establishment Republicans, use the pronoun “we” in discussing the Republicans and their “Pledge to America.” The Repbulicans are the team to which the two belong. Team Republican has issued a paltry pledge that did not displease La Coulter or Hannity.
The Preamble to The Pledge is quite nice, except that it seems sacrilegious for dirty dogs such as the Republicans to suddenly speak up about first principles they’ve seldom respected—original intent, the Tenth Amendment, etc.
“America is more than a country” states the pledge. Indeed. But it is also a community of souls once linked by a common history, heroes and traditions—a community rapidly being dissolved by central planners.
While the Republicans pay homage to the propositional nation (America as an idea), a cursory read tells me that their commitment to the flesh-and-blood American community remains pretty pitiful.
UPDATE I (Sept. 24): Have the Pledge makers promised to repeal “the new Paycheck Fairness Act passed by the House 256 to 162”? “The rise of the egalitarian society means the death of the free society,” writes Pat Buchanan in a brilliant column, “Equality or Freedom,” on pay parity being pursued by the Obama administration.
If women with the same skills as men were getting only 78 cents for every dollar a man earns, men would have long-since priced themselves out of the market. The fact that the wily entrepreneur doesn’t ditch men in favor of women suggests that different abilities and experience are at work, rather than a conspiracy to suppress women.
UPDATE II: The Pledge is festooned with huge, “patriotic” images. To me that’s very reassuring—as reassuring as the promise by these power-hungry creeps to “roll back government spending to prestimulus, pre-bailout levels, saving us at least $100 billion in the first year alone.” Wow, $100 billion in a debt of $110 trillion! Now that’s bold. Basically the Republicans, who still don’t get it, are promising to return to 2008-level spending.
Notice all the legally safe, adjectival ejaculate used by these cobra heads to qualify their promises: “common-sense limits on the growth of government.” You know that to the Coulter and Hannity Republican, limiting any accretion in the military-media-congressional-industrial complex is tantamount to treason. “National security” (minus borders) is a big stick with which they like to beat their Democratic opponents. It’s the only stick they have, given their statist record.
Indeed, the Republikeynesians will “impose a net hiring freeze on non-security federal employees and ensure that the public sector no longer grows at the expense of the private sector.”
Republicans are tinkering on the margins, as Ron Paul has suggested, with no commitment to say which departments will be eliminated; or to tackle the philosophy of government, etc.
UPDATE III: “Republicans are the drag queens of politics. Peel away the pules for family, faith and fetuses and one discovers either ‘neoconservative welfare-warfare statists or global social democrats,’ or national socialists of sorts, who fuse economic protectionism, populism and a support for the very welfare infrastructure that is at the root of the social rot they decry.”—ILANA MERCER
Except for one republican (for he is not a Republican). Run Ron, run.
“Republican aides told Fox News Tuesday that the National Republican Senatorial Committee will not be funding O’Donnell’s general election campaign, leaving it up to Palin and the Tea Party Express to do the heavy lifting.”
Given GOP good will, why is O’Donnell already talking about cooperating with establishment Republicans “for the common good”?
Reaching across the aisle to get things done is a euphemism for relinquishing principles in favor of political expediency. As one hardcore tea partier said to Fox News’ Neil Cavuto, “the only time I want my representative to reach across the isle is to grab a Democrat by the throat.”
* Unrelated: I am traveling to a WND event. I will be back at my desk in a few days. My WND column will resume next week.
UPDATE: (Sept. 20): Lew Rockwell wonderswhether Christine O’Donnell can be all bad since she is “hated by Karl Rove, Charles Krauthammer, John Cornyn, the Club for Growth, and Dick Armey’s KochWorks.”
Alas, “she calls for murdering the unborn and everyone else in Iran, and is, in general, a foreign policy neocon.”
I can’t bring myself to break a sweat over Michelle Obama’s lavish vacation. The First Lady and daughter took along to Spain “68 Secret Service agents from the US,” and for “her entourage she had reserved 60 of the 129 rooms.”
The comparison to Marie Antoinette, down to the wave, is flattering, of course—to Michelle. But how stupid is it to suggest that individuals so privileged as these—who have set themselves and their offspring up for life by working the political process (i.e., by pelf)—could, by “toning down the flash,” humanise themselves “and signify that they sympathise with the setbacks of the people they were elected to serve.”
That was New York Daily News columnist Andrea Tantaros’s much-publicized criticism and attendant advice.
Yes, precisely: if the Obamas and their hangers-on tone down, I’ll feel so much better about them and their undeserved riches.
Dumb.
Besides, the metaphor is all wrong. This sojourn to Spain, the “sedate” soiree for Mexican President Felipe Calderon, down to the pelvis-shaking Beyonce—this is out of the MTV series, “Pimp my Ride.” Or Pimp my president.
UPDATE (Aug. 9): The Idiocracy at large has taunted Michelle and her posse by saying that the American economy could have done with their dollars. The royal party should have spent its money stateside.
The American cognoscenti knows so little about the money in their society. Government workers are paid out of taxes. In other words, the money they spend is money confiscated from taxpayers. Productive activities were suspended in order to fund these parasite. It’s a zero-sum game. The BHO family doesn’t produce anything; it consumes wealth. All told, even if Michelle vacationed in the US, the money she blows has already resulted in less economic activity somewhere unseen. It’s Bastiat’s elegant argument about ‘What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen’ all over again.
