Black Humor and the Art of War
Today’s Wash Post has a headline article on Afghanistan which notes that a major offensive against the Taliban in Helmand province earlier this year was “slowed” due to “political pressure from the Afghan government.” Confirmation that Afghanistan’s so-called government has only limited authority over a war being fought on its own territory rather suggests that Americans are dying to support a latter day Potemkin village-north-of-the Khyber Pass. And worse is coming. Like many other Americans I am dreading the Obama speech Tuesday night which will undoubtedly prove that even smart presidents can behave like a-holes. It will be the first Obama speech that I will actually watch, particularly as it does not conflict with Dancing With the Stars.
A blog site poster this weekend suggested that we Americans should begin to make preparations for an AfPak War Memorial in Washington. He/She proposed a nice, currently vacant plot of land on the Mall next to the Vietnam Memorial. As the Vietnam memorial is already down in a hole, the AfPak moument could be a hole that keeps getting deeper. To enter it you have to pass under a Dantesque gateway that has “Quagmire” written across it. There might even be enough room for a Global War on Terror monument, possibly a rendition of a stylized Washington bureaucrat shown spending large sums of money on nothing.
The absurdity of what we are doing in so many places and the speculation about a war memorial reminded me of an awful bit of black humor circulating at my army intelligence unit during the Vietnam War. National Lampoon had published a cartoon of a proposed Vietnam memorial that was a grand version of a McDonald’s restaurant of that era with two magnificent golden arches. Spanning the arches was an inscription reading “We are all meat.” The absurdity of the monument and inscription was just what we needed to cope with the prospect of shipping out to ‘Nam so we made a large copy of the proposed memorial and hung it on the wall. But it proved unpopular with several senior officers so we mounted it on a two sided frame back to back with an approved print of General Patton’s 3rd Army Tanks breaking through to Bastogne. Whenever we were expecting visitors we would flip over the frame to conceal the McDonalds’ war memorial.
People keep saying and writing that our president is smart, crafty, and wily. When does our Dear Leader begin to exhibit this grey matter and this wonderful set of instincts I keep hearing about? I don’t know about anyone else, but I have yet to see the evidence nearly a year into his term.
Granted, on occasion he utters something that sounds wise, such as hints of closing Gitmo or that we can’t keep spending money we don’t have. Then he leaves the torture camps open and spends with reckless abandon, including on these stupid wars.
So it looks like he’s going to double down in his Afpak debacle. Our soldiers will pay the ultimate price and the rest of us will pick up the tab by watching our economy crater and our money destroyed. Thanks a lot, Barack.
One term president, anyone?
It might have been nice to have a president who was cognizant of military affairs, but that wasn’t good enough for you Phil, was it. McCain would have had the moral authority to pull out of Afghanistan, Obama doesn’t. He is to busy bowing and groveling to Asians and Arabs. He can’t buck the pentagon on this and you know it.
Well Bill, McCain certainly has cognizance of military affairs as he dumped his first wife Carol after starting an affair with second wife Cindy, all accomplished while he was still a serving officer. He also cooperated with the North Vietnamese when he was a prisoner and has refused to entertain an inquiry into the attack on the USS Liberty, so much for moral authority. Apart from that there is absolutely no evidence that he would ever consider leaving Afghanistan without “victory” as defined by his neocon buddies. Plus he would have already started a new war against Iran. Obama is no prize but elevating McCain is delusional.
How come his fellow prisoners, you know the guys who were there, speak highly of him. Not everybody can be a Stockdale, Denton, or Day. There have been more inquiries into the Liberty then you can shake a stick at. And I hardly think that his marriage was the only one that ended after after extreme circumstance. It must be nice to be morally perfect, tell us how you do it. At least in Afghanistan he would have made a decision. Obama is going to split the difference. You know this. He’s finally in a situation where he can’t vote present and it’s killing him. But you have to admit this. This is Obama’s baby from here on in. We’ll see how your boy does.
How much longer would the soviets have stayed in Afghanistan if they could have afforded to? I have a feeling we’ll be leaving our occupied territories under similar circumstances, when the Political class feels it has the sufficient cover of a fiscal crises to save face.
The best way to unwind an empire without risking political chips is to go broke.
Or perhaps they’ll just renege on the welfare state, keep the empire, and let the DOD and DHS gracefully explain why the state of emergency is merely temporary…
You and I both, apparently, went into the military with a dislike for war, government, and things-military.
I sat through long months in VA Hospital “group”, and listened to the young man describe putting a bullet through the 15-yr-old he had been laying on. Or the other young man describe being on top of the embassy building, for hours after the US surrender, thinking he and his 4 companions had been left behind.
I, myself, was “tortured” in training, but I never tortured anyone, and never executed any innocents, and to my knowledge have never participated in leaving any innocent bodies in my wake.
Mr Giraldi, your agenda is straight out of the ANTIWAR.COM playbook, and some days you are dead on. Some days, not so much.
I hate Obama the President. I approve of his speech, and the plan. Give the Generals part of what they asked for. Make NATO and the UN fill the void. And put a meaningful timelimit on everyone to produce results.
Will he have the courage to keep his word? (Has he been in the habit of being honest, and keeping his word so far?)
I may have to break down, in a year or two, and come help you lefties make up posters and signs…