Residual forces
Thank heavens that bankrupt Americans spent billions of dollars last year deciding between John McCain and Barack Obama. They faced an historic choice between "Change" and "Change you can believe in", and the victory has proved decisive.
In the battle of war vs. peace, the undisputed victor was war, and this week, that fact crystallized with Senator McCain announcing his support for President Obama's proposed strategy for Iraq. And why wouldn't he? Obama's plan for peace calls for leaving a "residual" 50,000 troops in place even after a so-called pullout 18 months from now, and the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee says he's been promised by Obama that the president would reconsider any withdrawal if more violence erupted in the region. The existing U.S./Iraq agreement, negotiated under President Bush, had all American forces "tentatively" out of Iraq by the end of 2011, but the Obama plan employs the clever tack of renaming the combat troops "peacekeeping troops".
I'm not sure how this situation is any different than Nixon in '68-- elected under vague promises to end the war, blaming the predecessor, forces still in place years later to protect the Empire, with continuing threats in place to escalate. But Democrats don't care. Headlines blare today that Obama is ending the war. Starstruck Democrats have been given the glitzy, red-carpet president they prefer. His presidential oration and style is as if from the mind and pen of Aaron Sorkin, he's photographed out and about at NBA games, and they generally approve of the music on his iPod.
But if Obama doesn't start proving some, or any, of my predictions about his presidency wrong, I might start to get a swell head.
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Three cheers for the person who posted the passage from "Catch 22" in the comment thread for Friday's Des Moines Register story on farm subsidies. Here's a longer version...
"Major Major's father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age. He was a long-limbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down. His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he didn't grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major's father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa...
"'The Lord gave us good farmers two strong hands so that we could take as much as we could grab with both of them,' he preached with ardor on the courthouse steps or in front of the A & P as he waited for the bad-tempered gum-chewing young cashier he was after to step outside and give him a nasty look. 'If the Lord didn't want us to take as much as we could get,' he preached, 'He wouldn't have given us two good hands to take it with.' And the others murmured, 'Amen.'"
In the battle of war vs. peace, the undisputed victor was war, and this week, that fact crystallized with Senator McCain announcing his support for President Obama's proposed strategy for Iraq. And why wouldn't he? Obama's plan for peace calls for leaving a "residual" 50,000 troops in place even after a so-called pullout 18 months from now, and the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee says he's been promised by Obama that the president would reconsider any withdrawal if more violence erupted in the region. The existing U.S./Iraq agreement, negotiated under President Bush, had all American forces "tentatively" out of Iraq by the end of 2011, but the Obama plan employs the clever tack of renaming the combat troops "peacekeeping troops".
I'm not sure how this situation is any different than Nixon in '68-- elected under vague promises to end the war, blaming the predecessor, forces still in place years later to protect the Empire, with continuing threats in place to escalate. But Democrats don't care. Headlines blare today that Obama is ending the war. Starstruck Democrats have been given the glitzy, red-carpet president they prefer. His presidential oration and style is as if from the mind and pen of Aaron Sorkin, he's photographed out and about at NBA games, and they generally approve of the music on his iPod.
But if Obama doesn't start proving some, or any, of my predictions about his presidency wrong, I might start to get a swell head.
---
Three cheers for the person who posted the passage from "Catch 22" in the comment thread for Friday's Des Moines Register story on farm subsidies. Here's a longer version...
"Major Major's father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age. He was a long-limbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down. His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he didn't grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major's father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa...
"'The Lord gave us good farmers two strong hands so that we could take as much as we could grab with both of them,' he preached with ardor on the courthouse steps or in front of the A & P as he waited for the bad-tempered gum-chewing young cashier he was after to step outside and give him a nasty look. 'If the Lord didn't want us to take as much as we could get,' he preached, 'He wouldn't have given us two good hands to take it with.' And the others murmured, 'Amen.'"
posted by CM @ 10:48 AM
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