My immediate reaction to Obama administration announcing it is now going to adopt an attitude of budgetary discipline after indulging in a near Bacchanalia of spending? I'd say that operatives are so convinced of the efficacy of Obama's putative charms that they have come to believe that good policy is merely the result of effective stagecraft - that no matter how stupid, wrong-headed, ill-advised, ill-considered, ideologically tendentious, shamefully superficial, cynically preened, pandering, driven by a shallow concern for optics something they may do may be they don't care - they obviously believe that as long as they can get Obama up in front of a camera to declare solemnly that whatever he chooses to do must be right and good and beyond reproach then enough suckers will buy into it to indeed make it appear to be exactly that.

"... personally, he's lauded for having masterful political skills but what I see comes across as superficial and vain... though I'm entirely aware that the two states need not be mutually exclusive... but I just don't think the man gives a good speech... the delivery is too studied, the language over wrought, the aesthetics too self conscious... it's as if Pericles, following the success of the funeral oration, had tailored every subsequent speech after it to the effect that his style became cloying and mawkish, with the original as consequence being demeaned and drained of value... thankfully, Thucydides was a better writer than that..."

Former General who was once in charge of Afghanistan and presently is US ambassador to that wretched place has come forward - rather, it has been made known that he has strongly advised Obama that he thinks an upping of troops to be a bad idea. A resource I trust says, and I guess it makes sense, that the secret counsel was leaked by someone in the White House - not likely a military operative loyal to McChrystal and Petraeus out to get Eikenberry [the general] for opposing their plan - Eikenberry's position as ambassador now probably untenable since in leaked cables he shat all over Karzai in particular and the whole Afghan gov't in general - no, the suspicion is it was leaked by someone opposed to an Afghan surge who either wanted to put pressure on Obama or, more likely as far as I'm concerned, did so as means of preparing the ground of public opinion for a rejection of McChrystal and Petraeus by Obama. Regardless, the consensus seems to be that the leak will serve only to make a bad situation worse.

There's an alternative theory that Eikenberry leaked the material himself in order to short dick McChrystal - apparently they have a jaundiced relationship - and promote a plan of his own that accentuates more non-military aid to Afghanistan - in which case I guess he would be the one trying to sway Obama's position with public pressure, not some insider [I was thinking Rahm baby]. Remember, McChrystal, or someone close to him, leaked his recommendations in a similar attempt one assumes to pressure Obama - it appears someone figured turn around was fair play - but to what end and with what consequences?

If Obama himself is the source of this end around in attempt to curry favour with a public that may be troubled by a break with the generals - and if indeed the end result of the ploy is a bad situation has been sorely aggravated - well, then my prediction that Obama and the military could be on a collision course starts to look plausible. If, on the the other hand, Obama had nothing to do with it, that it was Eikenbarry acting alone or someone close to Obama [like Emanuel] who went rogue thinking it was a clever maneuver - does that then mean Obama has lost control of the process? I once hypothesized that I could see an over matched Obama bringing an academic-like inertia to difficult policy decisions, that when action and cold calculation were required regarding a decision fraught with peril and representing a threat to his ideological purity and the well crafted persona thereof, I speculated that faced with such a dilemma he would seek refuge in trying to reason away the unpleasantness, burying the uncompromising facts in endless debate until ambitious underlings stepped forward and settled the issue for him - could that be what's happening here?

Of course it's impossible to know if what's happening is part of a deliberate strategy or the result of a dysfunctional process - but reagrdless I think it's safe to say that increasingly eyes are narrowing and brows are furrowing on the military side of things.

Max Boot over at Contentions shares my bewilderment cum despair [rather more appropriately since he's someone and I'm not - I share his]:

One would think that the merits of this position would have been hashed out long ago (like, say, back in March, when the results of the last Afghan policy review were announced) and that President Obama would have concluded by now that we can’t simply write off Afghanistan because of the “corruption and ineffectiveness” of its government. But, no, Eikenberry’s cables seem to have landed with the impact of a mortar round in the White House and, if leaks are to believed, they have further reinforced the president’s tendency toward hesitation and doubt.
It does not exactly inspire confidence to read this account of the latest NSC meeting, from the New York Times:

A central focus of Mr. Obama’s questions, officials said, was how long it would take to see results and be able to withdraw.
“He wants to know where the off-ramps are,” one official said.

So the president is already looking to leave Afghanistan before he has even committed more forces? He’s more interested in an exit strategy than a strategy for success? What a terrible message to send to our troops and what a heartening message to send to our enemies.

It’s hard to know, of course, if this is an accurate reflection of what the man in the Oval Office is thinking — or simply a reflection of what the aides who are providing all these quotes for the media are thinking. Whatever the case, this bespeaks an extraordinarily chaotic and undisciplined White House decision-making process, with the president’s most senior advisers playing out their disagreements in public even after Gen. Stanley McChrystal had been chastised for making his own views known.

Although there is clearly a liberal bias in the media, and an adjunct adoration of the Obama child following close behind - indeed, each is fuel to the other's flame - although this is clear, I tend to avoid commenting on it because such seems a bit petty - a lot of the vitriol on the right regarding it comes off sounding like small minded excuse mongering - I tend to want to believe the bias is beside the point and not worthy of scorn, even though one could easily imagine scenarios where that decidedly would not be true.

But then an example so brazen jumps out at you and starts you thinking maybe you've entirely underestimated the insidious nature of it - case in point: Anita Dunn resigns as White House communications director, the same Anita Dunn who in a summer speech extolled the virtues of Mao's teachings and then tried to pass this praise off as a bad joke gone awry - I read about her resignation on CNN's website - they chose not to mention in any way whatsoever why she's gone, instead simply quoting her as saying 'it was never my intention to stay long'. That's a pretty blatant tailoring of the news to suit a political agenda - or is it simply a business agenda spilling over into a political one?

CNN has fallen to the bottom of the news ratings pile and consequently have increasingly slanted leftward in an attempt to gain market share - it's embarrassing, unseemly, possibly insidious - but is it dangerous? And at what point can one distinguish a business imperative from a politically biased one?  [is there a consoling irony in a private media company selling its soul for market share by suppressing truth re socialist Obama's Mao loving operative in order to gain favour with Dear Leader partisans in hopes they'll grease wheels of capitalism by choosing Coke over Pepsi? Ah, there's a twisted something in there - don't know about salubrious effects of irony]

Ricks, and many of his readers, parried my thrust and thusly went my riposte:

Well, Mr Ricks, I entirely disagree. I read you often at the Post and read your books as well because, even though one could sense a bias influencing your writing, it was sufficiently hidden away, which allowed me to suspend judgment long enough to give you the benefit of the doubt and properly consider your point of view. I don't read you much anymore because your prevailing 'sentiments', as Zathras would have it, are too forward and consequently get in the way - but I suppose if you're only writing to please the people already predisposed to share your opinion then a gauze of sentiment is not an issue - in fact, for the Zathras-like out there in the mawkish blogsphere, it's no doubt a necessity.

Personally, if I read Descartes, I accept he's highly motivated to prove the existence of a God, but as an agnostic I'm not going to give his Meditations the time of day if he can't win my trust that his arguments will be fair and evenhanded. I understand you Obamaphiles are anxious to demonstrate the godliness of Dear Leader, but still I wonder how it is you expect your devotion to be taken seriously by nonbelievers when you can't even proffer a simple but legitimate criticism of the man without at the same time feeling the need to apologize for it as if you feared a fall from grace.

Yet another rebuke of Ricks - don't know why this guy bothers me so much, seems he's come to symbolise for me the unhealthy nexus of Obama hagiography and press bias - suppose because I used to read him a lot in early days of wars when he was at the Post - latest offense: tries to upbraid Obama for endless debate of Afghanistan policy but can't bring himself to do so without offering salve of "but I still love you!" Unseemly shit. 

Still an Obama fan? One can argue he has failed in all his first five foreign policy tests: bungled response to putative coup in Honduras; naive approach to Iran; mishandling of missile defense in Poland; confusion and mixed signals viz Israel; a credibility undermining farce with Afghanistan [has anyone in the Oval Office read Galula on the importance of not showing a weakness that may cause a target population to question your commitment if you want a COIN strategy to work?].

But I'm not going to dwell on Obama's many failings. My beef with you Ricks is why do you feel the need or think it's legitimate to make known your political bias and declare which insufferable pol you're a 'fan' of? Ostensibly, you're an analyst, you're supposed to be objective - if your opinion is to have any value whatsoever one has to be able to believe it's not vitiated by a bias! What is wrong with you people?

One is either a well reasoned commentator or a political hack, you can't be both. Of course people have their sympathies, but you wanna be taken seriously as a critic of something you better make an effort to keep yours stifled - you certainly don't proudly proclaim like a giddy school girl what a fan you are of the Obama - you should be bloody well embarrassed for saying something like that.

I remember thinking when the BBC welcomed that anti-immigration racial extremist on their most popular political talk show that it's too bad the guy's a bit of a nut job cause not everything he's saying is nuts - and then I remember thinking but of course you have to be an extremist nut job to say these things because no mainstream politician would dare say these things - and then I remember thinking that that's the real problem here, isn't it? Not the nut job per se but the fact that everyone's too busy being outraged to consider the possibility that maybe the guy is making some good points?

Well, sure enough, polls show that a significant portion of the British electorate weren't too busy acting outraged to listen since many seemed to agree with him, in part at least - meaning, yes, the real news was being missed by politically correct pundits and politicians: a significant number of non-nut job native born Englanders are not happy with immigration policy.

And of course not soon after the poll release you then get the Labour Immigration minister admitting that mistakes have been made - but, and this is interesting, only by referencing unemployment problems - in other words, decidedly avoiding the 'clash of cultures' question - in other words, out of fear or political correctness or under the influence of a blinding liberal ideology, they chose to interpret the poll results in a way that explicitly attempted to avoid what may be the most pressing and significant question raised by the poll: does England, and all of western Europe for that matter, have a Muslim problem?

I don't know the answer to that question - I do know that it is a legitimate question and that it's curious if not telling how anxious some are to avoid asking it.

Do I have a point other than finding it 'curious'? Well... probably that we're being told that in order to get along with foreign cultures you need to respect them, but isn't that putting the cart before the horse? Isn't that to falsely acclaim an idealised notion of the nature of open societies, of liberal democracies, over a more reality based notion of such? ie isn't it the foreign culture's responsibility to accept, to adopt, to respect the tenets guiding our way of life before they can hope for respect in return? And when a foreign culture is governed by an ideology that resists change, rejects such an acceptance, don't you have a problem? There are no Athens in Islam, no Romes, no Magna Cartas, no revolutions Glorious, French or American - when Islam moves it steps backwards, not forwards. Of course, on a pragmatic level, it's all about numbers and a problem only becomes a problem when the numbers become too big to ignore - but isn't it naive to think that there's nothing wrong with a Western Europe that will be 20% Muslim by 2050? [possibly the tactful, more respectable way to put this is to ask: if you have a large Muslim population and a significant portion of that population is frustrated by their lives in the West and come to blame the West for that frustration and as a consequence openly oppose integration according to Western norms while adhering to a religion that not only endorses and validates such an opposition but is apt to preach that only the violent overthrow of the offending infidels can effectively ease the pain of association with them - well, then, isn't that a problem? Seems like a problem]

What I find curious is how Western Civilization [to speak in general terms] seems to want to act as if it's ashamed of itself, as if there's something wrong or inappropriate with thinking that there is no parallel offered by the species to match that line traced in history from Athens to Washington. Are we doomed now to belittled ourselves by jumping back and forth between arrogance and acquiescence until energy and motive are lost and we fade away? Extremes on the right were outraged by Obama's Muslim 'apology tour' of the Mideast while extremes on the left cheered it as if on the cusp of a new age - the great mass in the middle sat on hands, shrugged shoulders, smiled weakly, mouthed platitudes, watched TV, fell asleep. Must mean something - or does it? An alarmist then, am I? I want there to be a ghost in the cellarage, calling out crimes unseen. Hamlet, I am thy father's spirit, doomed for a certain time to walk the night.

Ozymandias complex - fear the lone and level sands stretching far away...

Given poor election results which seem to indicate independents moving away from democrats in droves, if Obama wanted to moderate, migrate to a definitive centre a la Clinton, could he? His election was a mirage, a fantasy narrative based on illusion and hyperbole, the result of a gullible and profoundly ill informed electorate suffering from Bush fatigue and reaching out into the darkness for relief, for something new. He moves to the centre, a place that I believe is not at all amenable or propitious viz his rather superficial talents, that may mollify independents but then I think the founding illusion of his presidency is undone or at least marginalized thus exposing a central weakness since a move right will leave his base feeling betrayed, disheartened and potentially hostile: if the founding illusion is sullied and his base abandons him what's left? Clinton could move to the middle because that essentially is where he came from - he didn't owe his political fortunes to the uber left, he won the election running on bread and butter issues, and as a democratic white governor of a southern state the pragmatism of moderation was pretty much in his political DNA. Obama is about as far removed from those conditions as you can get: given his predilections and sympathies I don't see how the fanciful narrative that sustained his presidential run could survive a move to the middle.

Not that Obama is doomed, no, many turns left in the road - but I fixated rather early on the central problem for him: the enthusiasms that carried him into the office were either fed by the vain and illusory hopes of the ultra left or governed by a wishful thinking amongst the electorate in general - what would happen when reality came crashing down on those enthusiasms? We don't have a clear answer to that question yet, but his highly partisan and doctrinaire pursuit of health care reform, his almost flippant willingness to spend money and raise taxes and his dilatory and as far as I'm concerned misguided if not indeed incoherent approach to the twin evils of Iran and Afghanistan and the whole Mideast problem in general seem to be suggesting that the scepticism of non believers like myself was not entirely misplaced.

Studies show that over the last 20 years the number of Americans willing or interested in or not entirely opposed to the idea of serving in the military has fallen sharply - also shown is that of that dwindling pool of candidates the number who are in fact eligible or capable of serving has also fallen sharply - listed causes for disqualification: poor education, outright stupidity, drug use, criminal records - and most damning of all, obesity - the obesity rate among the most desirable age demographic for military service has risen from 12% twenty years ago to 23% today - from report I read a recruitment officer is quoted as being shocked by the number of candidates coming in to enlist who can't even manage one push-up.

Distressing information - I wonder how long before America needs to institute a peace time draft in order to ensure the most powerful military in the world stays the most powerful military in the world? If the culture keeps spitting out a combination of effete, America-hating Europhile liberals, sloven fatties and drugged up high school dropouts can a crisis really be that far removed?

Sidebar - someone must have looked into why people enlist - unemployment, lack of opportunities in hometowns, to pay for education no doubt remain near top of the list - but someone must have looked into contributing cultural incentives - God, love of country, a yearning for adventure that is unique - and likewise culturally induced disincentives - laziness and physical degradation, sure, but also contempt for authority, a growing discomfort with the ideas of force and power and military necessity, a disregard for values commonly associated with patriotism, a splintering of social cohesion and the sense of a unifying national identity - things of this nature. Someone must have done a study like this - I'd be curious what such a study indicated - and be curious to know how political ideology or bias factored in.

Of course it's now taken as a received truth to equate the democrats with a weakening of the military imperative - and possibly for good reason [a recent bipartisan report suggesting Obama's national security team is a mess - that the president has given no guidance to national security matters and the administration seems to be at a loss doesn't help the perception that they lack military bona fides] - but what I'm thinking specifically here is how the foreign policy gestures Obama has made since taking office - apologizing to Muslims for the supposed sins of American hubris, telling the Europeans that there's no such thing as American exceptionalism, shying away from a show of strength in Afghanistan and replacing it with an enervating intellectualism - even, I might add, cavalierly laying all blame for current economic crisis on Wall Street and big business and therefore by inference indicting capitalsim and the American way even though that does not paint an accurate picture of all the contributing factors - I'm wondering how this general ambivalence to the ideal of America and the utility of the projection of American power in the world trickles down and impacts not only the willingness of able candidates to serve. to bear that burden, but also, with possibly more cancerous consequences, impacts the willingness of the abiding society to honour and laud the principles upon which the military stands?

In short I guess what I'm wondering is how do you maintain the greatest military in the world if the population increasingly is of the opinion that the country and the ideals that ostensibly motivate it are no longer great or of especial importance? This is no doubt to put it too simply if not crudely but if China increasingly believes it is and deserves to be a super power, an elite nation, special - and America increasingly believes that such formulations are meaningless and not conducive to leading a happy and contented life - in other words, is increasingly sympathetic of a European view of reality - then China wins, no?

"... sure, there's an arrogance to wealth and power, an accompanying hubris... but there's also a hubris nestled in weakness, the self regard of victim-hood... one's idealogical bias is often a reflection of this search for the 'perfect' self and thusly the exercise of skepticism towards all claims and pleas is strongly advised... but if forced to choose I'll almost always take the arrogant conservative over the aggrieved liberal..."