brainiac conspiracy

One Man's Earmark is Another Man's Paycheck

For a guy who usually writes so eloquently about weighty and complex moral issues, this is surprisingly ungracious:

Speak no ill of the dead? Well, let me simply say that the racist, populist, larcenous bigot of a Senator---a man who robbed the American tax-payer to pave his state with baubles and bribes---is not going to be much mourned in these parts.

What I'd like to know is this: when did "robbing American taxpayers" to "pave one's state with baubles and bribes" become such a misdemeanor of governance? I always thought that one of the most important responsibilities of any legislator was to lobby on behalf of his constituents, and making sure that they get their "fair share" of federal revenues to spend on public-works projects that will, hopefully, make a positive contribution to their health, happiness and well-being, now and for posterity. Did West Virginia get "more" than its fair share? Probably. But so what of it?

Robert Byrd represented a poor state. A very poor state. Over the course of five decades, he worked his way up the seniority ladder, learned how to leverage the patronage system, and managed over to obtain billions of dollars in funding for his constituents, so they could build things like schools and hospitals and other stuff as well:

It's difficult to travel in West Virginia without seeing something that's been dedicated in Byrd's honor through the Allegheny Highlands. Corridor H is one of his most well-known entities bearing his name. His unyielding support of the state's corridor system has helped ensure four-lane divided highway passage through the mountains, creating faster, more efficient travel and boosting economic growth.

Randolph County Commissioner Julia Elbon credits Byrd with connecting Elkins to the interstate system. Before Corridor H between Elkins and Weston opened, the only way to access the eastern portion of the state from the west was by traveling winding two-lane roads. Since then, Corridor H has been credited with helping Randolph County and the area gain more tourists from states that can use Interstates and similar highways the entire way . . .

Two projects in which Byrd was instrumental are entering the final stages before completion. The Elkwater Dam, near Valley Head, will provide fishing and boating opportunities as well as potable drinking water for the residents in the southern area of the county; and a nearly $1 million infrastructure project in the Elkins Railyard is scheduled to break ground on July 9.

As the Elkwater Fork Dam undergoes final preparations for its reservoir filling process, Upper Valley Watershed Partnership Chairwoman Elaine Russell explained how the structure would not have come to fruition without the help of Byrd.

The senator helped find $50,000 for the initial Upper Valley Watershed and dam study and after it was completed, Byrd secured $19.5 million for construction. Work on the dam didn't begin right away and when the cost of steel increased, so did the price tag. With Byrd's influence, the federal government picked up three-fourths of the final approximate $35 million cost, while the state paid for one-fourth. Russell says residents between Randolph County's southern points and Elkins will benefit from the project for many years . . .

Scientific advancement throughout the region and country has seen the effects of Byrd's guiding hand as well. In Tucker County, the Friends of the 500th will forever be grateful to the senator for providing the funding for the Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge, the only refuge completely within the state's borders. According to Refuge Manager Jonathan Shaffler, Byrd was "instrumental" in its establishment.

Shaffler says the Canaan Valley would be a completely different place if it weren't for the foresight possessed by Byrd. And, he continued, the entire state would be a different place without the senator's prominence.

"It doesn't take a fool to look around and see what he's done for us," Shaffler said.

In Pocahontas County, the skyline would be totally void of one of its most easily identifiable landmarks if Byrd had not been as devoted to expanding science research in West Virginia.

"His namesake is in our backyard," Michael Holstine, business manager at the Green Bank National Radio Astronomy Observatory, said.

The Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, dedicated in 2000, became a reality with Byrd's help. The observatory came to his attention when one of the GBT's predecessors collapsed. Holstine said the senator called for an emergency appropriation for the observatory to repair the damaged telescope. Byrd also played an integral part in securing $8 million in funding for the construction of the science center and nearby student dormitory.

And these things are "bribes and baubles"?

Whatever you call them, one can't deny that Robert Byrd was one hell of an effective legislator---securing federal funding for education, transportation, sciences and the environment, for the people of West Virginia. His constituents were grateful for all of his work, and rewarded him by re-electing him again and again. And this is a bad thing? Pray tell, in what world? Would it have been any better to Sullivan if Robert Byrd had lobbied for military bases in West Virginia instead of roads and observatories? Should he have simply delivered florid speeches on the Senate floor, then gone home? Or perhaps he should have simply sat in the back of the chamber, snarling at his colleagues to get off his damn lawn while voting "No" on a bunch of 99-1 appropriations bills. I mean, I really do admire Sullivan's work, but how else can you read a post like this and not conclude that he seems to have a profound misunderstanding of how American-style government is supposed to actually work? Either that, or this is simply a case of mean-spirited sniping, which is completely uncharacteristic of him, and frankly beneath his dignity.

Either way, one man's earmark really is another man's paycheck---and frankly, we could use a few more Senators like Robert Byrd right now, lobbying their colleagues on The Hill for more federally-funded paychecks instead of self-defeating spending cuts and austerity measures.

---Vitelius

First They Came for Our Russets

Shorter Idaho GOP: We're completely insane, but it's not our fault.

And I thought they believed in promoting a culture of responsibility. (H/t Doug J.)

---Vitelius

Quote of The Day

"The dumbness doesn’t just come from soundbites."

---Vitelius

Just Heard the Most Awesome News

Judging by all the chatter in Nutville today, Obama must have withdrawn Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court over the weekend, and decided to re-appoint Thurgood Marshall instead. All I can say is, great pick! However, one suspects he's smelling rather moldy these days. Then again, those people all smell funny anyway, so it shouldn't be a disqualifying factor.

---Vitelius

"The Image of America Has Changed"

And as long as we keep housing inmates at Guantanamo, killing civilians in Afghanistan, and putting the interests of the Israeli Likud above our own, so it will continue to be. Requiescat in pacem.

---Vitelius

Everything You Need to Know

About the state of our terminally diseased corporate national newsmedia can be found right here:

"Michael Hastings, if you believe him, says that there were no ground rules laid out. And, I mean, that just doesn't really make a lot of sense to me," she said, adding that she knows McChrystal's staff and McChrystal doesn't have a history of interacting with the press. "I mean, I know these people. They never let their guard down like that. To me, something doesn't add up here. I just -- I don't believe it. "

Host Howard Kurtz asked Logan if there is an "unspoken agreement that you're not going to embarrass [the troops] by reporting insults and banter."

"Absolutely," she said. "Yes... there is an element of trust."

Logan also took exception with Hastings's claims — made earlier on the program to Kurtz — that his role as a journalist was to build trust with subjects so they feel comfortable speaking their minds around him.

"What I find is the most telling thing about what Michael Hastings said in your interview is that he talked about his manner as pretending to build an illusion of trust and, you know, he's laid out there what his game is," Logan said. "That is exactly the kind of damaging type of attitude that makes it difficult for reporters who are genuine about what they do, who don't -- I don't go around in my personal life pretending to be one thing and then being something else. I mean, I find it egregious that anyone would do that in their professional life."

Hastings also said that beat reporters -- reporters, like Logan, specifically assigned to cover the military -- do not publish negative pieces about their subjects in order to assure continued access.

"I think that's insulting and arrogant, myself. I really do," Logan said, "because there are very good beat reporters who have been covering these wars for years, year after year. Michael Hastings appeared in Baghdad fairly late on the scene, and he was there for a significant period of time. He has his credentials, but he's not the only one. There are a lot of very good reporters out there. And to be fair to the military, if they believe that a piece is balanced, they will let you back."

"Michael Hastings has never served his country the way McChrystal has," she added.

Logan also slammed Rolling Stone for how the magazine framed the story.

"When you start an article with General McChrystal making obscene gestures, you're not even using something that he said," she said. "And Rolling Stone magazine put their own spin on this. They said that the greatest enemy for McChrystal is the wimps in Washington. Nowhere in the article does McChrystal refer to 'the wimps in Washington.' That's Rolling Stone magazine, how they chose to cast this, to make it as sensational as possible. And that was with intent."

Jesus, where to begin.

So, a reporter's job is not to report what he actually sees, but only to report what his subject wants him to report. Because you need to build a relationship based on trust in order to get the kind of access that guarantees a steady flow of information, But if what you discover during the course of that relationship proves embarrassing to the subject, and you dare to report it, then you've violated that trust and dishonored your profession, even if what you are reporting is true. Finally, if you haven't actually served in the military, you have no business filing stories on its leaders that are in any way unflattering to them because doing so dishonors our troops. Because the final arbiters of whether your reporting is fair and balanced is not your editors, your readers or your own best judgment, but the generals who you've been assigned to cover.

The job Lara Logan is describing here is not that of a journalist whose first obligation is to convey facts to her readers or viewers, but of a stenographer whose primary job is to dutifully transcribe her subjects' provided talking points, then package them in a way that can never be construed as offensive in any way to her subjects. The actual content of your reporting, i.e., the reality that unfolds before your eyes, is secondary to keeping your sources happy and your access open. What's really scary here is the degree of deference to state power on display that borders on outright worship. One wonders how a journalist such as Seymour Hirsch could have ever ever broken the story of the My Lai massacre by adhering to such a code of conduct.

Reading between the lines here, I am guessing that Lara Logan has seen and heard a lot of evil and nasty shit during her time covering the war in Iraq, and that she consciously chose to ignore a lot of it in the interest of furthering her career and keeping her sources content, even if what they fed her was bullshit. If it was enough fodder to consume a few minutes of airtime each night on the CBS Evening News, that was good enough. Then along comes some freelance nebbish like Michael Hastings, who doesn't operate from the same playbook and who manages in only a couple of weeks to break a story that's bigger than anything Lara Logan has managed in her career as a war correspondent, and she's really, really pissed off about it.

Why? Well, the way she simply seems to "know" that Stan McChrystal's staff would never, ever "let their guard down" the way they did tells me that either (a) Lara Logan is some kind of psychic adept, or that (b) Lara Logan not only knows these clowns, but she's also relied on them for access in the past. And that's what she's really upset about---not that Michael Hastings has breached some code of journalistic ethics but the fact that Michael Hastings burned her sources. I could be wrong, and I'll be happy to retract this entire post if I am, but I don't see any other motivating factor for such a post hoc attack. Either way, it's a sobering thought to consider that a correspondent who's so obsequious and servile in the presence of state power is employed by the same network that used to used to keep people like Ed Murrow on the payroll. Your Liberal Media on the march, once again.

---Vitelius

Someone Please Explain This to Me

I know I’m no constitutional scholar (I only play one on TV), but the sentence

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

has always seemed pretty unambiguous to me: that is, the right to keep and bear arms is contingent on service in a militia, e.g., as part of one's service to an organization, supervised by the government, with a well defined command structure and codes of conduct. And since we don’t have state militias anymore, that would mean that there’s no enumerated individual right per se to own guns and that any such right, if any, would be the prerogative of states and municipalities---under the Tenth Amendment that’s so cherished by wingnuts the world over. Which means if a city such as Chicago wants to ban all firearms within its limits, it’s within its constitutional right to do so, and if a state such as Alabama wants to hand out AR-15s to all of its citizens on their 18th birthday, it’s okay to do that, too. So where do our strict-construction Federalists find a "universal" right of gun ownership here? I know that a guy like Tony Scalia is a lot smarter than me and that's why I can't understand the super-sophisticated logic he and his cohorts use, but hey, I'm willing to listen. But at this point, I'm still not getting it.

Then again, these are pretty much the same group of people who told you ten years ago that while you have the right to vote, the government isn’t obligated to actually count your vote if it isn’t convenient to them, and we all know how awesomely that turned out.

---Vitelius

Gotta-Read of The Day: Metaphor For Our Times Edition

Because when you strip away all the hype, desert real estate is just that.

--Vitelius

Saturday (Very Late) Night Opera Blog

Well, after six more hours of apocalyptic Wagnerian awesomeness, I can finally cross the Ring cycle off my personal bucket list. All I can say, it was a great experience, and I hope some opera company, somewhere, will take up this production again one day, even with its $32 million price tag. (Which is about two million bucks per hour of opera. Yikes!) As it wasn't recorded for video, it'll require a future revival for further analysis and review. The final three minutes alone (Brünnhilde's immolation scene, the return of the ring to the Rhine maidens, Valhalla goes up in smoke, etc.) needs to be seen again because its everything-and-the-kitchen-sink staging devices (essentially deconstructing the entire production before your eyes) can't be described in any aesthetic vocabulary that I'm aware of. At least Freyer was in attendance tonight (it was the cycle's last performance here), and he received a thundering ovation from the audience, which was kinda cool to see after all the hostile press this production received when it was first rolled out more than a year ago.

In other news, I guess we still suck at football. Okay, we don't suck exactly---we just need to figure out a way to stop playing like North Korea in the first half, and like Argentina in the second, of all these international matches. This was, at least, the best American side we've ever put together for the World Cup, and while they played hard and went out with class, I still think they were good enough to have won one more game, even against a talented Ghanaian team that was missing its best player. Oh well, it's only 1,460 days and counting until Brazil 2014.

---Vitelius

World Cup Ruminations

I haven't written about it up to now, but in my non-baronial incarnation, I'm actually a huge football fan though I haven't had much time to watch many of the tournament games since I don't have access to a TV at my day job. Or at least, not without incurring the wrath of my gorgon overlords wise superiors. Anyway, not much has really surprised me up to now except perhaps (a) how much the African teams generally sucked, (b) how strong all of the South American teams are, and (c) the overall underwhelmingness of England, which I'd assumed to be a lock for the semifinals at least. I always thought Argentina would be the strongest side going in if all their players were fit, and it looks as though my suspicions been confirmed, though with Dieguito on the sidelines, any outcome is possible. Still, if you put a gun to my head and ordered me to peg the final game right now, I'd wager Brazil-Argentina with the Albiceleste taking it all. I don't think the US squad is any better than a quarterfinalist at best, though even getting that far (with a win over Ghana today, no easy task) would be a great accomplishment in itself. I guess we'll find out more in a few hours.

---Vitelius

Frankenfish: The Other Red Meat

Dear God, no.

The Food and Drug Administration is seriously considering whether to approve the first genetically engineered animal that people would eat — salmon that can grow at twice the normal rate.

The developer of the salmon has been trying to get approval for a decade. But the company now seems to have submitted most or all of the data the F.D.A. needs to analyze whether the salmon are safe to eat, nutritionally equivalent to other salmon and safe for the environment, according to government and biotechnology industry officials. A public meeting to discuss the salmon may be held as early as this fall.

Some consumer and environmental groups are likely to raise objections to approval. Even within the F.D.A., there has been a debate about whether the salmon should be labeled as genetically engineered (genetically engineered crops are not labeled).

The salmon’s approval would help open a path for companies and academic scientists developing other genetically engineered animals, like cattle resistant to mad cow disease or pigs that could supply healthier bacon. Next in line behind the salmon for possible approval would probably be the “enviropig,” developed at a Canadian university, which has less phosphorus pollution in its manure.

The salmon was developed by a company called AquaBounty Technologies and would be raised in fish farms. It is an Atlantic salmon that contains a growth hormone gene from a Chinook salmon as well as a genetic on-switch from the ocean pout, a distant relative of the salmon.

Normally, salmon do not make growth hormone in cold weather. But the pout’s on-switch keeps production of the hormone going year round. The result is salmon that can grow to market size in 16 to 18 months instead of three years, though the company says the modified salmon will not end up any bigger than a conventional fish.

Just what the world needs: More farmed salmon.

A study of more than two metric tons of North American, South American and European salmon has shown that PCBs and other environmental toxins are present at higher levels in farm-raised salmon than in their wild counterparts. Researchers at Indiana University and five other research centers say increased toxin levels in farm-raised salmon may pose health risks to people who eat the economically important fish. Their study, which appears in this week's (Jan. 9) Science, is the most comprehensive analysis to date of salmon toxin concentrations.

Yum. And as a special added bonus:

The growing global appetite for cheap farmed salmon is imperiling wild fish populations across the planet, scientists warn.

The first worldwide assessment of the impact of cultivated salmon on wild stocks found that where native populations encounter salmon farms, the numbers of wild fish crash, on average, by more than 50 percent.

The farmed fish spread diseases and parasites to wild salmon. Some cultivated escapees also interbreed with the native fish, reducing the ability of their offspring to survive, researchers say.

You know, it would be nice if the US and the other developed nations of the world would address the underlying environmental problems that are depleting wild fish stocks worldwide and turning our oceans and inland waterways into dead zones instead of green-lighting another for-profit enterprise that doesn't address the structural nature of the problem, which will consume a great deal of natural resources and energy in the process, and which may in the long run even make things worse.

---Vitelius

Capitulation We Can Believe In

I think this tells you pretty much everything you need to know about our government:

Bank stocks shot higher Friday after an agreement on a financial regulation bill reassured investors that new rules won't devastate financial companies' profits.

Banks outdistanced the rest of the market after congressional negotiators agreed on a bill that increases the regulation of financial companies, but that doesn't include some of the harshest provisions that the government originally proposed. The legislation imposes new rules on the complex investments known as derivates, but the rules aren't as strict as investors feared.

It also includes a far milder version of what's been called the Volcker rule. That rule, named after former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, would have banned commercial banks from trading simply to increase their profits, a practice known as proprietary trading.

And as a special added bonus, the money quote for our times:

"They come out of this big-time winners," Bob Froehlich, senior managing director at Hartford Financial Services, said of financial companies. "Two years later, people will look back and say 'My gosh, nothing really changed.'"

Everything your parents and teachers taught you was wrong: Crime pays.

Meanwhile:

Senate Democrats abandoned on Thursday efforts to provide fresh aid to cash-strapped state governments and extend emergency unemployment benefits for millions of jobless workers, leaving in limbo President Obama's push for more spending to bolster the economy.

The decision came after the Senate failed again to muster 60 votes to advance a package of tax cuts and emergency economic provisions. Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) joined a united Republican caucus in voting to block the measure, citing concern that even the latest slimmed-down version would expand bloated budget deficits.

That's the ticket: foam fingers for Wall Street, middle fingers for its victims. I am beginning to think that someone needs to primary Obama in 2012 (and every other Democrat who voted for this crappy bill), simply to force him (and them) to try to explain to the voting public why we could only tinker with an engine that's already broken down from overheating and in need of a systemic rebuild. Have fun trying to cut deals with House Speaker Boehner next year.

---Vitelius

Is DHS Necessary?

Paging Gary Faulkner: Your country needs you. And you don't even have to fly off to Pakistan this time.

---Vitelius

Is Petraeus Necessary?

Duuuuuuuude.

What can you say? Pro wrestling's loss is counter-terrorism's gain. (H/t Abu M.)

---Vitelius

Liberty for Me But Not for Thee

You really gotta hand it to these people. I mean, any political platform that contains both this:

Limiting The Expanse of Government Power

And this:

We support legislation that would make it a felony to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple and for any civil official to perform a marriage ceremony for such.

Is proof that today's generation of conservatives inhabits a bubble-wrapped sphere of existence that is 100-percent free of irony, logic, and simple introspection. I can't think of any other Western-style democracy on the planet at present that would consider these people to be anything other than a 3-percenter fringe movement. Well, maybe Israel.

---Vitelius

Profound Insight of the Day

Given the current economic climate, any government program that left the terms of mortgage modification up to banks, not bankruptcy courts, was bound to be a bad idea.

Now they are going into Damage Control Mode, but one wonders if it isn't too late to preempt two totally awesome years of subpoenas, investigations and impeachment hearings that we're going to be treated to, starting in the spring of 2011.

---Vitelius

The Awesomeness of Aquatic Monocultures

Non-indigenous species do the darnedest things:

An Asian carp was found for the first time beyond electric barriers meant to keep the voracious invasive species out of the Great Lakes, state and federal officials said Wednesday, prompting renewed calls for swift action to block their advance.

Commercial fishermen landed the 3-foot-long, 20-pound bighead carp in Lake Calumet on Chicago's South Side, about six miles from Lake Michigan, according to the Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee.

Officials said they need more information to determine the significance of the find.

"The threat to the Great Lakes depends on how many have access to the lakes, which depends on how many are in the Chicago waterway right now," said John Rogner, assistant director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

But environmental groups said the discovery leaves no doubt that other Asian carp have breached barriers designed to prevent them from migrating from the Mississippi River system to the Great Lakes and proves the government needs to act faster.

"If the capture of this live fish doesn't confirm the urgency of this problem, nothing will," said Andy Buchsbaum, director of the National Wildlife Federation's Great Lakes office.

Scientists and fishermen fear that if the carp become established in the lakes, they could starve out popular sport species and ruin the region's $7 billion fishing industry. Asian Carp can grow to 4 feet and 100 pounds and eat up to 40 percent of their body weight daily.

So what’s the solution? Well, ideally, you’d want to shut off access to Lake Michigan, which in Illinois would mean closing the locks on a couple of canals linking the Chicago River and the lake.

Unfortunately, somewhere, some way, doing this will be very bad for certain corporate persons, which means it’s very, very bad for America.

A Chicago-based industry coalition called Unlock Our Jobs said the discovery of a single carp did not justify closing the locks. Doing so would damage the region's economy and kill jobs without guaranteeing that carp would be unable to reach the lakes, spokesman Mark Biel said.

"A few isolated incidents of Asian carp in this small section of the Illinois Waterway does not mean existing barriers have failed," said Biel, also executive director of the Chemical Industry Council of Illinois.

Just like a few isolated tar balls washing ashore on the Florida coast doesn’t mean the laser-sharp BP containment strategy has failed, either. But rest assured, in our awesome new Republic of Citizens United (neé U.S.A.), Mr. Biel can always take his complaint to guys like this, and he and his fellow corporate persons can be made whole again. The rest of us had better stock our freezers full of Great Lakes whitefish while we still have some time.

Or perhaps not. And bring on the Carpmaster Tournament series!

---Vitelius

Wednesday (Late Night) Opera Blogging

No posts today. Had to get up early for work this morning, then down to the Chandler this afternoon for five and a half more hours of pure Wagnerian awesomeness, so I pretty much missed everything cool that happened today, like Landon Donovan's goal or Obama firing McChrystal (didn't think he'd really do it) and pulling Petraeus out of his hat. These things happen in the best of homes. The opera was fine, though it is more a light-hearted and humorous work than the others in the Ring cycle, so it didn't exert the kind of strong emotional pull on me that Rheingold and Walküre did. Still, looking back now, I'm glad I plunked down some (serious) money for the whole four-concert cycle because that's how these works really need to be seen and heard---sequentially, one night after the other over the course of a week or so---to make the most artistic and aesthetic sense. Also too because this is the first Ring cycle in the 24-year history of LA Opera and Lord knows when or if we'll get another one. And there's still six more hours of Götterdämmerung immolation on Saturday night before the cycle is finished for good.

Oh, about Obama's decision today: Nice political instincts, eh?

---Vitelius

The Bipartisan Awesomeness of Backbiting

Some terrific advice for Obama, from people who speak for Real Americans:

Refuse McChrystal's resignation. The general is a man of honor, and no idiot.

Unless he is a dishonorable man, or an idiot, or both.

After Cpl. Pat Tillman, the former-NFL-star-turned-Ranger, was accidentally killed by his own troops in Afghanistan in April 2004, McChrystal took an active role in creating the impression that Tillman had died at the hands of Taliban fighters. He signed off on a falsified recommendation for a Silver Star that suggested Tillman had been killed by enemy fire. (McChrystal would later claim he didn't read the recommendation closely enough – a strange excuse for a commander known for his laserlike attention to minute details.) A week later, McChrystal sent a memo up the chain of command, specifically warning that President Bush should avoid mentioning the cause of Tillman's death. "If the circumstances of Corporal Tillman's death become public," he wrote, it could cause "public embarrassment" for the president.

So, we can add "lying dissembler" and "political opportunist" to "dishonorable" and "idiot" here. Personally, I don't think it really matters what Obama chooses to do with McChrystal if their underlying strategy on how to wage the Afghanistan war doesn't change. Most people in America have already psychologically "checked out" of Afghanistan for the same reason people quickly "checked out" of Iraq after Mission Accomplished was declared---because our Presidents, then and now, demanded no real sacrifices from them unless they were members of the military, or their families, or their loved ones. Barack Obama hasn't exactly told us to go shopping yet, but neither has he asked Americans to pay any price and bear any burden to defeat the various sundry Bad Guys in Afghanistan because, well, we'd probably have to raise taxes, or something equally icky like that, to pay for it all.

On the other hand, ending the war in Afghanistan would an awesomely efficient way to cut federal spending and reduce our deficit, wouldn't it? So why aren't any of our leading Washington deficit hawks suggesting this change in policy?

---Vitelius

McChrystal's Slip

I just finished reading the Rolling Stone piece in its entirety, and I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around it. I mean, what were these guys thinking? That Rolling Stone is just some headbanger magazine, and that projecting a little “fuckin' A” machismo would appeal to the readership, or boost enlistment? I mean, they even had a chance to review the story before it went to press, and given the leeway the military is typically given over the press during wartime, one would think that a simple phone call from somebody at Team America to Jann Wenner’s office would have succeeded in spiking the story for good. Did it simply not occur to them that anyone at the White House would stumble across it? If so, these guys are dumb as rocks, and need to be re-assigned. On the other hand, if they’re not, it means they simply didn’t care if their comments embarrassed the White House or not, which comes pretty close to rank insubordination. It certainly doesn’t reflect well on McChrystal’s leadership skills that his closest adjutants display the lack of self-discipline that you’d typically associate with a gang of frat-house boys, and the general seems to have no problem with this.

One certainly can’t envy Obama his choices here. He’s going to get pilloried whether he fires McChrystal (by the usual wingnuts for undercutting the troops, not having a plan for victory, etc.) or whether he simply lets him off with another sternly worded warning (by liberals, mostly, but also by some conservatives, to be fair, for tolerating disloyalty in the brass). Politically, at least, it’s lose-lose for the administration. And frankly, I'm not sure it even matters what Obama chooses to do, when you consider that

In June, Afghanistan officially outpaced Vietnam as the longest war in American history -– and Obama has quietly begun to back away from the deadline he set for withdrawing U.S. troops in July of next year. (Emphasis added.)

And after eight and a half years, this is where we stand---with members of the general staff sniping at the White House and the diplomatic corps, an administration publicly singing the praises of an Afghan leadership that the diplomats (and much of the military) distrusts, a risk-averse counterinsurgency strategy that seems to be succeeding in somehow killing more civilians than ever, a bunch of pissed-off enlisted men who feel their hands are being tied, and millions of taxpayer dollars flowing into the hands of hired thugs to maintain order. Isn't it about time to declare "Mission Accomplished," then leave?

---Vitelius