First, a word from our
holiday: Although veterans deserve honor, let’s not confuse this holiday with
Veterans Day. This is MEMORIAL day,
where we honor the dead who have fallen in service to their country. While it’s also more than permissible to
incidentally pay respects to our other deceased loved ones as well, since we
don’t have a holiday to do that, we shouldn’t make it a second Veterans Day, as
many are doing. Veterans Day honors all
veterans, living and deceased, with primary honors to the living.
The historian in me
realizes that this may be spittle in the wind, for holidays have been morphing
from their original purpose since, well, time IMMEMORIAL. :)
On to your “rant.” If I’m the Spankdaddy, you’re the Spankmomma
now! LOL. Harsh but accurate words you
have conveyed, and if people are uncomfortable with them, perhaps that should
be a sign to them!
It is unclear how coordinated
sinister the intent is, but certainly the effects are sinister. I watch us slowly transform in ways all too
similar to Rome. And what would once
have been cause for alarm barely gets notice, while the barely consequential
gets trumpeted. How very many grumpy
observers there must have been in Rome’s day, from the fall of Carthage to the
rise of Caesar!
I agree with you that
we are complicit in our own downfall. We
say we are too busy with our lives to pay attention to politics—and then
politics affects our lives in multifaceted and interlocked ways, often to our
detriment. Disgust with politics is
understandable, but that reaction plays into the hands of those who seek to
cement control of those politics. We have an electorate
that largely doesn’t pay attention most of the time, and is often as a
consequence easily manipulated when it does, particularly in states with
predispositions.
My, my, the “pre” part
of my post has taken up considerable space.
That means there’s time to address only one “scandal” this week. The others will have to wait! :)
Benghazi:
It is fairly apparent even looking from the outside that this was a CIA
operation, a BUNGLED CIA operation (with no backup plan or decent military
coordination—shades of Blackhawk Down) from start to tragic end to post-tragedy
decisions. Ambassador Chris Stevens
almost certainly knew about it because he was probably part of it. Whatever that operation was is unclear, and
speculation that they were lured to Benghazi on false pretenses by terrorist double
agents is similarly indeterminate. That
the CIA drove the narrative, the changing talking points, the info that was
released, the timing, the confusion (probably deliberate), the diversion, the
misinformation, and the silence, is indicative of a lot. That the CIA has not been called heavily to
task—effectively given a pass, really—is telling. While much of what they do is intensely
valuable and very necessary, the secret operations world and the classified
world have attained incredible, barely accountable, and nearly untouchable
power since the Cold War and now the endless “war” on “terrorism.” What they say—or don’t want to say—usually
goes, especially in a Democratic administration, whose influence on them is
usually weaker.
There was
confusion and damage control after the attack.
And officials in the State Dept certainly, and even the White House,
felt like they were left holding the bag from the very House and Senate members
condemning them, because it was those same members who had refused to fund the
requests for increased security at diplomatic stations all over, and made
necessary the State Dept decision not to increase security for Benghazi. Hindsight always looks 20/20 in the specific,
but beforehand, when resources are scarce, which they are at State, hard
decisions have to be made. And our
embassies and consulates are threatened the world over.
But sure,
the State Dept and the White House and even DoD (which rejected a request by
the second highest US diplomat in Libya to send in a Special Forces team the
morning after the attack) have tried to spin and shade to spare themselves
embarrassment from their political enemies.
We might wish they hadn’t done that, but the environment is poisoned in
Washington, and people and organizations are going to react to that
environment.
The
Republicans driving scandalmania largely know all of the above. That they don’t want to focus on legitimate
criticism of the administration is telling enough, let alone the fact they largely
care not a whit about focusing on the critical, compelling issues. As I have said from the beginning, this administration deserves
CONSIDERABLE legitimate criticism, but nearly all of that is lost or
unaddressed because it is irrelevant to the Republicans driving scandalmania,
for their objective has nothing to do with crafting correctives or making
better policy.
In place of those we get false insinuation, hypocrisy, hysteria,
and hyperbole—the search for scandal. It
isn’t about political differences, it’s about that a large core of Republicans
have never accepted EITHER of this president’s elections. That he has been remarkably effective for a
no-executive-experience outsider facing obstruction has only made them hate him
all the more. And the Democrats only
look better in comparison, that is, in relative terms. Because, yes, for the first 6 years they
cooperated with the Bush administration, albeit sometimes reluctantly. In Republican eyes, they are weak like that.
Safe inside their gerrymandered districts and accepting red
states, the Republicans driving obstruction, paralyzation, and diversion want
to take hope for even watered-down, technocratic “change” of the
non-plutocratic sort out of the equation.
Infrastructure anyone? No?
Foolish me! Not enough things
have fallen down yet for it to be a scandal. I probably need scandal
lessons. Maybe I should watch that television
series more often! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment