MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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Hits of the Day
Laura Flanders on SOTU
By A Guy Called LULU on Fri, 01/27/2012 - 8:31pm |The grades for the president’s State of the Union are in and the critics have been kind. In fact, it's chilling to see just how few hits the president takes for couching his entire address in unqualified celebration of the US military.
URL:
http://www.thenation.com/blog/165881/not-peep-about-presidents-praise-war
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Comments
(IMO) Flanders bringing up those military troops who urinated on the corpses within a review of SOTU attempting to put down President Obama's praise of the military was
ridiculousbullshit.by Aunt Sam on Fri, 01/27/2012 - 9:09pm
Seconded.
by Elusive Trope on Fri, 01/27/2012 - 9:20pm
Thirded.
by tmccarthy0 on Fri, 01/27/2012 - 9:31pm
Unfourthed.
It's always considered crass and unclassy to say something negative when we're praising our troops. That's why we trot out our military when we want to guarantee approval - we get our Oprah Winfrey everyone-nod-their-head moment.
Whether it's troops urinating on the dead or drones that seem to keep missing their mark and killing civilians (kinda like our famous "smart bombs"), or that our heralded capture of bin Laden seems to have ended in a bullet through the head and dump into the sea, or that our 2nd "success" was an assassination of a non-military figure with no indictment and still no specific details allowed on his "crime". [Not cooperating with the war on terruh, one presumes, in that undeclared war in Yemen.]
Or that we've spent a trillion dollars in Mideast wars and $500 billion a year base pay for these guys to "outperform expectations" - give me a fucking trillion and I'll learn how to do quadruple back flips and kill people like Jackie Chan, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Angelina Jolie combined.
*MY* expectation was that Obama would try to end these futile wars, that a military approach to world peace and nation building would drag on and on because you can't nation build at the point of a gun and you can't weed out anti-American sentiment by putting troops and drones in to kill people and force them to behave the way you want.
(not that "liberal democracy" is leading on the curriculum)
Our military budget has gone from $310 billion in 2001 to Obama's proposed $646 billion. Who has the codpiece in his flight suit now?
If it would do any good, I'd vote for Ron Paul on this issue alone - end the war, bring our troops and money home.
[and please don't bring up the end of the Iraq War - that was on W's time schedule, agreed before he left office. We would still have more troops there if the Iraqis had given us complete immunity as we tried to push.]
by PeraclesPlease (not verified) on Sat, 01/28/2012 - 12:25am
What I heard in the speech is a president that admires military discipline and communal teamwork, and not one that admires war making. I've heard similar from him many times before, in all manner of ways, not always with military references involved.
Now I don't happen to admire either military discipline, or even teamwork that much. I myself am loner, not a joiner, hate committees, and tend to most admire creative individuals and iconoclasts, so I'd be much more interested in reading an essay bashing his admiration of military discipline and teamwork. But one bashing something that he didn't really seem to say in the speech, just to advance the writer's agenda? Not so much. Who knows, he may indeed admire warmongering now, but I really didn't see it in this speech.
The whole thing does bring this up for me: so many were so excited to have a cool, rational, disciplined, non-emotional president; whatever happened to that? To me, it's not him that's changed, he still seems very similar to the presidential candidate and book author he once was.
by artappraiser on Fri, 01/27/2012 - 10:27pm
Good comments. I didn't see warmongering. But I did see the intent to have a smaller, more mobile and smarter military. I served in the military following college. A career officer, stuck in his rank, said to me once, "Give me a war, any war."
I thought using the military model of mutual respect and dependency as it applies to the country as a whole was a master stroke. Which militant Republicans are going to disagree with it?
What's been interesting to me about the speech and the aftermath are the visuals, the body language, the understatement of the Somalia operation, the tying of all of it into a package. This is a juggernaut, messaging at every level. It's about time. And it leaves journalists with very little to criticize, hence this unfortunate article.
by Oxy Mora on Fri, 01/27/2012 - 10:54pm
But your comments are waaay better than my self-centered ones; very insightful analysis, especially about the tying together and the media response. I feel like slapping myself and saying doh.
by artappraiser on Fri, 01/27/2012 - 11:13pm
Came back to make a possible addition to the "package" you mentioned as regards Somalia operation, etc. I can buy 2 rescues of Iranians at sea as happenstance within a short span of time, but not 3. Especially with news coverage following each in short order. I can't help it, I am visualizing an order to the US Navy to use all intelligence and scour all seas looking for Iranians in distress, and be ready with full PR after you find some and rescue them.
by artappraiser on Fri, 01/27/2012 - 11:50pm
It was glaringly obvious that the Pres had to say that stuff if he was also going to say anything even faintly librul. It was a tradeoff.
Plus, the military personell--unlike Congress--seem to respect his office and do what he says. (It's pretty sad when a relatively liberal president has to look to the military as an example of people who follow his lead.)
And, as Oxy points out above, we're back to a smaller, more mobile military, and that can't look like what it looked like when Don Rumsfeld was in charge of the concept. So he had to paint a new picture.
I'm sure he would rather have talked about successful efforts at bipartisanship, but you go with what you have, you know?
by erica20 on Fri, 01/27/2012 - 11:05pm
the military personell--unlike Congress--seem to respect his office and do what he says
I'm sure he would rather have talked about successful efforts at bipartisanship, but you go with what you have, you know?
So funny and true! Makes me realize one thing wrong in my original comment above, there is change here: I don't think we're ever going to see the bipartisany hopey author Obama again, probably never again, he is a goner.
by artappraiser on Fri, 01/27/2012 - 11:19pm
He was cute in a Jonas brothers kind of way, but this new guy works on more levels.
He's not perfect, and maybe further back on the curve than we'd like him to be, but he knows what he's doing, eh?
by erica20 on Fri, 01/27/2012 - 11:41pm
Actually I think we will see the bipartisan Obama, but what he has learned is that it is challenge enough to get bipartisanship between the moderates and liberals. If he can do that, then some things might actually get accomplished.
by Elusive Trope on Fri, 01/27/2012 - 11:42pm
That's what I meant, but my daughter really likes the Jonas Brothers so I threw that in.
I think it's actually a tripartisanship in a weird way. He's willing to call in a few types who are real conservative on certain issues if he can get 'em.
by erica20 on Sat, 01/28/2012 - 12:12am
by A Guy Called LULU on Fri, 01/27/2012 - 11:54pm