Through the Gates
And it wouldn’t be Thursday without Island Dweller spotting something to tick us off. He brings up the subject of former Defense Secretary Gates:
Most illustrious, dread, awful, and so on –
Your slightly chilled minion here in the hinterlands has noted the kerfuffle recently initiated by former SECDEF Gates through the following statement, part of a recent news release about his memoir, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, in which Gates writes:
Hillary told the president that her opposition to the [2007] surge in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary. . . The president conceded vaguely that opposition to the Iraq surge had been political. To hear the two of them making these admissions, and in front of me, was as surprising as it was dismaying.
They must have considered him one of them – or they were displaying their supreme arrogance.
If anyone suspected the lives of our service members were not the primary concern of their commander-in-chief, or of the foreign policy apparatus that should be supporting the best (apolitical) interests of the United States, this exchange should go a long way toward confirming that suspicion.
The dissent about the Iraq troop surge among those in high U.S. political office, or aspiring to it, could not have failed to come to the attention of those guiding the opposition, and it could not have but helped fuel their resolve.
The point is, Hillary Rodham Clinton is part of a liberal elite that loves to dabble in matters of state (with no experience or qualifications), as long as her offspring, and those of her close associates, are not affected by that dabbling – or who ensure the dabbling occurs in the first place.
Say what you want about Pres Bush the Elder – after reluctantly coming to the conclusion Desert Storm would have to occur, and giving the go-ahead, by his own account his next move was to seek out a quiet place in the White House and get on his knees to pray he had made the right decision. Many years before, he had been one of those doing the attacking for another president, along with two others he was directly responsible for – and only he made it out of the aircraft when they were shot down. As far as I know, he was the last Chief Executive with direct combat experience and to whom loss of life was a deeply personal thing. You sure can’t say that about this current bunch.
The liberal ruling elite in this country have a scarcely-concealed disdain for flyover country, and with the current method of staffing the ranks in our military, that’s where the the overwhelming majority of the volunteers come from. To review the rendering of this exchange, one can not wonder if the lives of our service members are not viewed as, to this liberal ruling elite, and to quote a line from a recent film, “worth no more than so many chickens.” I always suspected it and this exchange goes a long way toward confirming it.
I wonder what the later-SECSTATE would have said if, through mandatory military service, the lives of the children of her liberal-elite associates would have been on the line, right along with the “flyover” folks. Another excellent argument for universal military (not national) service.
ID
The problem the Czar has with the Gates memoir, and why he probably will not get around to reading it, is that it merely confirms every damned suspicion most of us have about the President.
He doesn’t get the military. He doesn’t particularly like them. They are undesirable but necessary blunt instruments, but a lot of Americans sure seem to like them.
In another part of the memoir, you will learn that Gates was merely a meat puppet to fill a necessary cabinet position—the President did not seem to care whether he was even in the room. In fact, you will read that the President was more inclined to take military advice from Samantha Power—who of course has less military experience than a fingernail clipping. And that Gates’ objection to this was eventually met with a ludicrous attempt at intimidation from Vice-President Biden.
The Gates memoir will be quoted heavily in 2016: from Clinton, using it to ridicule and humiliate Biden, and from Biden, using it to ridicule and humiliate Clinton. Already, from the excerpts we have seen, the entire Obama administration comes out looking like a bunch of college kids in a creative writing class. Not a grown-up among them.
Truly, now would be the ideal time for the Duchy of Grand Fenwick to attack and overpower us.
Also, yes: George H.W. Bush is the only living commander-in-chief to have seen combat. That isn’t a bad thing—it actually shows how rare military conflicts are getting. But it also means that college kids should not pretend to be toy soldiers when they slide into a leadership position.
Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.