The Hidden Mutex
Elliot Abrams’ account of how the Bush White House decided not to bomb the Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007 — but then let the Israelis bomb it anyway — paints a portrait of the inner cabinet decision making process. At meetings over the question of whether or not to bomb the North Korean designed Syrian reactor the various principals fought their corner, advancing the institutional views of the agencies they represented with the President having the last word. Bush apparently decided not to bomb the reactor. But when Olmert, despite American suggestions to the contrary, went ahead an bombed it, Bush was curiously unsurprised. Despite the passage of 5 years and the fact that nearly everyone of importance then is still alive Abrams is still not sure what happened.
So quickly did he accept the Olmert decision that I wondered then, and do still, if the president did not at some level anticipate and desire this result. He had sided with Condi and shown that she was still in charge of Middle East policy, but her “take it to the UN” plan had been blown up along with the reactor. He did not seem very regretful. What is more, he instructed us all to abandon the diplomatic plans and maintain absolute silence, ensuring that Israel could carry out its plan.
Perhaps the lesson in the Abrams story is that actions are the ultimate expressions of meaning. Words are nice, but handsome is as handsome does. In the end Bush came down on the side of Syria not getting the bomb. Outcomes are the most meaningful indicators of a presidential decision process. Glenn Greenwald would do well to bear that in mind when trying to understand why President Obama hasn’t worked out the way he expected.
This past week has been a strangely clarifying political moment. It was caused by two related events: the leak of the Justice Department’s “white paper” justifying Obama’s claimed power to execute Americans without charges, followed by John Brennan’s alarming confirmation hearing (as Charles Pierce wrote: “the man whom the administration has put up to head the CIA would not say whether or not the president of the United States has the power to order the extrajudicial killing of a United States citizen within the borders of the United States”).
Actually there have been a whole slew of clarifying moments. Time Magazine was quick to refute reports that the man who killed Bin Laden thinks he’s been screwed by the US Government. Citing an Esquire article that alleged “… the Shooter will discover soon enough that when he leaves after sixteen years in the Navy, his body filled with scar tissue, arthritis, tendonitis, eye damage, and blown disks, here is what he gets from his employer and a grateful nation: ‘Nothing. No pension, no health care, and no protection for himself or his family,’ Time said: “As veterans’ advocates were quick to point out, that’s not true; he is entitled to five years of free health care from the Department of Veterans Affairs.”
They forgot to add that after that the Shooter will be entitled to a lifetime of free Obamacare.
Or take the story that the woman cop who shot it out with the Fort Hood Jihadist thinks she was ‘betrayed’.
Three years after the White House arranged a hero’s welcome at the State of the Union address for the Fort Hood police sergeant and her partner who stopped the deadly shooting there, Kimberly Munley says President Obama broke the promise he made to her that the victims would be well taken care of.
“Betrayed is a good word,” former Sgt. Munley told ABC News in a tearful interview to be broadcast tonight on “World News with Diane Sawyer” and “Nightline.”
“Not to the least little bit have the victims been taken care of,” she said. “In fact they’ve been neglected.”
You don’t say?
Then maybe there’s Syria. As Walter Russell Mead puts it, it isn’t that President Obama should help the Syrian rebels, even though the best path might be to actually control them, it’s that he gave the impression he was going to help them and then did nothing.
As the FT points out, President Obama wants it both ways: he’s demanded Assad step down and called preventing genocide “a core national-security interest,” but promised in his second inaugural that “a decade of war is now ending.” He’s also threatened war with Syria if chemical weapons are used and proclaimed a “responsibility to protect,” but seeks to slash defense spending, might withdraw a U.S. carrier from the Gulf, and vetoed his cabinet’s recommendations on Syria.
The problem is not that the President is turning his back on Syria; there’s certainly a case that one could make for such a policy. The problem is that the President has neglected to make a case at all. He’s been content to make certain rhetorical promises while pursuing contradictory lines of policy. This is not only insincere to the American people, it is an extremely dangerous strategy: Iran, Assad, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Israel might no longer know what to expect from the U.S., or believe anything its Commander in Chief says. When one of the region’s most powerful actors projects that kind of weakness, it’s a game changer.
At the heart of each of these stories is a single consistent theme. What the President says is not what he will necessarily do. Glenn Greenwald is discovering that the contents of the box don’t match what was depicted on the label.
A whole slew of policies that would have triggered the shrillest of progressive condemnations under Bush – waging war after Congress votes against authorizing it, the unprecedented persecution and even torturing of whistleblowers, literally re-writing FOIA to conceal evidence of torture, codifying indefinite detention on US soil – are justified or, at best, ignored … [yet] … polls now show that Democrats and even self-identified progressives support policies that they once pretended to loathe now that it is Obama rather than Bush embracing them.
If a book by two former special operations soldiers is correct, then not only do the words on the box not correspond to the contents, they are sometimes the opposite of them. The book alleges that David Petraeus was set up by factions within the CIA and abetted by persons in the administration.
Senior CIA officers targeted Petraeus because they didn’t like the way he was running the agency – focusing more on paramilitary operations than intelligence analysis. They used their political clout and their connections to force an FBI investigation of his affair with Paul Broadwell and make it public, according to ‘Benghazi: The Definitive Report.’
‘It was high-level career officers on the CIA who got the ball rolling on the investigation. It was basically a palace coup to get Petraeus out of there,’ Jack Murphy, one of the authors, told MailOnline …
Petraeus was furious, they say, because he was kept in the dark about the raids being conducted without his knowledge by the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) across Libya and North Africa.
Webb and Murphy claim that the September 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. consulate and a CIA outpost in Benghazi proved to Petraeus that he was an outsider in the Obama administration and that he would remain marginalized as long as he was at the CIA.
Obama is stuffing the administration with senior officials who are “second-raters” or even “third-raters”. Why? Because he wants hacks. And Greenwald is beginning to get it.
Greenwald’s “clarifying political moments” are a fancy way of saying that the President systematically lies. In Mead’s words he says one thing and does another. He promises free health care and raises its price, says he’ll get justice for the Benghazi victims and forgets it; offers free stuff to the young only for them to discover they will be soaked to pay for the the benefits of the old; says he’ll stop North Korea while doing nothing, pledges to support Egyptian democracy and delivers them over to a tyrant. Etc, etc, etc, etc. As Walter Russel Mead put it, he makes “certain rhetorical promises while pursuing contradictory lines of policy”.
But Mead is more astute than Greenwald. He argues that the real danger to this kind of opacity isn’t that it proves some kind of personal failing so much as it debases confidence in the United States. This is especially important because national security depends on the credibility of the United States. Systematically debasing a Great Power’s pronouncements has the same ultimate effect as debasing the currency.
So when one asks ‘what did the President just promise?’ And the answer is who knows? Just spin the wheel of fortune; just lay out the tarot cards. Pick a number, any number: your guess is as good as mine, then there is real palpable danger.
Actually things are not quite that uncertain. The President one might argue, actually has a certain systematic set of priorities. The problem is guessing what it is.
It is like there was a hidden mutex.
Programmers will be familiar with the concept of a mutex — an object that assigns the priority of execution to a certain routine and denies that priority to all else until it is released. It behaves like a traffic cop that lets certain things go first and obliges others to wait. The problem with President Obama’s habit of falsehood is that it presents a dummy mutex to the world. If you believe the explict “go” signal you will crash in the intersection like the Syrians or the Egyptian protesters. But there is the possibility of a second channel signal. If you understand the real mutex you can decipher the actual signal. Kim things he knows what the real signal is. So he goes ahead and tests another nuclear weapon for North Korea.
Greenwald’s problem is that he took things at face value. But maybe the “unprincipled Democratic hacks” who are cheering the President’s power grab on are actually more perceptive than him. They for one were never taken in by the rhetoric. They listened to the guff politely and clapped, but understood the real priority was never ‘human rights’ or ‘pacifism’ or any of that twaddle the Obama campaign peddled to the rubes. The actual message was ‘seize domestic power by any means necessary’. That was the signal of the hidden mutex.
And now they are betting they guessed right. The hacks aren’t cheering Obama on because they think it will lead to world peace. They are cheering him on because they hope to get paid or be awarded a plum position. That’s why they are hacks, Greenwald. That’s why they’re hacks.
All the other traffic that he imagined would proceed must stop. The “we won” express gets the green light all the way. The remaining mysteries are who is the “we” and what does “winning” mean. Maybe we should ask the President what it signifies. Or maybe not.
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Wretchard said:
“The book alleges that David Petraeus was set up by factions within the CIA and abetted by persons in the administration.”
The hard truth is that Petraeus behaved like a rank amateur in allowing himself to get caught in what was effectively a honey trap. How could anyone with Petraeus’ intelligence and experience have been caught in something so obvious? One could counter argue that all the top politicians in Washington have courtesans and whores on the side and it was standard operating procedure. However not everyone was director of the CIA. Petraeus should have expected Obama or one of his henchmen to setup a honey trap against him. Petraeus allowed his reasoning to be confused by his sexuality. That was inexcusable and he paid the price.
It’s interesting that the Israelis assumed that Syria would remain quiet after their nuclear reactor got taken out. This leads to the next question: Did the US play the same gambit in dropping a bunker buster on the Iranian uranium enrichment facility near Fordow? Did that actually happen or was it merely Internet gossip?
Hmm. Barry Soetero as the Tom Bombadil of today’s version of Middle Earth? Barry Bombadil could make the Ring of Power disappear — or Iran, or Syria, or wherever. But he has little concern for the issues facing the mortals of Middle Earth. His motivations are puzzling, and no-one can count on his support.
It is said that Eisenhower deliberately obfuscated matters in the hope of confusing the Soviets into paralysis, once remarking “Let’s see them translate that into Russian!” It is doubtful that Li’l Barry is playing such a deep game. Maybe he has all he ever really wanted — the House, the plane, Camp David, access to any golf course, and non-stop adulation from the NYT set? In which case, the despots of this world can safely conclude that his words mean nothing at all.
I’ve noticed that the number of reports of voter fraud for Obama have been increasing in the swing states. There is a growing “perception” that Obama didn’t win.
It looks like the US is getting closer and closer to the “Snap.”
The hard truth? Is that some sort of double ententré Eggplant?
There isn’t a person alive who cannot be taken down by a honey trap of some sort, so did G-d design the world and the mankind in it. Insanity and corruption rule the day in the Beltway, there are no Taoists. Petraeus was taken out by those whose active faults are worse than his!
What the President says is not what he will necessarily do.
Let me clarify for Mead and all just how it works for those community organizers like our President, they DON’T DO. They state a desired result, and wait for someone else to DO it, insulting them all the way to help them along, and otherwise leading from behind, the golf course, and Hawaii, letting a crack team of hacks and flacks deflect all questions. Obambus has now expanded his sphere of inaction from a few square blocks in Chicago, to the United States, and now the world. Make him Pope and he will rule the Universe thusly, from behind.
Now, that does not sound well, but I am not saying it is always wrong. What if Bush41 had stayed out of Iraq and Kuwait? Well, Gulf Wars I and II and Afghanistan would probably not have happened as they did, nor 9/11. Saudi Arabia might have collapsed already as Iraqi oil was never shut down, keeping prices lower. Now, it is quite likely that something WORSE would have happened, Iraq and Iran might both already have atomic weapons, who knows what would have transpired with Israel. Or – not. Can’t prove any of these hypotheticals in court. Can’t *prove* that Obambus has let anything slip. Can only argue it.
The Euro-Neo-Progressive believes war is obsolete, can’t happen, shouldn’t happen, won’t happen, except among a few atavistic savages easily controlled, where we find a need, by some police, lawfare, maybe some special forces and drones (we are in the Age of Rumsfeld in spite of all objections). What if they are right? Do we know they are not?
It’s very Zen to let inaction lead the way.
It is not, however, very American.
Therein lies the rub.
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So what about this mutex deal, that Obambus is not directing resources and priorities to world processes. Again, for me it’s a big la de da, do we really want Global Obamacare? Problem is he doesn’t have a Nancy Pelosi to deem it done for him. Thank Cthulhu.
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e @ 2: The hard truth is that Petraeus behaved like a rank amateur
Like a rank idiot, he was never cut out for that job and apparently not the Washington social environment, but I suppose you don’t know until you try.
When you look at acutal policies and actions, instead of announcements and statements, Obama’s desires become clear enough:
At home:
1. Obamacare will collapse the private health care industry, and this will lead to national government provided health care. People will vote democrat for life to keep their care, and costs will be controlled by rationing and eventually, denial of care for the elderly or those whom Obamas health care panels deem unworthy of resources.
2. Gun ownership will be deligitimized, gun registration and attempted confiscation will follow. This will be done most likely by forcing gun owners to buy insurance, placing special taxes on guns, ammunition, and so on. The goal is a disarmed population that must rely on government for safety.
3. To Obama, high unemployment is irrelevant, and in fact desried. By forcing more and more people to accept food stamps, Obamacare, government assisted houseing and so on, obedience and loyalty to the government is assured. (African Americans have perhaps the highest unemployment rates in the country, yet the overwhelming majority voted for Obama).
4. Illegal alein amnesty will create 10 or more million reliable democratic voters, thereby assruing the permanent rule of the Democatic party.
The overall goal is to make the US a larger version of Mexico with Obama and the democrats as the PRI. tax, borrow, spend, elect, – and keep power indefinitely.
” … there’s certainly a case that one could make for such a policy. The problem is that the President has neglected to make a case at all. ”
Years, indeed decades ago a medical professor pointed out to us that the failure to decide what to do is not the same as deciding to do nothing tho the outcome might seem the same; how one was passive and the other active; how severely pernicious the results of the former could be, far more than an incorrect decision in the latter.
The many years since have shown me how profoundly correct he was … and this is the problem with Mr Obama. Having done little more than ”organizing” and writing two books (about himself), plus talk, talk, talk he’s had no seasoning in taking in the data, sifting them for significance, and all else that results in a reasoned decision.
So he just avoids making one and, as predicted long ago, we now see the pernicious effects.
As for foreign policy:
1. Obamas defence cuts show he does not want the USA to be a great power, full stop. At best, he sees the military as a piggy bank to fund Obamacare. At worst, as a domestic police force.
2. Obama wants Islamic Fascism to rule the Middle East. This is the only explanation for his support of the Muslum Brotherhood.
3. He wants Iran to be the dominant power in the region. This explains the tolerance of Irans nuclear weapon program, the withdrawels from Iraq and Afghanistan, and the prevention of Israel from taking action.
4. Judging by his treatment of Israel, Obama considers the country expendable.
5. Obama likewise in Asia considers US allies Japan and South Korea expendable. This accounts for budget custs to the Navy, the lack of response to North Korea and the cutting back of missile defence programs that could counter North Koreas missile programs.
6. Perhaps most harmful, Obama does not believe the US should be a nuclear power at all. His lack of nuclear tests, cutting of the arsenal and planned cuts in nuclear forces all point to this.
Obamas overall goal is a USA that has all the power and influence of Sweden. Or perhaps Mexico.
Hey everybody, what difference does it make?! Now there’s a mutex for you.
bvwRedux @ 5 said:
“The hard truth? Is that some sort of double ententré?”
David Petraeus is over 60 years old so flaccidity maybe an issue…
bvwRedux also said:
“There isn’t a person alive who cannot be taken down by a honey trap of some sort, so did G-d design the world and the mankind in it.”
I completely agree but Petraeus should have expected that sort of gambit and been prepared. If he had issues staying zipped then he should have had a woman on the side where all aspects of the relationship were closely controlled. I am simply amazed that Petraeus did not see this coming. At one time, I expected Petraeus to play the role of an American Sulla by displacing Obama after TSHTF. Instead we see Petraeus being brushed aside with trivial ease.
Obama is not that sophisticated of a demagogue. However so far, almost all of Obama’s contenders have proven to be a gaggle of Bozos. Obama has succeeded mainly because no one with any political competence has seen fit to challenge him. Has our civilization grown so moribund that we are reduced to this?
“The remaining mysteries are who is the “we” and what does “winning” mean. Maybe we should ask the President what it signifies.” Wretchard
Or maybe not indeed. Rhetorical question; what are the chances that he’d be either forthcoming or honest?
The left is composed of a minority of committed leftists and a great majority of “useful idiot” liberals. Assign the most mendacious of motives, imagine Obama as an active traitor to his oath of office and the most efficacious of explanations for his behavior emerges. It’s not a mystery, it’s just appalling.
“The Euro-Neo-Progressive believes war is obsolete, can’t happen, shouldn’t happen, won’t happen, … What if they are right? Do we know they are not?” Josh
Only the willfully obtuse believe that war is obsolete. Ask Putin, China’s totalitarian leadership, Egypt’s Morsi and Iran’s Supreme Ayatollah Khamenei if they wonder if Europe’s useful idiots might be right or if they have any doubts at all of a war’s potential usefulness.
I detect a new conspiracy between the Democrats and the media. They are giving big play to quotes like: “We don’t have a spending problem. We have a paying for problem.” They think conservatives will hear this and their heads will explode. In this way they will eliminate all opposition. It may work. I think a risk of stroke among conservatives listening to the spew that comes from DC is a real danger. We should run PSAs.
If I were a fourth rate Democrat I’d be upset with Obama, too. After all, he started out appointing second and third raters. Now he is appointing fifth and sixth raters. The fourth raters are saying, “Dammit, you skipped right over us!” But Obama knows what he is doing. A fourth rater would have said, “We have a Tax Raising problem.” It took a fifth raters to come up with “pay for problem.”
#9,
“Perhaps most harmful, Obama does not believe the US should be a nuclear power at all…Obama’s overall goal is a USA that has all the power and influence of Sweden.”
Arguably, his actions indicate that his ‘goals’ greatly exceed mere ideological views. Consider; were he to actively want America to suffer, to be brought low… how would his behavior differ? Rather than assume consistent incompetence that unerringly moves the US as surely toward the circumstances you describe, as intentionality would, does not consistent action indicate disciplined intentionality?
What would provide such motivation? Great motivation, even when ideological requires passion to sustain it. Examining Obama’s history, the most passionate influence (and for 20 years) was the ‘reverend’ Jeremiah Wright. Though for the most part he conceals it well, Obama at heart is a racist, whose behavior indicates a great desire to ensure that “America’s chickens come home to roost”.
GB @ 14: “… does not consistent action indicate disciplined intentionality?”
Maybe. But this sled was on the downhill slide long before Soetero was assigned the codename Obama. EPA goes back to Nixon’s days. Carter walked away from the Panama Canal while little Barry was still toking it up on a beach in Hawaii.
Barrack Hussein Obama is a late-stage symptom of a very serious problem, not the problem itself.
In my humble opinion, President Obama is about as effective as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.
Re. # 11. Eggplant
“…Obama is not that sophisticated of a demagogue. However so far, almost all of Obama’s contenders have proven to be a gaggle of Bozos. Obama has succeeded mainly because no one with any political competence has seen fit to challenge him. Has our civilization grown so moribund that we are reduced to this?”
Slight correction: Bozos are deliberately selected. Non-Bozos do not qualify.
That’s the problem with having as your leader someone who thinks they are the smartest person in the room (in this president’s case, all rooms) – they don’t recognize that there are many agendas at work and that they will make the best decision by having a myriad of different people around them making them aware of all the agendas as well as possibilities. However, one must have some humility to surround themselves with people who may be smarter than them. One must also have some humility to subjugate their desires to those which are best for the organization or mission at hand….in this case the United States of America.
Hence, the dissimulation we see at every turn – the unraveling of so many institutions and ideas we thought were what defined the United States. I can’t think of anything on any front that this President hasn’t fundamentally ‘transformed’ the relationship of the government with its citizens and/or lied about regarding his past, present or future actions.
Challenging times ahead indeed….he is merely the result of many decades of educational deterioration in our country. Let’s hope the counter-balance, when it occurs, is sufficient to undo what he has done, will do and project us in a more sustainable future.
Very early on in 2009-2010 as Obama’s scummy methods were coming to light – the commie czars – the illegal appointments – the stirrings of fast and Furious – I suggested that Obama is operating the government the way he assumes it has always operated… Purely a spoils system, an opportunistic system, with Number One doing pretty much as he pleases.
While some degree of this trashy corruption is probably always present in governance, Obama’s version, perhaps culled from the putrid sewer of Chicago, is a cartoon version. National Security is a cartoon, a backdrop for the Star to strut his stuff. Big talk. Hot air. Grab what you can, and parlay parlay parlay!
That $20 million mansion in Hawaii is just a small perk on the billions this filthy man expects to grab.
Kinuachdrach @ 15,
“Maybe. But this sled was on the downhill slide long before Soetero was assigned the codename Obama…Barrack Hussein Obama is a late-stage symptom of a very serious problem, not the problem itself.”
Agreed. Obama is the foremost political agent of the left. That however, as your response ‘maybe’ indicates, does not preclude his being not just an active agent of the left but one of its architects. But whether bumbling fool or duplicitous knave the effect is essentially the same. I come down of the side of duplicitous knave because bumbling fools are not nearly as consistently effective at moving the agenda forward.
Although a true understanding of Obama’s motives remain opaque, in my opinion, the Ur test in understanding him is not Alinsky or Fanon or Marx, but Mike Royko’s “Boss.”
The key phrases from the article above: “The actual message was ‘seize domestic power by any means necessary’…The hacks aren’t cheering Obama on because they think it will lead to world peace. They are cheering him on because they hope to get paid or be awarded a plum position.”
http://www.amazon.com/BOSS-RICHARD-DALEY-CHICAGO-SIGNET451-17598/dp/B000RAEPUY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1360717522&sr=8-2&keywords=mike+royko+boss
Dorner’s hideout has burned. The cops are lighting smokes and relaxing now. So the presumption is that Dorner is dead or in an equivalent state.
GB-”Assign the most mendacious of motives, imagine Obama as an active traitor to his oath of office and the most efficacious of explanations for his behavior emerges. It’s not a mystery, it’s just appalling.”
You got that right. Walks like a traitor. Talks like a traitor. Is a traitor. When will people stop looking for “the good Obama” to show up- ya know he guy who actually does the right thing for America. Never was gonna happen. The policy promises were always just a means to an end: unfettered, unlimited power and control.
“But Mead is more astute than Greenwald. He argues that the real danger to this kind of opacity isn’t that it proves some kind of personal failing so much as it debases confidence in the United States.” That’s not a bug to Buraq- it’s a feature and a goal accomplished.
Eggplant – you are right about Petraeus- Buraq was out to get him from the git go and only a fool wouldn’t have seen that. I kinda think that Petraeus’s ego was a mite too big and was easily lured by promises of big things into a trap.
“the various principals fought their corner, advancing the institutional views of the agencies they represented’
A scene from “Yes Minister” ensued. The good news I hope is that YM is headed to the “legitimate” stage.
It surprises me a little that energy is still expended debating whether Obama is merely a lazy clueless fraud or is really a committed Marxist racist. First the two are not incompatible. Second prudence demands that, while it is normal and healthy to consider especially with politicians that one should never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence, after a long series of abuses and hostile acts we treat him as intending positive long term harm. Third the little we do know of him, his scant writings, his wife’s known writings, his associates and their writings, etc. all argue for the worst case. Fourth, what would he have done differently at any time if he was not acting with malice of forethought to harm the United States? What possible gain can there be at this point in conceding the smallest ground in the name of civility?
We may look at the track records and the reality and the pretensions of an Obama or an Ahmadinejad or a Pol Pot or a Professor Abimael Guzmán and laugh and hope that they or at least their followers are only in it for the babes and a job. The fact is that they believe in that stuff. They really believe that if you give enough power over life and death to the kind of people who will exercise that power in a government then people will become more generous and productive.
How human beings can believe that may be something that neurology might find answers to over the next decades. We are complicated and flawed creatures at a deep level. How can we protect ourselves from that hard wired condition? Is it simply a flaw in the wiring or something that was selected for under evolutionary conditions?
Most of the alternatives, such as Dogmatic Piety, Isolationism, Xenophobia, Randism, etc. that are advanced as firebreaks against the Marxist Totalitarian model are rejected by most people, even when they reject the means and the results of the totalitarians. Most people prefer the tolerant liberal in the old fashioned sense society that America represented. The inability of that society and the political system it generated to defend itself against infiltration and subversion is a problem. It does not mean that any other model is to be preferred.
I know it is my civic duty to watch the SOU, but it has blighted my whole day… for all the reasons above.
Ruined your whole day? It never happens to me, I never listen to his prouncements or speeches and the only news article that I will ever read that has Obama in the headline is if the next words are “resigns in disgrace”
One of the constants in the literature on Stalin is the unending complaints of the Old Bolsheviks that Stalin’s cronies were hacks.
BotP @ 9 – Let us assume, given the long time frame necessary to implement things, that the State Department is still full of Soviet spies. Who would they act to benefit the most? Putin.
Putin wants Assad to survive, while the whole American brain trust except Obama wanted to arm the Syrian rebels. He wanted to destroy the smuggling operation so he gets his new pal Obama (remember “…after the election…”) to tell Brennan to spoil the smuggling operation in Benghazi.
Obama’s boyhood mentor in Hawaii was a card carrying Communist. The past is prologue.
[On the subject of honeytraps, we can see why evil forces within the CIA were so miffed when Valerie Plame's cover was blown, it destroyed her effectiveness as the honey in a honey trap.]
So how do we SCREW Putin? Boycott the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games. Putin already has lots of trouble getting the show on the road. Mr Russian Athletics hosting a party where no one came would totally undermine him. It would expose the soft underbelly of his Put-emkin village.
And we can always host an alternate at Lake Placid as bread-and-circuses for low information voters.
Putin wants to play dirty? Well we can see him and raise him some more.
Do you believe in miracles? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTev5pSuYLk
Nail Putin and Iran & Syria et al will fall too.
Re. # 27. el baboso
“One of the constants in the literature on Stalin is the unending complaints of the Old Bolsheviks that Stalin’s cronies were hacks.”
Many of the Old Bolsheviks (as well as Stalin himself) were also hacks. The rest were fools. But only hacks matter. Just imagine how history would proceed if Trotsky (or any of others) replaced Stalin. I postulate it would be essentially the same. They were (and still are) all hacks… it is probably some natural law requiring mediocre hacks to eventually dominate all top government echelons.
“it is probably some natural law requiring mediocre hacks to eventually dominate all top government echelons.”
The Bolsheviks understood this well, even if they abetted it. Lenin reviled them as “careerists and charlatans, who deserve only to be shot, inevitably do all they can to insinuate themselves into the ranks of the ruling party”. Trotsky inveighed against “adventurers, careerists and rogues” with as much venom as his venomous pen could muster.
Of course Trotsky himself was done in by the very careerists he despised. The big brain was crushed in the end by cunning little men who would do anything for a buck or more party power. For that matter, Lenin may have been done in by these cockroaches too.
The man who bestrode the graves of these Marxist super-geniuses was none other than Joseph Djugashvili, aka Koba, aka Stalin. No man of silver phrase was he. No man of idealism either. Stalin had the principles of a pervert. In fact he was an Okhrana agent before he was a Bolshevist. Had the Bolshevists looked to lose he would have switched sides again. After all if you know how to organize one firing squad you know how to organize them all. He was far worse than any of the “hacks” that Greenwald resents. But Stalin’s complete lack of scruple was in fact his greatest strength. He had his friends, relatives, and even his doctors shot without a second thought. His children hated him. Even his closest associates feared him.
If you watch DownFall, the fictional Hitler says in the end “if only I had been as cunning and ruthless as Stalin I would have won”. It speaks volumes when even Hitler feels he is a nice guy by comparison. Not once were the words “principle” or “idealism” ever mentioned.
What has principle got to do with it? Hacks rule. Find the man who will sell his mother down the sewer and you will find a man who will rise high — in Chicago. The worst kind of person to be is a principled man of the left. If the Revolution loses you are screwed. If the Revolution wins, you are even more screwed.
Check it out. Go through the histories of Communist Parties or Left Wing parties through history. Who ran them in the end? The apparatchiks. The careerists. The hacks. The problem with idealistic leftists is they are playing the wrong game. If they want to join a movement where idealism rules then the Big Tent — or what used to be called the United Front — is the worst place to be.
They find out in the end. But always too late.
Wretchard:
They will need to extract a recognizable body to confirm that Dorner is actually dead. Otherwise, we will hear of more sightings of him – just like Dracula and Elvis.
Dorner has the status of a folk hero among some Californians, and if intact parts of his body are not found, he may gain the status of Kilroy or (as in the Princess Bride) the “Dread Pirate Roberts”.
Yes they probably have to drive a stake through whatever charred remains they find in that cabin. I was watching the live feed and heard them ask the news helicopter to pull back to a place more than ten air miles away.
The LAPD must have been concerned for the safety of the newsmen. Assault rifles, according to Jesse Jackson “can blow up railroads” and shoot down planes. It was for the news helicopter’s own good that they were prevented from recording the action at close hand. I’m sure Piers Morgan would agree because Dorner had “incredibly powerful” weapons. Maybe there was a risk even at ten miles.
That didn’t keep Dorner from getting dead though. And I have to confess that when I learned he was cornered in that cabin it appeared likely that it would be the last we would see of Chris Dorner. Doubtless the LAPD will put out a statement detailing the whole process of the cabin catching fire. But as we were talking about actions vs words in this thread, I can’t help thinking that the message the LAPD says in words is “crime does not pay”. But the message they sent in action was really more emphatic. More along the lines of “this is what happens”.
Perhaps that’s how it has to be. Still it’s nice to know which wavelength is the real deal.
Eggplant:
Some of the worst honey traps are self-inflicted. Remember the Profumo Affair.
The Obama machine is highly proficient at exposing the dirty linen of its opponents, but I have not seen any evidence of the Obama machine setting anybody up. Given human nature, it wouldn’t need to.
Folks, it’s been clear for quite a few years now that our Worst Nightmare is in our White House, laughing as he tears us down, brick by brick. He is a wicked, hateful destroyer, reveling in being in command of the nation he so viscerally loathes, in power over the race he so wholly hates.
Watching the Americans [sic] applauding his speech, Shakespeare’s phrase “like rats ravening down their proper bane” comes to mind.
As so many of you have noticed, once you simply accept the fact that he’s the Enemy Within, the viper we have nursed at our bosom (like Tiberius’s Caligula), then all his actions cohere in the mind, and a dreadful pattern emerges.
Who got rid of Caligula? the only ones who could: his Praetorian Guard.
Who got rid of Caligula? the only ones who could: his Praetorian Guard.
That ushered in an era of instability in Rome. And any similar event would probably have equally deleterious consequences. When a great nation gets into a political crisis, it must find a political solution. Anything else is likely to be more trouble than any worth it might bring.
Of course that means there are no shortcuts. And the return to a new stable consensus where “the numbers work” takes a long time. But that is why the Constitution exists. It is not in the first instance a prop, so much as a testimony to the fixes people have put in place in the past.
There is always a longing for a quick solution, but ultimately the quickest is usually a gradual but thoroughgoing awakening and political change. That’s not to say that upheavals won’t occur. But their lasting effect is usually to put the horrors into both sides and motivate them to come to a bargain in order to prevent a continuation of the crisis.
wretchard @ 30 – “it is probably some natural law requiring mediocre hacks to eventually dominate all top government echelons.”
The Bolsheviks understood this well, even if they abetted it. Lenin reviled them as “careerists and charlatans, who deserve only to be shot, inevitably do all they can to insinuate themselves into the ranks of the ruling party”. Trotsky inveighed against “adventurers, careerists and rogues” with as much venom as his venomous pen could muster.
Hacks, careerists etc. The way we fight them in my sailng class is twofold, we have fun and we learn something new every day, because knowledge is power. The fun part is obvious, living well is the best revenge.
The learning part is easy to understand if you differentiate between learning and teaching. Learning empowers the student, teaching empowers the hacks, careerists & unionized teachers.
So we
LIVE FREE OR DIE!!!!
Cold Blooded Murder is all Chris Dorner was, anyone thinking this animal is a “Folk Hero” or Hero of any kind needs professional help… God’s mercy be with his victims. Yes the Federal Government is Crooked and the Big City governments are too, the America of Old is Dead and Gone, a Chicago sprit lives in the Land of the NOT Free, Home of the very few brave! The Moral less and Scruple less Meek do rule this land.
On another subject, Now that 0bama doesn’t need all those losers it seems the Fed Government wants to use the money elsewhere so the Fed is cracking down on the Free “0bama Phones” seems like nearly half of the phones went to people that weren’t really poor enough, you’ve seen them. those poor people driven their Cadillac Escalades to the Food Stamp office or pulling up to eat at the Thanksgiving Turkey dinner freed the hungry gatherings.
Obama in particular, and Leftism in general may be easier to understand if you just accept that in their world there is no such thing as a lie because truth has no importance. It’s not just a philosophical thing either. They really don’t care.
Obama is not sitting around wondering how far he can wander from the truth. There is only data. Some data is useful to him, and some is not. Data that may threaten his wonderfulness is tossed aside. Accuracy and truthfulness are never a consideration.
However, reality always wins. The big question is when.
CharlesWhite @ 37 – Chris Dorner was a product of his age, a “Me Generation” winner of a feeling-sorry-for-myself-contest without losers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnVlB3WMGng&feature=youtu.be&t=0s
Drudge Report “Burn that f**king house down!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNk-bV40XMc&feature=youtu.be
Ashes for Ash Wednesday
Listening to local media this morning, they broadcast police scanner recordings as LEOs discussed “going with the burn plan”. There are also reports of a single gun shot being heard after fire began, as well as ammo cooking off in the fire. Perhaps cops were trying to “smoke him out”, but I truly doubt CD was walking out of there intact.
Spot on analysis again by Wretchard.
It is well established that North Korea was behind the Syrian nuclear program and are hand in glove with Iran in developing the bomb and the missiles to deliver them.
Israel cannot reach North Korea. They may not be able to do enough to Iran at this point. If Obama is waiting for them to pull the chestnuts out of the fire it may be too late.
Obama speaks volumes and promises to prevent Syria from exporting its weapons to Hezzie terrorists but whose F-15s flew right into the Dragon’s lair to deliver the opening shots?
Todays Jerusalem Post:
The feeble response by the international community to North Korea was due to China and Russia’s refusal to pass harsher binding UN Security Council resolutions, Levkowitz said, adding that this sent a worrying message to Iran. Tehran was learning that the international community would fail to monitor and prevent nuclear proliferation, and that consequences for blatant transgressions were mild, he added.
…
Mild is the new flavor of the day. Sanctions, soft power, leading from behind, consensus with our partners…
Reminds me of this quote from great rock spoof Spinal Tap. The bass player Derek Smalls is describing his role:
“We’re very lucky in the band in that we have two visionaries, David and Nigel, they’re like poets, like Shelley and Byron. They’re two distinct types of visionaries, it’s like fire and ice, basically. I feel my role in the band is to be somewhere in the middle of that, kind of like lukewarm water.”
If Obama and his policies are lukewarm water they just may end up drowning us all.
spindok @ 42 – The feeble response by the international community to North Korea was due to China and Russia’s refusal to pass harsher binding UN Security Council resolutions
The United States Olympic Committee does not need UN approval to withdraw from the Sochi Winter Games. Does USOC support the murder of innocent Syrian children??
Russia and China do.
Remember Munich 1972
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9HArGWgsm4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEy5OOS1eAI
Tomorrow, Feb 14, the action will switch to federal court in New Orleans.
The potential future is available here http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/IER_Mason_ExecSum_V1_NoEMB.pdf
Obama is trying to jail Kurt Mix!!
CHU LIED, DOLPHINS DIED!
FREE KURT MIX!
Obama is great just because. He is a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, just because, he was the editor of the Harvard Law Review, just because. Why did the junior senator from Illinois deserve to become the 56th president of the United States over incumbent political participants? Because. And it nary matters what the man does in Syria or anywhere else. He is proof that the evil US has a soft heart because they elected a Left-wing sociopath.
“alleges that David Petraeus was set up by factions within the CIA and abetted by persons in the administration”
Sounds about right; the CIA is full of progressives who were brought to power after the Church committee. Ever since then they have avoided meddling with internal politics of foreign nations and have been shaping the internal politics of the US though subterfuge, treachery, lies and leaks.
Had enough government yet?
Obama is being cheered on like the cop killer Christopher Dorner. Liberals love liars, cheats, and murderers… as long as they wear the team colors, and the just reward? No more than being a Ravens fan at Super Bowl. Being able to wear the emblem and the color of the uber-party is payment enough.
Petraeus goes from the commander of Centcom and ISAF to DCI in a bizarre swap with Panetta and then gets sheep dipped. Yeah, it was all his fault. Heil to the chief.
Do these people really believe the idiotic platitudes they sell or do they know that it is a con game? Wretchard seems to think that they know.
Here is Obama on the middle east last night:
In the Middle East, we will stand with citizens as they demand their universal rights, and support stable transitions to democracy. The process will be messy, and we cannot presume to dictate the course of change in countries like Egypt; but we can—and will—insist on respect for the fundamental rights of all people. We will keep the pressure on a Syrian regime that has murdered its own people, and support opposition leaders that respect the rights of every Syrian.
…
Sure the freedom loving opposition just wants to “repect the rights of every Syrian”. I agree that they want freedom. What do they want the freedom to do? The quote below is from a video released by the Syrian opposition and available on the Elder of Zyon website and provides some insight. The video is a child singing this:
Syrian child: Allah is what we strive for, and He is our goal.
Our Sheik Jolani has raised the banner.
Our Sheik Jolani has raised the banner.
Our Emir Mullah [Omar] did not renounce his religion.
All the soldiers have pledged their souls to Allah.
All the soldiers have pledged their souls to Allah.
Our leader is Bin Laden, the Americans’ worst nightmare,
with the power of faith, and our weapon, the PK machine-gun,
with the power of faith, and our weapon, the PK machine-gun.
We have destroyed America with a civilian airplane.
The World Trade Center was turned into rubble.
The World Trade Center was turned into rubble.
Just wait, you Alawite police,
we have brought slaughter upon you, and there will be no compromise.
We have brought slaughter upon you, and there will be no compromise.
They call me a terrorist – this is an honor for me.
Our terrorism is blessed, a divine call.
Our terrorism is blessed, a divine call.
Just wait, you Alawite police,
we have brought slaughter upon you, and there will be no compromise.
We have brought slaughter upon you – it is a divine call.
Say: “Allah Akbar.”
Crowd: Allah Akbar.
Syrian child: We will defend this village, we will not sell it out.
We will slaughter the Shiites in the towns of Kfariya and Fu’ah.
We will slaughter the Shiites in the towns of Kfariya and Fu’ah.
We will defend this village, we will not sell out Taftanaz.
We will slaughter the Shiites in the towns of Kfariya and Fu’ah.
We will slaughter the Shiites in the towns of Kfariya and Fu’ah.
Say: “Allah Akbar.”
Oh, yes and he reminded us again of our brilliant victory over Al Queda.
6. Josh: “Like a rank idiot, he was never cut out for that job and apparently not the Washington social environment, but I suppose you don’t know until you try.”
General Petraeus was an Eagle Scout presented with tempting delicacies that were purported to be ‘perks’ of the job. Who could turn them down? Especially when ‘everyone else was doing it’ and ‘it was expected of someone in his position’…
I don’t think he touched the money…
Back on the old days at Ma Bell, there was a saying about the 3 C’s. Not repeatable in mixed company. But the idea was these three things were NOT to be ‘touched’ or messed with upon pain of having to look for a new job…
tom
I guess I’ll be the skunk at the party, but one of the most important and revealing aspects of Eliot Abrams’ account of the Bush White House decision process re: the Syrian nuclear reactor was that it illustrated that both Bush and Obama share one negative character trait that has been extremely detrimental to the country. They are both inordinately influenced by the important women in their lives in philosophical and political outlook. This has influenced their policy decisions in ways which have been profoundly negative for the country.
First, the necessary disclaimer: Is Obama and his coterie of female Svengalis, e.g. his hard-core marxist grandmother, mother, Michelle, Valerie Jarret, et al. worse than Bush and his mother Barbara, wife Laura, or confidant Condo? Absolutely, by orders of magnitude.
That doesn’t change the fact, however, that Bush placed far too much credence in Rice, who was one of the weakest and most misguided Secretaries of State we’ve ever had. There is a profound difference between being “qualified” or “credentialed” for a position (a subject which has been covered here previously), and being suitable, or more bluntly, “fit” for the position and responsibility.
It is always surprising how many BCers don’t know that Condi Rice was a protege of Brent Scowcroft and a committed “arabist” and fatally biased in her diplomatic leanings. She was supremely “unfit” to deal with any of the Middle Eastern/Islamist issues, especially those which demanded action rather than “jaw-jaw” as Churchill put it, such as the Syrian reactor issue.
The fact that “in the end” Bush allowed Israel to act rather than blow their cover does not excuse his flawed “official” decision. He could have just as easily gone the other way, blown the secrecy of Israel’s plans and totally screwed the pooch. He should have nixed Rice’s plan, officially, and his failure to do so showed a fundamental weakness of character which plagued him throughout his term and ultimately destroyed him and set the stage for Obama to waltz right in.
Bush 43 reorganized the CIA in 2004 and moved them down the wiring diagram of who reports to whom in response to the treachery committed by the CIA weasels during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
He then put former CIA spook and congress critter Porter Goss in charge as the DCI. Goss was supposed to clean out the rats nest of CIA weasels. It didn’t work, as Goss lasted less than two years and his replacement rehired a bunch of high level people Goss had run off.
Appears the inmates are now fully in charge of the CIA. Only question I have regarding Petraeus is whether he was put there knowing the entrenched leftists would get him sooner or later or simply to get him out of the spotlight or perhaps both. It most certainly was not to do anything of value at the CIA. Cheers -
agimarc @ 48 said:
“Bush 43 reorganized the CIA in 2004 and moved them down the wiring diagram of who reports to whom in response to the treachery committed by the CIA weasels during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.”
Leftists within the national intelligence community were selectively leaking classified information to the MSM during the time of the Bush administration with the obvious intent of undermining the war in Iraq and future action against Iran.
These leftists were highly effective.
Bush may have tried to weed them out in 2004 but failed. The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of 2007 on Iran’s nuclear program, “Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities” was a knock-out punch against the Bush administration and terminated any hope that Bush might launch a preemptive action against Iran’s nuclear weapons program. That NIE was an amazing act of political disinformation/manipulation through treachery via the MSM. Many of the main players behind that NIE immediately left the intelligence community for jobs in academia. They essentially made a sacrifice play to terminate Bush’s war plans against Iran by throwing away their careers. It’s interesting that if you read-between-the-lines, the Obama administration appears to have concerns that a new batch of people within the intelligence community maybe trying to play the same trick against him. There is a hard core within the Intelligence Community that has no loyalty towards any president and is pursuing their own political agenda through MSM manipulation and biased classified reports. This is an incredibly dangerous situation and Yes it is possible these guys were the ones who took out Patraeus through a honey trap.
Eggplant @ 49 – There is a hard core within the Intelligence Community that has no loyalty towards any president and is pursuing their own political agenda through MSM manipulation and biased classified reports. This is an incredibly dangerous situation and Yes it is possible these guys were the ones who took out Patraeus through a honey trap.
Stipulating you are correct, what is the best anti-mole strategy?
Get inside their OODA loop and act in what to them are unpredictable “Black Swan” ways.
1) Agitate for a boycott of the Sochi Winter Games.
2) Nail Chu & Obama for sabaotaging the BP top kill operation in May 2010.
Tell Anderson Cooper he was played for a total chump! Remember the 16 hour news blackout, Anderson? CHUMP!!!
Hey Stephanopoulus! Remember Thad Allen announcing the flow of hydrocarbons into the Gulf had stopped on Good Morning America? CHUMP!!!
Hey, Michael Bloomberg! Remember Bloomberg News broadcasting the late Matt Simmons’ apocalyptic forecasts of exploding sea beds if BP were to shut in the Macondo 252 well, on the very morning (July 15, 2010) that the last drop of oil flowed into the Gulf? CHUMP!!!
Cooper, Stephanopoulos and Bloomberg, the Three Chumps of the 21st Century; See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil!
CHU LIED! DOLPHINS DIED!
FREE KURT MIX!
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-24/bp-engineer-can-t-force-u-s-to-specify-evidence-judge-says-1-.html
To use a “little Spanish lingo”, when it’s cowards versus cujones, CUJONES WINS!
Stephen@41: I truly doubt CD was walking out of there intact
This tragedy exposed many things. Three innocents came under police attacks, many of our populace cheered a murderer and the LAPD says ‘We don’t need no steenking trial’.
Peter Boston #38:
“Obama in particular, and Leftism in general may be easier to understand if you just accept that in their world there is no such thing as a lie because truth has no importance. It’s not just a philosophical thing either. They really don’t care.
Obama is not sitting around wondering how far he can wander from the truth. There is only data. Some data is useful to him, and some is not. Data that may threaten his wonderfulness is tossed aside. Accuracy and truthfulness are never a consideration.
However, reality always wins. The big question is when.”
Excellent observation, PB.
Exhibit A: Obama’s outrageous, theatre-of-the-absurd, Kafkaesque claim last night that we cannot cut our way to prosperity.
The polar opposite is the truth; without heavy cuts there will be no prosperity. Reality (math, really) predicts that no other approach other than to cut the public work force and the regulatory burden on small and medium sized businesses by at least 50% will result in a return to a robust economy. Obama makes the divorced-from-mathematical-reality claim that cuts will not result in the private economy booming – and nary a peep from pundits, not only on the left but even on the right.
Although some small percentage of the people working at NBC/CBS/ABC/NPR/NYT are ignorant of the economic basics, most have enough rudimentary math skills that they could figure out that without massive cuts to government the economy can at best remain unchanged and in all likelihood will continue to contract. But because that is an inconvenient fact, it is excised from the dialogue so that the greater narrative is never shown in a negative light.
Sickening that we have come to this. I’m not so sure that the “big” question is when, though. The “when”, now, isn’t as important now as the “how”, if one cares about their loved ones.
tharkun @ 47: “… both Bush and Obama share one negative character trait that has been extremely detrimental to the country. They are both inordinately influenced by the important women in their lives in philosophical and political outlook.”
Interesting perspective, and not at all skunk-like. We can probably all agree that GW Bush is a good man, but not a principled conservative. Whether he was excessively influenced by Condi Rice — that is not so clear.
My impression of Elliot Abrams’ version was a little different:
a) Mr. Abrams’ account was probably a little self-serving, whether consciously or not. Certainly, there was a lack of mea culpas or lessons learned.
b) There was a distinct impression that Mr. Abrams was not a party to the whole story.
Did GW say no to US military action and turn things over to Condi’s expensive conference as a distraction? By leaving it to her, he probably reduced the chance of traitorous leaks of info to the anti-Americans in the New York Times. When those punters had all left the Oval Office, did GW secretly dispatch some military man to Israel with actionable information to help with evading Syria’s air defences?
The main thought that struck me about the situation was that, at the end of the day, ‘international peace’ was going to depend on a very few, very highly trained men (Israeli or US) squeezed into tiny cockpits moving at around the speed of sound getting it right first time over hostile territory. We are all so sheltered by their courage & skill from the reality of the Dogs of War straining at their leashes all around us.