Crying on the Toilet — ‘Conspiracy, conspiracy…’
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Nearly 50 years have passed since that fateful day in Dallas when JFK was assassinated, and now some new insights have surfaced into those few precious moments in the abrupt transition of presidential power — and it ain’t macho.
In a new book on the November 1963 event, The Kennedy Assassination–24 Hours After: Lyndon B. Johnson’s Pivotal First Day as President, by Steven Gillon, paints LBJ as near the break-down point.
(Illustration found here).
Reportedly, JFK’s military aide, Brigadier General Godfrey McHugh, could not find LBJ on Air Force One after people had told him Johnson was on board — everyone figured he had departed already on Air Force Two as Kennedy and Johnson arrived in Dallas on separate aircraft — until the general checked the shitter in the presidential bedroom.
Via a piece by Gillon at HuffPost:
What McHugh claimed to have witnessed next was shocking.
“I walked in the toilet, in the powder room, and there he was hiding, with the curtain closed,” McHugh recalled.
He claimed that LBJ was crying, “They’re going to get us all. It’s a plot. It’s a plot. It’s going to get us all.’” According to the General, Johnson “was hysterical, sitting down on the john there alone in this thing.”
I soon discovered that McHugh had told a similar story when he spoke by phone with Mark Flanagan, an investigator with the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA).
Ironically, McHugh gave the interview to the HSCA a week before he sat down with the Kennedy Library in May 1978.
“McHugh had encountered difficulty in locating Johnson but finally discovered him alone,” Flanagan wrote in his summary to the Committee.
Quoting McHugh, the investigator noted that the General found Johnson “hiding in the toilet in the bedroom compartment and muttering, ‘Conspiracy, conspiracy, they’re after all of us.’”
Author Christopher Anderson claimed that McHugh shared a similar, although slightly more dramatic, version of this story when he interviewed the General for his book Jackie after Jack, published in 1998.
In complete contrast to LBJ’s blubberings, Jackie Kennedy was stoic and strong, seemingly in control despite the horror blowing around her.
She was only 34 then, the youngest First Lady in US presidential history.
In an interview (pdf) with historian Theodore White about a week after the shooting (Nov. 29, 1963), Jackie had this to say about the chaos on-board Air Force One, spinning the tale “one brief shinning moment that was known as Camelot”:
“…History…, everybody kept saying to me put a cold towel around my head” (and wipe the blood off: she is referring to the swearing-in scene at the plane, when Johnson is sworn in at the plant at Love Field and she was beside him)… “later, I saw myself in the mirror; my whole face spattered with blood and hair…I wiped it off with Kleenex.
History. I thought no one really wants me there.
Then one second later I thought, why did I wash the blood off?
I should have left it there, let them see what they’ve done…If I’d just had blood and caked hair when” (they took pictures of swearing in).
“Then later I said to Bobby what’s the line between histrionics and drama.
I should have left the blood on.”
In 1995, a year after Jackie’s death, The John F. Kennedy Library in Boston released the interview notes.
Another strange, little-known incident that day — US District Judge Sarah Tilghman Hughes, who administered the oath of office to Johnson, and JFK’s Bible and a three-by-five-inch file card containing the oath.
According to the National Archives:
Judge Hughes, in the process of stepping down the boarding steps, was hailed by a self-assured man who inquired if she wanted the two items she held in her hand.
Assuming he was a security man and because the items did not belong to her, Judge Hughes transferred to the man the file card and the President’s Bible, neither of which were ever located.
Kennedy’s assassination will always be clouded in conspiracy, pity and…romance.
Another Upgrade on the Downgrade
Filed Under Weather | Leave a Comment
Climate-change study and an ultimate understanding of future global weather appears fickle at best, and way off the mark at worst — in the last two years the big global-warming news is negative factors “have been significantly underestimated…”
In this particular case it’s methane gas, which is not only produced by landfill sites, fossil fuel energy and agriculture, particularly rice and livestock farming, but has been found to be ‘burping’ up from ‘methane chimneys’ due to thawing of the perma-frost in the Arctic.
(Illustration found here).
This morning from the UK’s timesonline:
Methane’s impact on global temperatures is about a third higher than generally thought because previous estimates have not accounted for its interaction with airborne particles called aerosols, NASA scientists found.
When this indirect effect of the potent greenhouse gas is included one tonne of methane has about 33 times as much effect on the climate over 100 years as a tonne of carbon dioxide, rather than 25 times as in standard estimates.
…
As methane breaks down much more quickly than carbon dioxide, the impact of cuts on climate would also be faster.
“For long-term climate change there’s no way around dealing with CO2 — it’s the biggest thing and it lasts hundreds of years,” Dr Shindell told The Times.
“But if we were to have a concerted effort to deal with non-CO2 we could have a very large impact on the near term.
“Substantial reductions in methane, carbon monoxide and black carbon: that’s the way to make a big difference. I think it should be more of a priority [for Copenhagen].”
In a few weeks — Dec. 7-18 to be exact — will be the UN’s Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, in which the world will attempt once again to reach some kind of consensus on one of the most-crucial events facing mankind most-likely in all of history.
Previews of the gathering ain’t too optimistic.
Even from Connie Hedegaard, Danish Minister for Climate and Energy and president of this year’s conference, the Copenhagen meeting is the last stand for climate change reversal.
She says, in part:
“If the whole world comes to Copenhagen and leaves without making the needed political agreement, then I think it’s a failure that is not just about climate.
Then it’s the whole global democratic system not being able to deliver results in one of the defining challenges of our century. And that is and should not be a possibility.
It’s not an option.”
The US, however, might be right now too preoccupied with the ‘public option’ of the health-care debate.
Economic considerations are also front and center in hampering the US from passing a decent climate-change bill along with millions and millions of lobbying dollars spent by coal pushers and others in attempt to hijack any kind of decent work on global warming.
The noxious smoke screen appears to be working.
A shitload of US peoples — 35 percent vs 44 percent just 18 months ago — believe global warming is not as serious as been shown, and humans are responsible — 36 percent, down from 47 percent last year.
According to McClatchy:
The legislation before the Senate, like a bill that passed the House of Representatives in June, would cap emissions and provide funding for climate assistance.
It would set a limit on emissions that ratchets down each year until it reaches an 83 percent reduction from 2005 levels by 2050.
It also would require power plants and other large sources of emissions to buy pollution permits. Most of the money would go to subsidize consumers and industries for increased fuel costs, and to encourage the development of clean energy. Some also would go to help poor nations adapt to climate change.
…
U.S. negotiator Todd Stern, speaking to members of Congress in September, urged the Senate to act, saying, “Nothing the United States can do is more important for the international negotiation process than passing robust, comprehensive clean-energy legislation as soon as possible.”
However, it appears unlikely that the full Senate will vote on the measure this year because lawmakers want to finish overhauling health care first.
The Bush administration opposed mandatory cuts in emissions.
Joseph Romm, who was an acting assistant energy secretary in the Clinton administration, said the Obama administration couldn’t turn everything around in less than a year.
“Given the last eight years, anybody thinking there was going to be a deal in Copenhagen wasn’t paying attention,” Romm said.
Romm runs the most-excellent site, Climate Progress, and he should know.
Moral Slaughter
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End of the week and bad war-related shit.
Beyond the US domestic horror of Joe Lieberman, military exercises in the Middle East are becoming way-more frightening than any paranormal or blair-witch fantasy could envision, creating a deep hole-drain in anything that remains of a moral fiber in the facade of a so-called American Ideal.
The righteous, or “just war,” is a lie perpetrated since day one — no such thing as a good murder, despite all the literary and artistic rhetoric babbled-out by political people and pundits pointing at the dire need to make the planet collateral damage.
In March 2003, at the time of the Iraq invasion, I was an editor/writer at a twice-weekly in Central California and responsible for the lay-out (and content) of several pages, including ones for religious activities, church services, specials and the like — after interviewing some local preachers/lay people on the religious/moral grounds for the war, I came away with the distinct impression that anyone with any sense of ethics would know the Iraqi endeavor was near-pure bad and appeared to signal a significant schism in history.
Of course, not that many people truly and fully understood back then (I didn’t) the true terror of George Jr.’s White House — the near fabrications, the outright ‘Curveball‘ lies, the twisted-torture of the US Constitution — and only some gut instinct told me these assholes were so-full of shit.
However, what I really didn’t comprehend was US-home-grown war criminals on a grand scale spawning two horrifying endless wars in faraway places as part-and-parcel of a long, freakin’-ass long war on terror — a worldwide and timeless conflict created by the US that feeds off itself.
And history is indeed now rampant, one would have to be a total dumb ass not to realize 9/11 and its after-effects of Afghanistan and Iraq made the world a much-more strange and violent place.
Even a pastor within George Jr.’s own supposed Christian denomination, Methodist, told me the Iraqi invasion did not fall under the premise of the “just war” doctrine — in fact some Texas Methodists crafted a petition/letter of complaint against George Jr. (“a member of Park Hill United Methodist Church (UMC) in Dallas, Texas”) and his boss, Dick Cheney (“local membership unknown”) for being “undeniably guilty of at least four chargeable offenses…crime, immorality, disobedience to the Order and Discipline of The UMC, and dissemination of doctrine contrary to the established standards of doctrine of The UMC. For these offenses, we the undersigned call for an immediate and public act of repentance by the respondents. If the respondents do not reply with sincere and public repentance for their crimes, we demand that their membership in the United Methodist Church be revoked until such time that they sincerely and publicly repent.”
Hahaha…gotcha! Hell first will freeze way-over.
Meanwhile, back up to speed: Bad wars getting way-badly worse, especially in the nefarious Af-Pak zone of insanity.
Wednesday morning, Taliban gunman staged an explosive pre-dawn raid on a guest house in Kabul, shooting-to-death six UN workers and a couple of Afghan security people — the scene was anti-pretty.
According to the New York Times:
The police said one of the victims, a woman, had been shot in the head, and another burned to death.
A cellphone video taken by a security official and seen by a reporter showed just the head and torso of a third victim, apparently cut in half when one of the attackers detonated his suicide vest.
And to add JP4 to an already-roaring fire, the Times has also reported the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, has been on the payroll of the US CIA the past eight years — since the October 2001 invasion.
WTF!
Key long-range quote from the brothers Karzai story:
“If we are going to conduct a population-centric strategy in Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backing thugs, then we are just undermining ourselves,” said Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the senior American military intelligence official in Afghanistan.
No shit sherlock!
And says it all for Gen. Stan McNasty (oops, sorry, I always do that) McChrystal’s big, bright idea of a counterinsurgency program — the so-called ‘population-centric strategy’ — to turn the tide of an already-lost operation, to give the US a victory in that endless war on terror.
The good general is all mouth and no brains — even with all the NATO troops (about a 100,000) and the vaporous-like Afghan forces (from 50,000 upwards to 200,000, but mostly not many at all according to some experts) against the suspected 25,000 (tops) Taliban, a 12-to-one ratio in favor of NATO, there is still no sign of any kind of tide turning.
And what’s worse, dumb-simple bombs are beating the shit out of the most-powerful military in all of history — IEDs killed eight US GIs on Tuesday in several incidents in south Afghanistan.
From Wired‘s Danger Room blog on these “dumb-down” devices:
We’ve become accustomed to the idea that a weapon’s potency grows with its sophistication: “Smart” munitions are more effective than dumb ones; supersonic jets can shoot down slower planes.
But Afghanistan and its IEDs are proving the exception to that rule.
Couple dumb with bad terrain and you’ve got the mixing of a hell-hole.
Due to the asinine US military set-up in a rugged, jagged, mountainous Afghanistan, placing outposts way out in country, nearly-non-accessible except by air — by helicopter.
As insurgents plant sometimes up to 100 IEDs a day, and although the military is throwing a lot of money and time to figure how to better detect booby-traps (the Danger Room post above goes into some detail on that aspect), the only way to move troops and supplies is by whirlybird.
A good look at this dangerous situation — three choppers went down on Monday (two collided) killing 14 Americans — can be found at a Popular Mechanics piece from last April, which proclaimed: “Afghanistan is hell on helicopters: Temperature swings can ruin seals and gaskets; towering mountains with low air density sap power from spinning rotor blades and engines; dusty deserts gum up hydraulics; and enemy combatants pepper the machines with rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire.”
A terrible place to be right now.
And right now, President Obama is deciding what to do with Afghanistan — in reality he’s weighting how much of an troop escalation should be allowed — as McNasty (oops) McChrystal wants at least 40,000 additional US troops, and up to 80,000 to do the job right, but now it seems the tortured nitwit general will end up getting far less fodder for his foolish fancies.
Obama, according to reports, will attempt a less ambitious plan in which 10 population centers and the Helmand River Valley in the south will see an increase in troops, a “compromise” it’s been called instead of trying to beat the Taliban out of the bushes all across the country — supposedly about 16,000 new GIs.
Much to Obama’s extreme-near-future misfortune, the only real course for the US in Afghanistan is withdrawal, a concept the White House has said is not even an option, which in turn creates a self-defeating, no-way-out strategy into a box canyon without exit signs or doorways — expect horror stories from there soon.
(Obama will have to curtail activities like his heartfelt photo op this morning at Dover AFB as the bodies of US peoples killed overseas were returned home — there will be way-too many of them).
One new twist in the ugly Afghan saga is Matthew Hoh, the first publicly-known U.S. official to resign in protest over the Afghan war.
“I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan,” he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter to the department’s head of personnel.
“I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end.”
Much has been made of Hoh’s resignation, which paints not a good picture of the US/Afghan scenario and a lot of commentators, politicians and other sorts have lofted Hoh way up high as a banner for getting the US out of the country.
He was on PBS’ News Hour this evening, saying “I don’t believe al-Qaeda is coming back…” in addressing the fear the terror group would return and set up camp if the US pulled out, and a troop increase would only “fuel the insurgency” — good talk, though nothing really new, for the US getting the shit gone (I didn’t take notes).
One former Afghan legislator called Hoh “A Great American Patriot”.
Glenn Greenwald gets in on the act with a post found here.
Even Garrison Keillor came out of the smooth-voiced woods in honor of Hoh, ending an opinion piece in The New York Times: Time to move on. Tell the others. It’s a brand-new day. Let us start making our way on out of Afghanistan, Mr. President.
What’s been missed is the moral slaughter involved in these wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it was criminal and immoral from the get-go.
One quote from Hoh in the original Post story has not been much touched upon in which he discussed his time in Iraq and there were no qualms about killing, death and destruction there:
“There are plenty of dudes who need to be killed,” he said of al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
“I was never more happy than when our Iraq team whacked a bunch of guys.”
Nothing immoral and bad about Iraq — a complete criminal enterprise.
No one seems to feel anything about the Iraqi invasion being a war crime, immoral and really, really bad.
I didn’t catch that deeper, much-more scarier vein of verbiage in that last quote of Hoh’s until I read Chris Floyd’s most-excellent post on the subject.
Floyd always looks at stuff at a more truthful, less hampered way (he’s one of my daily reads — or when he posts, which is just about daily) and his take on Hoh begins first with an examination of an interview with Jane Mayer, which appeared in the New Yorker online, and concerned the use of unmanned drones and its effect on Pakistan.
Meyer replies that although about 10 top bad al-Qaeda guys have been killed, a shitload of ordinary folks have been slaughtered to get them.
Floyd counters:
What is astonishing about this is that the interview doesn’t end there, in a roar of outrage from Mayer and her interviewer: “They’ve killed hundreds of civilians!”
Hundreds of Pakistani civilians, men, women and children with no involvement whatsoever in war or terrorism; just ordinary people living their lives as best they can — just like your neighbor, just like your mother, just like you…or just like the people killed on September 11, whose deaths are used as an eternal justification for war and bloodshed on a global scale by the American state.
But these drone-murdered Pakistanis — these human beings, these fathers and mothers, these grandparents, these toddlers, these brothers and sisters — their lives are just statistics to be coldly weighed in the calibrations of imperial policy.
The “bad news” about their deaths is not that they were murdered, not that these utterly defenseless men, women and children were blown to shreds without warning, without the slightest chance of escape, by flying robots controlled by unseen hands a world away; no, the “bad news” is that these that these killing might possibly hamper America’s “counterinsurgency program”…
And Floyd’s take on Hoh:
Hoh doesn’t like the war crime in Afghanistan because it doesn’t seem to be working out too well — not because it’s wrong.
Mayer doesn’t like the CIA Predator program of targeted assassination and massive “collateral damage” because it’s too unregulated, too opaque, and we need to find ways to make it work better — more like the Pentagon program of targeted assassination and massive “collateral damage.”
Floyd pulls insight from another most-excellent writer, Arthur Silber, who blogs at Once Upon a Time… and although he can really become involved in his subject matter, he also cuts to the bone of reality.
In his post regarding Hoh and the US, Silber nails the bottom line:
The critical facts are few in number, and remarkably easy to understand: Iraq never threatened the U.S. in any serious manner.
Our leaders knew Iraq did not threaten us.
Despite what should have been the only fact that mattered, the U.S. invaded and occupied, and still occupies, a nation that never threatened us and had never attacked us.
Under the applicable principles of international law and the Nuremberg Principles, the U.S. thus committed a monstrous, unforgivable series of war crimes.
Those who support and continue the occupation of Iraq are war criminals — not because I say so, but because the same principles that the U.S. applies to every other nation, but never to the U.S. itself, necessitate that judgment and no other.
While it may be true that some “dudes” threatened Hoh’s life and the lives of those with whom he served, Hoh could never have been threatened in that manner but for the fact that he was in Iraq as part of a criminal war of aggression.
In other words, he had no right to be in Iraq in the first place.
And if he had not been, he would never have been in a position to “whack[] a bunch of guys.”
Highly recommend both Floyd and Silber — both more intelligently-eloquent than I.
Torture Tunes
Filed Under Scratching Sounds | Leave a Comment
Music is kind of like trash and treasure — it’s all in the appreciation.
Last week, the National Security Archive filed a series of petitions (pdf) under the Freedom of Information Act seeking all kinds of data “concerning the use of loud music during detention and/or as a technique to interrogate detainees at U.S.-operated prison facilities used in its War on Terror at Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan during 2002-the present.”
The NSA’s action was on behalf of a long list of rock-and-rollers, some head-bangers in there, too, from AC/DC to Tupac Shakur with the likes of Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, even Neil Diamond and Nine Inch Nails thrown in between — just about all musical tastes represented.
Torture tunes also included a Meow mix cat food jingle, the Barney theme song and some Sesame Street melodies.
Also unfurled Oct. 22 was the musician coalition from which the FOIA requests were based, the National Campaign to Close Guantanamo, with music as torture underscored:
From the BBC:
In a statement, REM said: “We have spent the past 30 years supporting causes related to peace and justice. To now learn that some of our friends’ music may have been used as part of the torture tactics without their consent or knowledge, is horrific.
It’s anti-American, period.”
Of course, the CIA responded: Spokesman George Little said music was used only for security, rather than “punitive purposes…” and insisted any music was played “at levels far below a live rock band.”
Dude, AC/DC can’t be played anywhere near “far below” the screaming of a wounded hyena.
Other NSA tidbits, previously revealed (all pdf), which led to last week’s filing included:
In 2002, a female interrogator rubbed perfume on a detainee’s arm — “At the time of the event the detainee responded by attempting to bite the interrogator and lost his balance, fell out of his chair, and chipped his tooth. He received immediate and appropriate medical attention and did not suffer permanent injury.”
Ha!
And: Interrogators stated that cultural music would be played as an incentive. Futility technique included the playing of Metallica, Britney Spears and Rap music.
Listening to any of those three could, in some musical circles, be considered a heinous form of torture in itself.
Also in 2002: Mohammed al-Khatani: “He had also been deprived of adequate sleep for weeks on end, stripped naked, subjected to loud music, and made to wear a leash and perform dog tricks.”
And, Mohammad al-Sliha, at Guantanamo, who was “exposed to variable light patterns and rock music, to the tune of Drowning Pool’s ‘Let the Bodies Hit the Floor.’”
In 2001/2003, the testimony of Asif Iqbal on his capture and interrogation at Gitmo: “After three days I was taken to ‘the Brown building.’ I was long shackled and sat in a chair. I was left in a room and strobe lighting was put on and very loud music. It was a dance version of Eminem played repeatedly again and again. I was left in the room with the strobe lighting and loud music for about an hour before I was taken back to my cell. Nobody questioned me.”
And there’s way more.
All of this shit is like reading something out of the Spanish Inquisition or some horrible fiction from some faraway horrible place.
And remember, these sonofabitch US interrogators were acting in all US peoples name, they were representing us, displaying to the whole world, the horror of a lying hypocrisy.
America is a major party to the UN’s Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, an international law signed by Ron Reagan in April 1988.
In December 2008, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails eloquently retorted:
“It’s difficult for me to imagine anything more profoundly insulting, demeaning and enraging than discovering music you’ve put your heart and soul into creating has been used for purposes of torture.
If there are any legal options that can be realistically taken they will be aggressively pursued, with any potential monetary gains donated to human rights charities.
Thank GOD this country has appeared to side with reason and we can put the Bush administration’s reign of power, greed, lawlessness and madness behind us.”
Or so we hope.
War! ‘He Who Picks A Rose’
Filed Under Just Plain War, Madness, Orwellian, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
UPDATE/ADD-ON BELOW
Yes, the Edwin Starr song paraphrased is the counterinsurgency of fighting dumb-shit wars.
Last month on PBS‘ “Frontline,” an interview with Andrew Bacevich, a retired US Army colonel and a level head in this era of military idiots.
He’s also a professor of international relations and history at Boston University, a Vietnam veteran and the author of the 2008 book “The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.”
The US military’s fog-horning a counterinsurgency program in Afghanistan is baffling:
I am baffled by the fad of counterinsurgency, and I’m especially baffled by the extent to which the American officer corps has embraced this fad.
Now, I say that from the point of view of somebody who comes from a generation when counterinsurgency was anathema to the United States military.
In the era after Vietnam, the officer corps believed with something close to unanimity that long, protracted campaigns were very much at odds not only with the well-being of the military as an institution, but frankly at odds with the interests of the country.
Post-Vietnam, the officer corps was committed to the proposition that wars should be infrequent, that they should be fought only for the most vital interests, and that they should be fought in a way that would produce a quick and decisive outcome.
What we have today in my judgment is just the inverse of that.
War has become a permanent condition.
I mean, we’ve been at war now for eight years, and for all practical purposes, nobody can say with any accuracy when war will likely come to an end.
In my judgment — I know people that would disagree with this — we are now engaged in wars where we do not have vital interests at stake.
And … we’ve now abandoned the notion that we can win wars quickly or cheaply.
Our approach to war is one in which we now accept the notion that war is an open-ended proposition and that if someday out there some outcome is reached, it’s likely to be an ambiguous outcome that really doesn’t resemble in any sense the traditional definition of military victory. …
And this shit is generational?
It’s probably generational in that perhaps young people — and this is not necessarily a bad thing — have bigger dreams, have bigger ambitions. Older people tend to perhaps be more given to pessimism or cynicism.
I mean, I would like to call it realism, but others might view it differently.
I hesitate to say that older people have a better understanding of the human consequences of unrealistic and naive projects, because I know that these younger fellows like Nagl and [CNAS fellow Andrew] Exum have lost friends.
But at the same time, I puzzle over why their personal losses don’t cause them to question the implications for the policy proposals that they support.
We’ve lost over 5,000 American soldiers over the past eight years between Iraq and Afghanistan.
We think Iraq is now finally winding down.
At the same time, we ratchet up Afghanistan.
So if we do indeed have a full-court-press application of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, certainly at least several hundred more American soldiers are going to die.
And I think it’s very, very important to be absolutely certain that no alternative exists that would enable us to achieve our interests in Afghanistan without all those soldiers being killed.
And I think the people who insist that it has to be done through counterinsurgency have not seriously examined all the alternatives.
Is President Obama boxed in with regards to an Afghan escalation?
I think so. … I don’t think the president has to worry too much about being criticized from the right.
I mean, he’s going to be criticized from the right on, if not on the war in Afghanistan, on any number of other issues.
By staying the course in Afghanistan, he’s not going to get more Republican votes for health care or anything like that.
But if the president alienates the core of his support, plunging more deeply into this war when many on the left or people like myself, … wary of an overly militarized foreign policy, then I think he could find the enormous public support that he had during much of the first year of his term in office collapsing pretty quickly. …
There are many glib comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam.
And maybe we’re beyond making glib comparisons. But I do think that’s one of the areas where the Vietnam comparison still has merit.
The Vietnam War destroyed the Johnson presidency, and it destroyed the Johnson domestic reform agenda. And to the extent that Obama’s war becomes this costly, open-ended proposition with no end in sight, then one possible consequence that he has to consider is that his own very ambitious and important domestic reform agenda could be placed in jeopardy. …
And is this Obama’s war?
I think so.
And the question is whether or not [it is] going to be Obama’s war in the same sense that Iraq became Bush’s war, that Vietnam became Johnson’s war; that it’s going to be the one issue that consumes his presidency; the one thing that, … for the rest of his time in office, reporters [are] going to be asking: “When is it going end? When will light become visible at the end of the tunnel? How many more soldiers are going to have to die? How many more hundreds of billions of dollars are going to be spent?”
That’s what I fear he is inviting if he allows himself to be sold this counterinsurgency program.
But the president is a smart guy, and the president, I believe, is a very shrewd man in the best sense of the word.
And so I retain at least a smidgen of hope that he will understand the trap that he’s being led into here and therefore avoid it.
Read the entire interview here.
And to highlight the coup-like seriousness of the problem, yesterday NATO indeed boxed Obama.
From the UK’s Independent via antiwar.com:
Nato defence ministers signalled their backing for the Afghan strategy put forward by the American commander General Stanley McChrystal yesterday in an implicit rejection of the alternative plan proposed by US Vice-President Joe Biden.
The general had made an unscheduled appearance at the meeting of ministers in Bratislava, Slovakia, to give a presentation behind closed doors. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Nato secretary general, said: “What we did today was to discuss General McChrystal’s overall assessment, his overall approach, and I have noted a broad support from all ministers of this overall counter-insurgency approach.”
Real-bad moon rising — an insurgent War, What is it good for?
Update/Add-On:
Just discovered this evening — a way-little noted story of Seymour Hersh’s speech at Duke University 10 days ago, in which he said the US military, along with working hard in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Somalia, etc., are also “in a war against the White House — and they feel they have [President] Obama boxed in…They think he’s weak and the wrong color. Yes, there’s racism in the Pentagon. We may not like to think that, but it’s true and we all know it.”
According to the Herald-Sun in Durham, North Carolina, Hersh also had this to say (h/t HuffPost):
“A lot of people in the Pentagon would like to see him get into trouble,” he said. By leaking information that the commanding officer in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, says the war would be lost without an additional 40,000 American troops, top brass have put Obama in a no-win situation, Hersh contended.
“If he gives them the extra troops they’re asking for, he loses politically,” Hersh said. “And if he doesn’t give them the troops, he also loses politically.”
The journalist criticized the president for “letting the military do that,” and suggested the only way out was for Obama to stand up to them.
“He’s either going to let the Pentagon run him or he has to run the Pentagon,” Hersh said. If he doesn’t, “this stuff is going to be the ruin of his presidency.”
If anywhere near reality, and Hersh has been so-many times around the military block, he’s got a shitload of DOD sources — what a US-constitutional catastrophe.