The Wes Wing

K:

The Inquirer this morning had a front-page above-the-fold David Petraeus, offering the sage counsel that we stay in Iraq until it is no longer unstable. We have Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden running the CIA. Vice Admiral McConnell (USN Ret.) is DNI. So while one commander in the field runs a rearguard defense of a failing surge -- a policy, it bears repeating, whose so-called gains came at the cost of paying and arming Sunni militants, turning a blind eye to SCIRI/Ministry of the Interior death squads, and calling Moqtada Al-Sadr "Al-Sayyid," in other words, the cost of setting up its own demise -- the other two set picks for the president's drive to the basket on wiretapping and torture.

Deferring to the wisdom of commanders is the last desperate act of an administration with no support in the populace. Saying we will "listen to our commanders in the field" is tantamount to breaking out the batons.

So I ain't part of the Wes Wing. I was pissed that his bumper stickers in 2003 had Clark and four stars. Like fucking Noriega was running for president.

I think it's awesome that you and Larry are on the same page. How he does that cut-to-the-chase dialogue thing is, obviously, beyond me. Plus the piece had some bitchin' cartoons.

But f'reel f'reel, the shit will hit the fan if we as a nation keep assuming that civilians are crass guttersnipes bent on building an impressive retirement portfolio. Civilians aren't, by and large, doing a good job contradicting the only-military-has-gravitas meme. Why is Larry Craig still in the Senate: pensions!

(Can't we stop using the hyphenated-phrase-followed-by-"meme" meme? -- Eds.)

Brian Williams, 08/05/2013: Today in Los Angeles El Jefe Clark declared a condition of unrest, ordering the mobilization of 22 thousand of his controversial new paramilitary clones. Bred from birth to quell violence, able to subsist on a thin gruel of oats and cocaine...

...okay I'm mostly thinking of the Dominion here. My much-maligned secret sci-fi past exercises its long arm, and all the unsettled debts of history come back into play...

But isn't Obama supposed to be the definition of civilian competence? He's so competent, so motivated to solve problems, bind wounds, etc. that his Republican buddies in the Illinois Senate are stumping for him. The advice of a general, the silent presence of Clark's hand on the rudder, contradicts that posture.

I also didn't like the caricature of Gore. Only fat sodomite lieutenant governors want this guy to be president? Was this a Tim Kaine-Haley Barbour composite? That was cold. I think the possibility of his presidency is real, it's just up to him to grab the ring.

Anyway, I could have summed all this up by saying the Obama-Clark power play is an excellent way to run against Hillary Clinton. But it's a shitty way to run against John McCain. By which I mean it's a losing strategy. Picking someone to shore up your credentials is a tacit admission that you lack whatever he has. It's also a Reagan classic: a regrettable echo of this president's hands-off, CEO, don't-mind-me-i'm-just-the-Decider mimcry of the Great Sleepwalker. "The president is going to listen to the counsel of his advisers" is always code for "The president is way way out of his depth. Shit, the president couldn't run the Texas Rangers..."

And what problem does Obama have with rural whites? I mean, the boys here in South Philly are for Rudy Giuly; it's urban whites he's going to lose, like McGovern in 1972. Man won Iowa, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Kansas, the Texas caucus...somebody factcheck me quick....I honestly don't know what Obama needs. I feel like constituencies can't be grabbed by identity alone. Urban and ex-urban whites are going to vote BHO when he disses welfare, disses illegals, disses identity politics. He needs to tack right, and hard, not just as a matter of expediency, but as putting into practice his cross-the-aisle rhetoric. He needs to shape up on Israel -- not for my benefit; shit, he needs to shape up on Palestine for my benefit.

Therefore I give you the next vice-president of the United States: Pat Buchanan! A man who believes the war was botched from the start; who is the greatest attack dog since Spiro Agnew; shit, who wrote "nattering nabobs of negativism" and "effete snobs" and "pusillanimous pussyfooting"; who will probably cause China to call in its T-notes by saying some shit about poisoned toothpaste; who favors a ruthless crackdown on the undocumented; who had the best diss of McCain ever: "The McCain campaign is this: The jobs are never coming back; the illegals are never going away; plus, we're going to have all these wars."

Shit, if you wanna roll right, roll hard...