The General's Last Laugh

From Charging Elephant:

This entry echoes what I wrote about General McChrystal yesterday.  I feel more sure of it now that someone else sees this possibility.

The General’s Last Laugh


June 24, 2010 · 9 Comments

Don Fredrick



Colony 14



There are times when a piece needs no introduction, suffice to say this article by Don Fredrick is PRICELESS. J.C.





Yes, it’s still a long way off, but the 2012 race could conceivably be Obama and Biden versus General Stanley McChrystal and Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan. (Other good vice presidential choices might be Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann or New Jersey Governor Chris Christie).



Obama had better watch out. I expect that McChrystal, having been freed of the need to be “restrained” in his public statements, may now come out with both guns blazing. If McChrystal is willing to use the term “wimps in the White House” while still in command of the troops in Afghanistan, one should expect him to let loose with even more verbal ammunition now.







Clearly, McChrystal is not alone in his belief that the commander in chief is incompetent and Biden is an idiot. He (and his staffers) merely had the guts to say it in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine. The truth is that the Afghanistan war is a disaster, mostly because the mission has not clearly been defined (either by Bush or by Obama). Obama is still sticking with his July 2011 troop withdrawal date—meaning that the Taliban and al Qaeda will simply bide their time for another year and then have their way with the Afghan people. (Islamist extremists have far more patience than Americans.) In the meantime, tens of thousands of U.S. troops will continue to risk their lives while doing their best to avoid the accidental killing of Afghan civilians under ridiculous rules of engagement—rules ordered by McChrystal, but at the behest of Barack “I’m not a Muslim, I simply hate Jews” Obama and the politically correct Secretary of Defense, Robert “multiculturalism over victory” Gates.





Obama clearly showed anger in his statement announcing that McChrystal was being relieved of his command. It was a public pronouncement that no one dare criticize him, meant not just for generals in the field but everyone in government and beyond. It was a “How dare anyone criticize me” order as much as it was a “McChrystal bad, Petraeus good” statement. (One must give Obama a little credit, however. After all, he did not blame Bush; and he did force himself to pay a few compliments to the departing general even though he can’t stand the military veteran—or the military.)



Yes, Obama had the right to fire McChrystal. And yes, McChrystal “spoke out of school.” But McChrystal is not the problem; he is only one of the symptoms of the problems.



It is too late for Obama to suddenly command respect. Obama has demonstrated his incompetence, not just with Afghanistan and other international blunders but domestically. After 17 months of proving to the world that he is nothing more than a leftist ideologue with no leadership qualities, he can’t very well put that cat back into its bag. And while everyone will now be speculating about divisions in the White House and the Pentagon about how the war is being conducted, the Obama administration is stalling the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammad until after the November elections; budget director Peter Orszag is jumping ship in July; Rahm Emanuel may not be far behind; and Democrats are set to get creamed in the upcoming mid-term elections. (This will not be an “all politics is local” election; it will be a “how can we stop the Obama agenda?” election.)



The Democrats are refusing to pass a budget for next year, using as an excuse Obama’s phony budget commission—which will conveniently not issue its ineffective program-cutting, tax-increasing recommendations until December. The Democrats’ failure is purely political: refusing to prepare a budget leaves their Republican opponents unable to point to the massive deficit it will contain.



California, Illinois, and many other states are broke and begging for federal bailouts. But the public no longer has sympathy. (Well, at least those who pay taxes have no sympathy.) Even the Democrats in Congress know that and are reluctant to hand billions to California in fear of what it will do to their reelection chances on November 2. Yet if Obama and the Democrats refuse to bail out California now, its economy will be so terrible in 2012 that Obama may even lose the state in his bid for reelection. (The Golden State may be full of leftists, but unemployed leftists who lose their homes to foreclosure will nevertheless be very angry.) If they do bail out the states, either by borrowing more money from China or simply printing it, they add even more to the deficit and compound the federal debt and inflation problem.



Obama is destroying jobs along the Gulf Coast because of his oil drilling ban, foolishly believing that he can still get his nonsensical cap and trade legislation passed by turning the oil industry into the enemy. But all he is doing is turning tens of thousands of the thankful employed into the bitter unemployed.



Obama is doing nothing to police the border with Mexico. In fact, he now has a scheme to make 12–20 million illegal immigrants instantly legal simply by “pardoning” all of them, as the court did with his Aunt Zeituni Onyango—who has been in the United States illegally since 2000 and ordered deported but was recently been granted asylum—purportedly because Kenya is so “dangerous.” (One would be hard-pressed to explain why Obama’s aunt would be subject to persecution in Kenya, where everyone is proud that their nation’s “son” became the U.S. president.)



People are angry. They are starting to see through the lies and the threats and the political games. Even the usual phony excuse, “We must give the states more money or we will see thousands of teachers, police officers, and firefighters” laid off is no longer working. In New Jersey, the voters have said, “Enough is enough” and are supporting the new (and refreshingly honest) Governor Chris Christie as he goes toe to toe with the state’s employee unions, telling them they can no longer expect people earning $40,000 to pay higher taxes so that their members can each be paid $80,000 and receive pensions and retiree health insurance worth $2 million. Although the politicians used to say, “If we don’t raise taxes we will have to close the museums,” the citizens are now saying, “Fine, close the museums. Feeding my family comes first.”

The game is over. The administration is falling apart. Obama is incompetent, and his leftist solutions only make the problems worse. More and more Americans now see that the Emperor has no clothes… and it will not be long before the thug in chief becomes the laughing stock of the nation.



He will fall from grace quickly—and it will be devastating. He will retain a few loyal leftist hangers-on in the political arena and in the media, but they will suddenly find themselves in a rapidly-shrinking minority. It will resemble the Watergate fiasco, where Nixon’s supporters started dropping off… slowly, at first, but then turning into a stampede. The stampede from Obama may be even more thundering. He has not even been in office two years and Congressional Democrats in swing districts are practically begging Obama not to campaign on their behalf.



Unless things quickly turn around the Obama supporters (except for the “true believers”) will abandon him. And what can he do to turn it around? Absolutely nothing. Because turning it around means embracing increased freedom, smaller government, freer markets, reduced federal spending, and following the U.S. Constitution—all of which are directly antagonistic to the way in which Obama’s drug-damaged brain (barely) functions.



Obama has self-destructed more quickly than Jimmy Carter. He may not even make it to the 2012 primaries. With the colossal psychological issues rumbling around in his psyche from having been abandoned by a father, mother, and step-father, he is ripe for a nervous breakdown. To compensate for being abandoned as a child, he has made it his life’s mission to not only be accepted but revered by everyone else. He is an artificial person, with all the details of his life invented in his imagination because he could not handle the reality of rejection and abandonment. He is hiding his long form birth certificate, his school records, his passport file, and his legislative papers not only to keep the public from facing the truth about him, but to keep himself from facing his own truths.



Obama is at his angriest when confronted. He expects everyone to treat him as though he is someone special, and for the most part he has been treated that way throughout his life. When someone stands in his way and says, “No, you are wrong,” he is at first defensive, giving long, convoluted arguments that he expects will end the resistance. That method usually works—he wears the opposition down and they finally give up and let him have his way. But on occasion someone calls his bluff. An example was Obama’s “open meeting” with Republicans, which he attempted to use to bamboozle his ObamaCare opponents. He partially succeeded—until Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan confronted him with facts and logic. Obama was flustered, and angry. He had no way of responding to the points Ryan had made, so he simply ignored them and hoped he would go away. Obama tried to hide his anger, converting it into mere annoyance. But the anger was present, and palpable.



Over time, there will be increasing numbers of Ryans and McChrystals confronting Obama. He will be annoyed at first. As the criticism mounts he will become angry. And sound decisions are not made when one is angry. Obama’s problems will therefore multiply, because the only decisions he has ever learned to make have been political decisions. His skills only enabled him to gain office. Once there, he has no skills to solve problems. His decisions are nothing more than reactions to events—and many of them are vindictive, retaliatory, and political.



When Obama is finally forced to confront reality and rejection head on, he will not know how to react or cope. He will be found huddled under his desk in the Oval Office, curled into the fetal position, crying for the mother he still so desperately wishes to please to avoid yet another abandonment.



It will not be pretty. And as he is led away in an ambulance for the psych ward, his angry wife, reacting in an even angrier fit of rage, will have to be physically restrained.



And Stanley McChrystal will get the last laugh.