Congress: deaf, blind and really dumb?

After blaming everybody else for American parochialism, let’s finally flail away at U.S. politicians -- who should be, you’d hope, enlightened leaders with real knowledge of the world. Congress harbors a small platoon of exceptional minds. It also billets brigades of elected “folks” who are unutterably parochial. Even many national politicians manage to look inward without being introspective. Introspective about anything -- local, national or international.

A few of them (usually the loud mouths) are, like Longfellow’s little girl with a little curl on her forehead: “... When she was good, she was very, very good / But when she was bad she was horrid.” Most, alas, fly low, and think as little as possible about complex “foreign” issues.

Generals busy being generals...

... Recounting a shadowy but sharp war between the White House and top generals, Petraeus actually threatened Obama with a public fight (subtext: those brave generals against the Chicago wimp). Petraeus told his staffers that the president of the United States was “[expletive] with the wrong guy.” 1 Probably he meant “singing” with the wrong guy -- no doubt from the same hymn-book, but with Petraeus’s choice being O Worship the King (Petraeus) and Obama’s being Blest Be The Tie That Binds (White House and Pentagon). Masters of mission creep, the top U.S. military played Obama for a weak-kneed community organizer...

A third rationale might be that Obama, after “singing” with General Petraeus, had decided to ignore again his anti-war Democratic base and go with the Pentagon flow. Indefinite foreign occupation? Never! Until you remember what Petraeus told Bob Woodward about Afghanistan in his book Obama’s Wars: “You have to recognize also that I don't think you win this war. I think you keep fighting. It's a little bit like Iraq, actually... Yes, there has finally been progress in Iraq. But there are still horrific attacks in Iraq, and you have to stay vigilant. You have to stay after it. This is the kind of fight we're in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids' lives.”

Our kids’ lives. At last, loud and clear, the “consensual” military-industrial complex fantasy: a multi-generational war that you never have to explain or leave. Why? Because people will forget why they got into it in the first place... The bars in U.S. officers’ messes echo with clinking tumblers of Jack Daniels. “Defense” industry lobbyists splurge on Maseratis. Snouts-in-the-trough Members of Congress join fancier golf clubs. America finally achieves a “strong national defense.” Until next time.

Dog’s breakfast at the Pentagon...

Some generals and top industry-crony bureaucrats fear that Gates has got their number – and finds it too big. “Pentagon officials said the [Gates compressions]... were aimed at more than a number. Mr. Gates said he wanted to flatten a bureaucracy that had experienced significant ‘brass creep,’ swelling to ‘cumbersome and top-heavy proportions.’ He complained, for example, that a request to send a dog-handling team to Afghanistan goes through no fewer than five four-star headquarters.”

That’s not walking softly and carrying a big stick. It’s five generals walking the same dog. It’s hundreds of generals and admirals applauding Petraeus’s half-prediction, half-plea, for unending war. In proposing his cuts, Gates gamely insisted: “No sacred cows.” But back to the kennel: All these events and opinions highlight a military “tail” that’s perilously close to wagging the political “dog.” When generals publicly scheme against their President, where is the piously-vaunted submission of soldiers to elected officials?

And what about officers’ pricey, all-too-comfy lifestyles? One would like to call this high-on-the-hog living – but retired General Arnold L. Punaro cheerfully describes it in canine terms again: “When you have a head dog, you also have a deputy dog, then a deputy deputy dog, and a deputy deputy deputy dog,” deplored General Punaro. “The layers are suffocating the bureaucracy.” Doggone it, if this is not evidence of out-of-control “militarism,” what is?