The Army Kinda Sorta Maybe Tangentially Quietly Accidentally Anti-Endorses Obama By Association
The Washington Post's Phillips Carter is incensed that "Stand-to" a news roundup site in the RealClearPolitics mold maintained by the Army's public affairs office linked to an obscure blog article on Obama's Iraq policy entitled "World Peace thru Surrender." Here's how the author believes an Obama presidency would go down:
Roger that Redleg six, throwing away all ammo now and preparing to surrender … Redleg five, out.
After all, what better time to surrender than when we are winning… Sure. This is all old news for those of us who care. But it still ticks me off anyway. So I thought to myself,”Why not share the wealth?” Now I can be ticked off in good company. Enjoy.
Mr.Hooah!, out.
This would all be a non-story, of course, if Mr.Hooah! weren't the well-known Counterstrike handle of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
But as it is, I smell conspiracy.
RSS
brenda, blind faith in those who claim they represent Jesus and God is dangerous too.
Obama….Who is he really? There was a lot of valid hoopla over his apparent association with a church which preached black power during his rise to power himself…yet, poof!, that information has been eliminated from the news, period. He has a father who was an avowed militant muslim and spent years within a muslim country AND still retains citizenship (he is a dual-nation acccording to his own web site).) . His father bigamously married his mother (he was married at the time and still was until his death to Kezia in Kenya) and he has half siblings all over Kenya…why dont we ever hear from them, or is this another attempt by Obama to avert eyes from his real heritage? It seems to me that a man who was potentially going to be President of the U.S. would have family members crawling out of cubby holes everywhere to congratulate, get their own attention in the media etc. Yet, I don't recall any news of even one of his remaining blood relatives. I really don't think it's terribly important what foreigners think of Obama, and especially whether they "like" him or not….I do, however, think our Nation needs to take a good long look at where all of this is going…in our quest to prove we are not a prejudiced Nation, we may be leading the rest of the World to believe that, somehow, just the color of one's skin promotes understanding…Not a good idea, I am afraid. People, wake up and LISTEN to Mr. Obama. Is he really capable of fulfilling all of those many promises he makes in his speeches…take a good long look at with whom he closely affiliates…DO weigh in his experience and what Kind of Political leverage he worked with. THEN, ask yourself if you are really capable of saying that He IS the man to bring about change, Or, is he using A "catch Phrase" to bring in supporters blind to the realities of the Political process of America….remember, he would only be President, not King. As far as I know, we are still a Democracy and our Congress of representatives actually runs the country. Blind Faith (except in Jesus Christ or God) is DANGEROUS!
dangnabit: Now that, right there, that's good writing. Seriously.
The answer to propaganda is truth. Do not limit your blogging to Comedy Central, HuffPo, etc. — My experience w/ Fox is that about one out of 5-6 messages end up posted . . . yes, I think they do screen for point of view (and then, of course, various pundits report that "Well, our e-mails/blogs are running about blah-blah-blah-to-one for/against . . . ") . . . but some of you will be familiar with/comfortable posting to veterans' sites, active military sites, legitimate conservative publication sites, etc. Do it. Level satirical smackdown when you must, but keep the sarcasm to a minimum.
Yeh, I know. I/we now are all part of a "liberal" conspiracy. Bullshit. A lot of us aren't even that liberal. I own an old Bronco and a gun. And a brain.
Imagine any public relations person you know. Now imagine an Army version of that. It smells the same only it's green.
Susan, Susan–don't you know EVERYONE has opinions?
Even bloggers who write for ComedyCentral. And BTW, your racism is poorly veiled-I can still see it.
Geez. Knee Deep In The Hooah is a blog, owned privately, not endorsed by anyone. Military parent and spouse. Linked by Stand To…which links to right AND left blogs out there. WaPo got their panties in a wad because someone listened to Obama's speeches, read his website and policies and did an analysis. The results was his PERSONAL opinion. That is still allowed ya know.
Actually, Obama is a biracial man, raised by a white mother and white grandparents try to get in touch with his 'blackness' so that he has a better chance at the presidency.
Reality Check from the audience in the Middle East.
Op-Ed Columnist
Obama on the Nile
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: June 11, 2008
Cairo.
This column will probably get Barack Obama in trouble, but that’s not my problem. I cannot tell a lie: Many Egyptians and other Arab Muslims really like him and hope that he wins the presidency.
I have had a chance to observe several U.S. elections from abroad, but it has been unusually revealing to be in Egypt as Barack Hussein Obama became the Democrats’ nominee for president of the United States.
While Obama, who was raised a Christian, is constantly assuring Americans that he is not a Muslim, Egyptians are amazed, excited and agog that America might elect a black man whose father’s family was of Muslim heritage.
They don’t really understand Obama’s family tree, but what they do know is that if America — despite being attacked by Muslim militants on 9/11 — were to elect as its president some guy with the middle name “Hussein,” it would mark a sea change in America-Muslim world relations.
Every interview seems to end with the person I was interviewing asking me: “Now, can I ask you a question? Obama? Do you think they will let him win?” (It’s always “let him win” not just “win.”)
It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Democrats’ nomination of Obama as their candidate for president has done more to improve America’s image abroad — an image dented by the Iraq war, President Bush’s invocation of a post-9/11 “crusade,” Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay and the xenophobic opposition to Dubai Ports World managing U.S. harbors — than the entire Bush public diplomacy effort for seven years.
Of course, Egyptians still have their grievances with America, and will in the future no matter who is president — and we’ve got a few grievances with them, too. But every once in a while, America does something so radical, so out of the ordinary — something that old, encrusted, traditional societies like those in the Middle East could simply never imagine — that it revives America’s revolutionary “brand” overseas in a way that no diplomat could have designed or planned.
I just had dinner at a Nile-side restaurant with two Egyptian officials and a businessman, and one of them quoted one of his children as asking: “Could something like this ever happen in Egypt?” And the answer from everyone at the table was, of course, “no.” It couldn’t happen anywhere in this region. Could a Copt become president of Egypt? Not a chance. Could a Shiite become the leader of Saudi Arabia? Not in a hundred years. A Bahai president of Iran? In your dreams. Here, the past always buries the future, not the other way around.
These Egyptian officials were particularly excited about Obama’s nomination because it might mean that being labeled a “pro-American” reformer is no longer an insult here, as it has been in recent years. As one U.S. diplomat put it to me: Obama’s demeanor suggests to foreigners that he would not only listen to what they have to say but might even take it into account. They anticipate that a U.S. president who spent part of his life looking at America from the outside in — as John McCain did while a P.O.W. in Vietnam — will be much more attuned to global trends.
My colleague Michael Slackman, The Times’s bureau chief in Cairo, told me about a recent encounter he had with a worker at Cairo’s famed Blue Mosque: “Gamal Abdul Halem was sitting on a green carpet. When he saw we were Americans, he said: ‘Hillary-Obama tied?’ in thick, broken English. He told me that he lived in the Nile Delta, traveling two hours one way everyday to get to work, and still he found time to keep up with the race. He didn’t have anything to say bad about Hillary but felt that Obama would be much better because he is dark-skinned, like him, and because he has Muslim heritage. ‘For me and my family and friends, we want Obama,’ he said. ‘We all like what he is saying.’ ”
Yes, all of this Obama-mania is excessive and will inevitably be punctured should he win the presidency and start making tough calls or big mistakes. For now, though, what it reveals is how much many foreigners, after all the acrimony of the Bush years, still hunger for the “idea of America” — this open, optimistic, and, indeed, revolutionary, place so radically different from their own societies.
In his history of 19th-century America, “What Hath God Wrought,” Daniel Walker Howe quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson as telling a meeting of the Mercantile Library Association in 1844 that “America is the country of the future. It is a country of beginnings, of projects, of vast designs and expectations.”
That’s the America that got swallowed by the war on terrorism. And it’s the America that many people want back. I have no idea whether Obama will win in November. Whether he does or doesn’t, though, the mere fact of his nomination has done something very important. We’ve surprised ourselves and surprised the world and, in so doing, reminded everyone that we are still a country of new beginnings.
You forgot that he'll invite his Muslim relatives, who'll bring the terrorists home.
So let me get this straight… Obama is a terrorist fist jabbing secret Muslim who endorses the insane ranting of a radical Christian preacher and will bring about the downfall of the United States with his peacenik loving of surrender and appeasement.
Wow. Dude is busy.
What the hell do the NeoCon scum have on some of these people? I've read (I own) Gates' "From the Shadows" and found it — and presumably him — to be a balanced (starting to hate that word for the idiomatic meaning it has acquired, ie. "biased; unbalanced") if somewhat truncated perspective on cold-war politics. He did NOT strike me as a stupid, or irrational, man.
Being Secretary of War does not require him to like THIS war. If anything, he came on board to limit the culture of facism provoked by Rummy. Or so some of us thought.
HEY, BOB! THE WAR IN IRAQ IS NOT THE WAR ON TERROR. IT NEVER WAS.
I keep asking people who think they are/thought they were conservatives to – please – revisit their conservative roots. OK, this means you, too, Robert Gates. Try a little interaction with:
http://www.amconmag.com/
http://conservativetimes.org/