Loose lips: the McChrystal article

The New Neo Posted on by

General Stanley McChrystal, top guy in Afghanistan, was summoned to the White House with some splainin to do after an incendiary piece appeared in Rolling Stone in which the general and his aides criticized the US ambassador to Afghanistan, as well as President Obama and much of his administration, for its handling of Afghanistan.

I’m no fan of Obama. Nor do I have a military background. And yet even I know that what McChrystal did (or allowed to have done) in this piece is a no-no. Perhaps offering such public criticism is marginally acceptable once a military officer has retired, but certainly not while in the thick of things. Even afterwards, it can be controversial.

There are military codes of behavior and there are informal military traditions, and neither of them encompasses public criticism of a commander-in-chief, no matter what the disagreement. McChrystal could not have been so naive as to know that he did not risk being fired from his command and even further embarrassed and/or disciplined as a result, and blaming it on a civilian press aide (who already been fired as a result of the article) just doesn’t wash.

Disclaimer: I have not yet had time to read the Rolling Stone piece, just summaries and excerpts, although I certainly plan to read it later today. So I don’t know how many of the statements came directly from McChrystal and how many from his underlings. But it almost doesn’t matter; the article was written with his approval.

While I’m sure it was mega-frustrating to deal with Obama and his staff, McChrystal needed to approach this some other way. One wonders why he did not. Was he purposely falling on his sword, sacrificing a career that seemed increasingly worthless under the circumstances, in order to get the truth out about this administration (one he voted for, by the way)?

Was he driven temporarily insane by dealing with a president who seemed to understand nothing about the conduct of war, and who endlessly pondered, Hamlet-like, while McChrystal’s urgent requests for more troops went unanswered? Or did Rolling Stone end up slipping him and/or his aides a dram of sodium pentathol to make them talk?

[ADDENDUM: Here’s an interesting take on the matter from Blackfive.]

And now for something completely different

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip (literally): Vanderleun at American Digest.]

It’s not easy to look good in a hat, although it helps to be beautiful to begin with, and to have classic features and well-defined cheekbones. Hats used to be part of most people’s regular prescribed attire, fancy ones for the rich and caps and scarfs and wimplish things for the laborers and peasants.

No more. The hat has mostly disappeared, except for the ubiquitous baseball cap, sometimes word backwards, and the balaclava for ski outings and other bitterly cold days.

But every year the decorative and ceremonial hat makes a reappearance at the Ascot horse races in England. And not just a revival, an outburst of enthusiastic creativity and commentary, all the more exuberant for having been so long pent-up.

Here’s a site devoted to some of the more memorable from this year’s event. I reproduce a few below:

ascot5.jpg

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Steyn on anti-Semitism

The New Neo Posted on by

This Mark Steyn piece is well worth reading. In it, he offers an excellent description of that widespread, long-lasting, multi-faceted, over-determined, much-explained yet ultimately mysterious phenomenon: anti-Semitism.

Wherever a Jew is, whatever a Jew is, he should be something else somewhere else. And then he can be hated for that, too.

Is Rahm on the way out?

The New Neo Posted on by

Richard Fernandez speculates on the news that Rahm Emanuel is planning to leave the White House by the end of the year.

As with most administrations, the true story of the inner workings of Obama’s has yet to be told, and perhaps will only be learned after the fact, if then. But his seems especially opaque and cryptic, and we are left reading tea leaves, much like the old Kremlinologists.

Here’s Fernandez’s re-write of, if not the truth, then the message Rahm wants to convey:

Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, is threatening to leave his job later this year unless Barack Obama gets real. Rahm has made a lot of personal sacrifices to join the White House. He gave up being a congressman, Chicago deep dish pizza and being a father to his children for what? To be blamed as abrasive when the midterm disaster unfolds. No way he’s taking the fall for that. But just to show the boss he’s not scared, not a rat ”” not until the last moment anyway ”” he’ll stay until the midterm disaster makes it absolutely clear that all his warnings about futzing around have come true. And just in case you think Emanuel is yellow, remember that’s he willing to take on Richard Daley. And think on this. When all you inner circlers are walking the streets in DC rattling pencil cups and looking for a job, Rahm’s going to be mayor of the Windy City.

And here’s the original Telegraph story on which Fernandez is elaborating. It underlines earlier reports of a rift between Emanuel the Semi-Outsider and the highly influential Gang of Three, Jarrett, Gibbs, and Axelrod, who seem to have consolidated their already-formidable power.

One of the points the Telegraph article makes is that Rahm has engendered “frustration among Mr Obama’s closest advisers that he failed to deliver a smooth ride for the president’s legislative programme that his background promised.” Speaking of wanting miracles! If that statement is true (and we do need to take it all with a grain of salt), it is unbelievable that Rahm was expected to whip the Democrats into line on these votes any more than he already had. He would had to have sent all the recalcitrant Democrats dead fish, and put a horse’s head in each of their beds, to have accomplished that daunting feat.

What an odd notion—that it’s all about discipline and that Bush just had better discipline. Could it not instead be that, for the main part, Bush’s proposals were actually less extreme— and more popular with the Republicans in Congress, their constituents, and the American people as a whole—so that those who voted for them didn’t risk being thrown out on their ears as a result?

Obama rubber, Bush glue

The New Neo Posted on by

Isn’t it interesting how those defending Obama seem to have come down for the most part to the repetition of a single assertion: “Bush did it, too!”

Their statement isn’t even necessarily true, although sometimes it is. Nor is the scale usually equivalent, such as with the example of the extent of Obama’s and Bush’s respective deficit spending. But it’s deeply ironic, is it not, that nearly all they’re left with is comparison to the man most Obama supporters consider to be the worst president in history, both an evil knave and a stupid fool.

Gone is the great orator. Gone the transformative uniter and the three-D chess player. Gone, too, the fixer of oceans and the engenderer of leg thrills, the closer of terrorist prisons and the withdrawerer from wars.

They are left with the single comeback: “bounces off Obama and sticks to Bush.” It was old even during the campaign, and yet it worked back then. But now, Obama’s teflon coating has worn thin—and Bush’s adhesive qualities seem to have faded away, leaving him to enjoy his retirement down in Dallas and Crawford, where two grateful towns are no longer missing their village idiot.

Bumping up again

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: I’ll be bumping this post up to the top for only a couple more days. Please scroll down for new posts.]

[ADDENDUM 6/17: For those who mentioned that I should change from PayPal because of what they did to Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs, I’m happy to report that Paypal has restored her account and apologized for the offense. So I feel okay staying with them, since it’s such a bother to change.]

I’m passing the hat once again. I’ve decided to do this twice-yearly, so as not to overwhelm you with my pleas, and the time’s come round once more (time passes so quickly when you’re enjoying yourselves).

Profuse and heartfelt thanks to everyone who originally donated last fall, and profuse and heartfelt thanks to those who made donations in the meantime, and profuse and heartfelt thanks to those who are about to do so.

Here’s a repost of my original explanation:

passhat.jpg

Well, I’ve done it; I’m officially passing the hat.

Ever since PJ ads disappeared last spring I’ve been mulling it over, and I’ve finally succumbed and placed a Paypal button on my right sidebar. It’s the yellow one that says, “Donate.”

I would appreciate donations, but they’re hardly required. Nor should you feel the least bit bad if you decide not to click on that button. I’d do all of this anyway, for free—as I did at the beginning, and as I have for the last few months.

But I would be deeply grateful if you do decide to contribute, whether it be a penny or quite a few dollars. Every single bit— be it large or be it small—adds up, and it all helps a great deal. And so I thank you in advance.

I will probably repeat this notice every now and then, the equivalent of jiggling that cup/hat. But I’ll be discreet about it. And it’s a lot better than those fund-raising drives they have on NPR, isn’t it? No interruption of the scheduled programming.

Father’s Day musings and poetry

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This a slightly edited version of a previous post of mine.]

Father’s Day. A sort of poor stepchild to Mother’s Day, although fathers themselves are hardly that. They are central to a family.

Just ask the people who never had one, or who had a difficult relationship with theirs. Or ask the people who were nurtured in the strength of a father’s love and guidance.

Of course, the complex world being what it is, and people and families being what they are, it’s the rare father-child relationship that’s entirely conflict-free. But for the vast majority, love is almost always present, even though at times it can be hard to express or to perceive. It can take a child a very long time to see it or feel it; but that’s part of what growing up is all about. And “growing up” can go on even in adulthood, or old age.

Father’s Day—or Mother’s Day, for that matter—can wash over us in a wave of treacly sentimentality. But the truth of the matter is often stranger, deeper, and more touching. Sometimes the words of love catch in the throat before they’re spoken. But they can still be sensed. Sometimes a loving father is lost through distance or misunderstanding, and then regained.

There’s an extraordinary poem by Robert Hayden that depicts one of these uneasy father-child connections—the shrouded feelings, both paternal and filial, that can come to be seen in the fullness of time as the love that was always, always there. I offer it on this Father’s Day to all of you.

THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house.

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Obama, knave or fool, latest edition

The New Neo Posted on by

Mort Zuckerman, former Obama supporter, answers the question and says “fool.”

I beg to differ (I believe the answer is that he is both). But it’s still interesting to see Zuckerman come this far in his condemnation. He doesn’t quite get that what he may see as a bug (our declining influence and power in the world) Obama sees as a feature.

Zuckerman writes, “Obama clearly wishes to do good and means well.” Why that is so clear he does not say; it’s not at all clear to me, but perhaps it’s clear to Zuckerman because he’s a Democrat.

However, for a guy who wants to do good and means well, the list of Obama negatives in foreign policy that Zuckerman notes is unconscionably long and very serious. Zuckerman also brings up the following additional point, which is a part of the picture I hadn’t really thought much about before:

Obama’s meeting with the [Saudi] king was widely described as a disaster. This is but one example of an absence of the personal chemistry that characterized the relationships that Presidents Clinton and Bush had with world leaders. This is a serious matter because foreign policy entails an understanding of the personal and political circumstances of the leaders as well as the cultural and historical factors of the countries we deal with.

Whatever it is that Obama lacks in personal terms—call it warmth, call it empathy, call it what you will—it has apparently been duly noted by those heads of state with whom he has interacted in person.

There are over 800 comments to the Zuckerman article as of this moment, and there is no way I’m going to read them all. But, just looking at the first twenty or so, I see that most of them are saying what I’m saying: Obama’s a knave, Mr. Zuckerman; and if he’s a fool, too, he’s probably not been foolish or incompetent enough at getting his agenda implemented.

Changing minds: George Wallace

The New Neo Posted on by

The recent news that the federal government is planning to mount a legal challenge to the state of Arizona’s new immigration law is just another outrage in a long series of outrages by the Obama administration. Even though the state of Arizona is only trying to protect its citizens and enforce policies consistent with federal law, Obama and Holder have chosen to take it to task for doing so.

I am in agreement with the Arizona side in this particular dispute, as are the majority of the American people. But, although the situation is profoundly different in most respects, it sparked a memory of another battle between the federal government and a state, which featured a dramatic visual from my youth: the 1963 moment in which Governor George Wallace of Alabama stood in the doorway of an auditorium at the University of Alabama to block the federal-court-ordered entry of black students there.

It was a dramatic act of theater by Wallace, who knew his cause was doomed and the federal government would win; he ended up stepping aside. Later on, after a shooting had left him a lifelong paraplegic and chronic pain sufferer, Wallace had a conversion experience and became a born-again Christian, renouncing his former segregationist views and trying to right the wrongs he’d perpetrated.

It is a complex story, made even more complex by the fact that when Wallace had started out as a politician (and this I had not known before; I just learned it while doing research for this post), he was considered a racial moderate compared to those against whom he was running. He substantially hardened his segregationist views for political reasons, and it seemed to work for him, since he became a very successful politician. So in Wallace’s case, it may be that he didn’t have quite so far to go for his change experience as one might think.

I learned a few other new facts while researching this piece. For example, Arthur Bremer, the man who shot Wallace, had no political beef with him; he merely wanted to assassinate some public figure and become famous, and Wallace was a target of opportunity. Then, after Bremer’s diary was published as a book, it became the basis (in a fictionalized version) for the movie “Taxi Driver,” which later served as inspiration for John Hinckley’s shooting of President Reagan. Art imitates life, and then life imitates art.

I also learned that one of the two black students whom Wallace attempted to block on the steps that day was named Vivian Malone Jones. Jones, who died in 2005, had a career in the civil rights division of the Department of Justice. One portion of her life story that engendered a bit of a lump in my throat was this:

In October 1996, she was chosen by the George Wallace Family Foundation to be the first recipient of its Lurleen B. Wallace Award of Courage. At the ceremony, Wallace said, “Vivian Malone Jones was at the center of the fight over states’ rights and conducted herself with grace, strength and, above all, courage.”

And, in a last, probably tangential, but rather strange twist, there is the following connection:

[Jones’s] brother-in-law is Eric Holder, the current U.S. Attorney General.

Update on Clive Wearing: amnesia, a love story

The New Neo Posted on by

Some of you may recall a post I wrote in 2005 about Clive Wearing, the man with such profound memory loss that he lived in a single repeating and ever-changing present moment disconnected from those that had gone before.

To refresh your memory (or if you’ve never heard of Wearing in the first place) I strongly urge you to read it. Wearing’s story is both fascinating and profound—in human, spiritual, emotional, and scientific terms. You may also want to view some YouTube videos based on a documentary about Wearing and his devoted wife.

I have recently been reading the book Musicophilia by neurologist/author Oliver Sacks, in the expanded 2008 edition, which offers an update on Clive’s plight. It shows that, even over twenty years after the brain insult that in 1985 robbed him of so much of what we consider ordinary human life and thought, things can still change (at least slightly) for the better.

One of the aspects of Wearing’s story I did not emphasize much in my earlier post was the fact that his condition changed over time. Initially very frightened—in fact, terrified—because he realized something was deeply amiss but could not understand what it was, he later became profoundly depressed. These states lasted for months and even years, but ultimately, new learning on an emotional level (or some sort of global cognitive level) seemed to kick in, and he achieved a certain equanimity and even joie de vivre (many of the YouTube tapes from the original documentary come from a time before this happier period).

Wearing was able to draw on several strengths: the stability of a newer and more home-like residence; the love he felt towards and received from his wife; the continuing place of music in his life; and his formidable intellect and sense of humor, which gave him increasing ability to converse and interact, albeit in limited and somewhat repetitive ways.

Recently, however, he seems to have actually regained a small ability to put down new memories. This is astounding after all these years. Sacks reports that in the spring of 2008 he received a note from Wearing’s wife Deborah that stated:

Clive continues to surprise us. Recently he looked at my mobile phone and asked, “Does it take pictures?”…Earlier this month I’d been with Clive, then went outside for about ten minutes. I rang the doorbell to get back in and Clive opened the door with the care assistant who had been with him the whole time. Clive said, “Welcome back!,” perfectly aware that I’d been there previously. His care assistant commented on this change. The staff also told me how one day a care assistant had lost her lighter. Ten or fifteen minutes after hearing this, Clive came up to the same lady and gave her the lost lighter, saying, “Is this your lighter?” The staff could find no explanation for his remembering who had lost the lighter or that she had lost the lighter…

It may not seem like much. But for a man who initially was reduced to saying over and over things such as this—“I haven’t heard anything, seen anything, touched anything, smelled anything. It’s like being dead”—or crying inconsolably for months on end, or greeting his wife each time he saw her as though they had been separated for a lengthy and almost unendurable period, it is quite an achievement; a testament to the plasticity of the human brain, the mystery of healing, and the power of love.