The Conservative Soldier

Gen. Stanley McChrystal has been relieved of his duties by the most under-qualified President of the United States in American history.

The truth has set McChrystal free. He is freed from the tepid American military effort in Afghanistan, an effort hindered by a President who does not lead, who allows military and civilian insiders to bicker and snipe, and who has little regard for American military strength and those who sustain it.

Considering that the Obama White House is defiantly uncommitted to dealing aggressively with our nation’s enemies, it sure has a proclivity for dropping bombs. F-bombs, to be precise.

This White House tolerates a Vice President who erupts about what a “big f—ing deal” ObamaCare’s passage will be. It operates under a chief of staff who denigrates the decisions of others as “f—ing retarded”.

Now, press secretary Robert Gibbs expects us to believe Barack Obama is outraged about a magazine, read mostly by aging 1970s war protesters, that hires a writer who, apparently, loves typing the “f” word and did so four times in a profile of McChrystal.

Somehow a reckless presidency that acts by decree without regard for the rule of law is less egregious than a reckless decision by McChrystal’s civilian communications advisor to give a vehemently antiwar journalist full access to the general and his staff.

Not one f-bomb was attributed to McChrystal, the top commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Two were introduced by the author, Michael Hastings, who has crafted war coverage and analysis for such left-of-center digital media outlets as Salon, Slate and True/Slant. Two others were contained in unattributed comments by “aides”.

The revelation of the Rolling Stone piece is not that politicians and military personnel curse like sailors and don’t always get along. The Rolling Stone episode that brought down a four-star general is a stark reminder that the dictatorial Obama and his disciples do not tolerate truth and transparency.

We’ve seen it before. During the 2008 campaign, Sam Wurzelbacher (Joe The Plumber) was savaged by the compliant mainstream media after he dared challenge candidate Obama’s wish to “spread the wealth around”.

When Obama led the government takeover of the American auto industry, General Motors chief Rick Wagoner was fired – by the feds, not by GM. Unprecedented.

A Cambridge, Mass., police officer arrests one of Obama’s buddies, a (black) Harvard professor, for obstructive conduct. Obama hurls the officer under the bus. He “acted stupidly,” Obama said, though the truth was the (white) officer acted appropriately.

The list goes on: South Carolina Rep. Joe (“You lied”) Wilson. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (immigration enforcement). Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (BP disaster support).

But this is the Obama way: Attack any and all who oppose his version of reality, who dare to tread too close to the truth. In this case, as The Heritage Foundation’s Mike Brownfield writes this morning, the Hastings piece “revealed a larger problem for the president — festering, internal dissension regarding his administration’s Afghanistan strategy.”

Rolling Stone headlined its story, The Runaway General. It is merely a chapter in the story of a Runaway Presidency.

Video images and statistical projections related to the BP oil well disaster are nauseating. The reaction is shared universally. Equally nauseating were Thursday’s Congressional hearings during which hours were committed to the interrogation of BP chief executive Tony Hayward.

Shepard Smith, the Fox News anchor known for a left-of-center world view, said bluntly, “Today’s public dress down is as much about politics as it is getting to the bottom of this national tragedy.”

Members of the Congressional subcommittee who spent the day grilling, rebuking, admonishing, even mocking, Hayward have a lot more in common with the reserved Brit than any would care to admit. It is also shared by President Barack Obama. The lawmakers, Hayward and Obama did nothing on Thursday to further reduce the volume of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, nothing to dramatically step up the containment or removal of oil from the vulnerable waters.

Blaming BP is not a solution. Feeding populist rage is not proactive. It is reactive.

If blame is essential amid this crisis, why are Obama, his administration and members of Congress so unwilling to accept any responsibility for their complacency at the outset of the explosion and failure to recognize the magnitude of the uncontrolled oil flow? Why does President Obama travel to the Gulf Coast for photo ops but not to oversee a massive clean up effort that marshals experts and technology from around the world? Why does Obama hesitate to waive a law that prohibits foreign vessels from being dispatched to the Gulf to help collect oil?

And one other question trumps the rest: Why is there so little outrage among lawmakers and American citizens toward the nauseating politicization of the BP accident that took the dangerous turn Wednesday of subverting the rule of law? The U.S. government effectively seized $20 billion in assets of a multinational corporation, then selected the “independent” body that will determine who has been a victim of the disaster and how much money they need to be “made whole”.

The czar of this independent body is attorney Ken Feinberg, the same Ken Feinberg who presided over the Obama attack on executive pay among the nation’s financial institutions. This is the Feinberg who “independently” ruled these institutions — many of which never asked to be bailed out and, in some cases, repaid the money — were prohibited from honoring their compensation agreements with selected senior-level officers. Feinberg is an Obamatron, period.

Texas Rep. Joe Barton called the seizure of $20 billion from BP a “shakedown”.  Later, he was compelled during the Hayward hearing to reiterate that he holds BP responsible for the environmental disaster. The two are completely unconnected. The $20 billion transfer of wealth to the U.S. government represents naked exploitation in the aftermath of the rig explosion, and another example of a government takeover of a private enterprise. By the way, that $20 billion is an initial amount. The U.S. likely with extort more. And it is separate from $100 million allocated to compensate for Obama’s worst decision since the accident: shutting down all offshore drilling for six months, crippling an industry. When Obama says BP will pay he apparently means “for my reckless decisions.”

Conn Carroll, writing The Heritage Foundation’s Morning Bell analysis Thursday, gets to the heart of it. “Yesterday’s ‘voluntary’ deal between BP and the Obama administration was nothing less than a continuation of (Obama’s) ongoing assault on the rule of law,” he concludes. “From Fannie Mae to Freddie Mac, from GM to Chrysler, from AIG to Citibank, our government continues to subvert the established rule of law. This lawlessness creates uncertainty in the business environment, and it is a huge reason why our economy is not recovering as it should be.”

An environmental crisis meets an economic crisis. Which will take longer to clean up?

David Broder. James Carville. Maureen Dowd. Thomas Frank. Peggy Noonan.

These are not folks you will find wandering around a Tea Party rally. These are elite pundits, authors and former White House insiders who, on January 20, 2009, were either overcome with joyous emotion or, at the very least, ideologically aligned with the transformational inauguration of The One, Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States.

Dowd (New York Times), Frank (Wall Street Journal) and Carville (CNN and former Bill Clinton advisor) write/comment from the far left and bask in their enlightened elitism. Broder (Washington Post) and Noonan (Wall Street Journal and former Reagan speechwriter) are considered moderate, less agenda driven than some in the D.C.-New York corridor.

In recent days, all have expressed concern, disappointment, frustration, even outrage, toward the current state of the Obama Administration. Some have concluded, to paraphrase, that Obama might not have what it takes to do the job. For most on the list, this marks a first.

Anyone who has watched or been subjected in everyday life to the realities of Illinois and Chicago politics (read Liberal Democrat controlled cronyism and corruption) probably saw this coming. The Chicago Way was uniquely capable of elevating a former community organizer from the streets to the U.S. Senate. Then, despite his relative obscurity, the Chicago Way kept building momentum for their man all the way to the White House.

Now, the boundless optimism that swept over Grant Park on Election Night 2008 is replaced by stunned disbelief toward the unraveling of the Obama Era (Rasmussen Reports: Obama 53% disapproval. Gallup: 47% approval, down from 64% a year ago), hastened by his failure to demonstrate leadership amid the BP oil spill catastrophy.

“He is hard put to sound convincingly like the leader of the nation,” writes the Journal’s Dorothy Rabinowitz, “because he is, at heart and by instinct, the voice mainly of his ideological class.”

Not by coincidence, many in that class are themselves falling into disarray. Individuals who might have expected to be politically entrenched heading into the fall elections are on the ropes, including Governor Pat Quinn, U.S. Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias and Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (IL-9th).

In a recent poll of likely Illinois voters by Rasmussen, 57% somewhat or strongly (34%) disapprove of Quinn’s performance. In the same poll, Obama insider Giannoulias trails Republican opponent  and U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk (IL-10th) 42%-39%. Kirk led 46-38 at the end of April. He is losing ground because of inaccuracies about his military service allowed to stand uncorrected for years. And Schakowsky is facing scrutiny for her support of a largely ignored federal bailout of Chicago’s ShoreBank, a micro-financing institution to which Obama & Co. have longstanding ties, as well as her recent praise for White House correspondent Helen Thomas. Thomas resigned this week on the heels of an anti-Semitic rant. Only a few weeks ago, she had appeared with Schakowsky as a featured speaker at a fundraiser.

As leaders of Chicago’s failed bid to host the 2016 Olympic Games discovered, there is no guarantee that the Obama Effect will turn anything around. Quinn, Giannoulias and Schakowsky might even find themselves better off downplaying the President’s Chicago ties come November.

The Journal’s Thomas Frank, as hardened a left-winger as they come, expressed utter exasperation in his weekly column this week. “We are now experiencing the biggest environmental disaster in generations—a disaster, mind you, that follows hard on the heels of a campaign in which Mr. Obama’s opponents chanted, “Drill, baby, drill”—and yet the party of environmentalism is unable to make political capital out of it. What set of circumstances makes such a perverse outcome possible?”