Another Quarter - Another Afghanistan Mission

Per the AP and Fox News: 'Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is heading to South Asia on a mission aimed at refining the goals of the nearly 9-year-old conflict in Afghanistan as fears mount about the war.'  We have consistently failed to establish a clearly stated mission in Afghanistan, adapting tactics to the situation as necessary, and we have yet to properly and fully source any of the stated missions to date.  Instead, we keep redefining the mission, accomplishing little in the way of long-term success as a result.  These are failures of both the Bush and Obama Administrations, and must be rectified if we are to achieve success.  This is not to advocate that we blindly stick with a mission that we're unable to accomplish, or for which there is no political and public will, but we must find a mission that we can and will support.  Otherwise, there is little point to being there.

D Day Commemorated

Sixty-six years ago, the beaches at Normandy were the site of one of the largest invasions in history, as the Allied Forces began the slow recovery of Europe from Germany and the Axis.  Interviews with veterans from last year's celebrations, such as the one in the Telegraph with SGT Ken Scott (UK: 50th Div, Durham Light Infantry), say it all:

'"There's no hatred left, none at all," he says. "We have to move on and forget, but I felt it was my duty to come back and be reverent. There are no stains on the beach now, no bodies being washed up. The tide has cleaned this beach but it is the same beach we came up on. ... What was it like? If you were not there you will never know. Go to a cemetery and look at every cross and think of each one as a son or a husband or a father of children and count them, and then you might know a little."'

By Fox News with Jewish Veteran, Arthur Seltzer (4th Sig BN):

'Not that Arthur was alone in his endeavors. He was one of tens of thousands of young Americans who on June 6, 1944, took part in the D-Day landings, an unprecedented invasion that took so many lives, but ultimately saved the world from being crushed under the Nazi jackboot. ... Arthur did stay alive, and later on that fateful day he saw the sergeant whose idea it had been to sign the dollar bill, a dollar bill Arthur has kept to this day. "He says, 'You and I are the only two survived from that landing craft,' and I said to him. 'You mean you lost your whole squad?' and he says, "Yes I lost my whole squad." ... Arthur Seltzer's war did not end on D-Day. He went on to fight in the Battle of the Bulge, forever known as the greatest battle of the war, and on April 29, 1945, Arthur, who is Jewish, was with the American troops who discovered the Dachau concentration camp. Arthur describes the scene as, "Dead bodies all around, naked skeletons, people dressed in these uniforms with black stripes, they were half starved, the odor was so bad you could hardly take it. The odor of death."'

May we never forget.

Seriously? Fawning Reaches New Heights

Two wacked-out headlines:

1. From the NYT (of course): 'Gentle White House Nudges Test the Power of Persuasion'

'Tempers were fraying in the White House Cabinet Room as night turned into morning on Jan. 15. President Obama had been cloistered nearly all day with House and Senate Democrats, playing “marriage counselor,” an aide said, as he coaxed, cajoled and prodded them on a health care overhaul. As the clock neared 1 a.m., the two sides were at an impasse. Mr. Obama stood up.“ ‘See what you guys can figure out,’ ” one participant remembers him saying, adding that the failed effort left the president mad. Another Democrat who was there, Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, said Mr. Obama left “frustrated that while he was putting out ways to bridge the problem, we hadn’t reached a conclusion.” Ever since his days as a young community organizer in Chicago, Mr. Obama has held fast to the belief that by listening carefully and appealing to reason he can bring people together to get results, an approach that in Washington has often come up short.'

I fail to see how leaving in a snit, ordering others to figure things out, qualifies as gentle or persuasive.

2. From Fox News: 'NAACP to Honor Van Jones as 'American Treasure'
The title alone makes me think of the PBS ads for 'Antiques Roadshow' ("... well sir, you have a national treasure, a national treasure'), putting Van Jones on the level of a well-preserved textile.

'But Jones still has his share of outspoken supporters, and one of them is Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP. "Van Jones is an American treasure," Jealous writes in an opinion piece posted at CNN.com. "He is quite simply one of the few Americans in recent years to have generated powerful new ideas that are creating new jobs."

Ahh - for that to work as an accolade, one would have to demonstrate that at least one job had been generated by these 'powerful new ideas' something I doubt Mr. Jealous (I had to write it) can prove.

Oh well - as least it's entertaining.

Vote for Freedom of the Press

Whether you like or dislike the commentary on the Fox cable channel, their news division is out there gathering and reporting on the news just like any other news division. And yet, the White House is trying to treat them like a political enemy. Freedom of the press is one of the most cherished rights in the country, and no administration has the right (or is right) to try to suppress that freedom. Despite some fairly large ideological gulfs between various news agency members, many in the press are rallying to the side of Fox News in defense against the silly (and at times self-demeaning) attacks by the White House. Apparently, the White House thinks that this issue that's not going away any time soon, but I have to wonder why an administration facing so many grave and important decisions is spending its time trying to squelch unfavorable coverage.

The NPR News Blog has a short survey on this issue if you care to vote.

UPDATED: No We Won't - Oh Wait, We Will

UPDATE 1: Link here to an interesting editorial on a better use for White House talent.

After throwing the equivalent of a four-year old's tantrum over the posturings of puffed-up opinion commentary on Fox, the White House has decided that it might be in its best interest to allow Administration officials to appear on Fox News shows after all. In the last posting, I discussed the increasingly partisan, and over-hyped coverage on all of the cable news shows (of course, both the left and the right have long concluded that media bias is rampant), and the increasingly competition between the various outlets.

What seems particularly ridiculous is the personal offense the White House seems to feel whenever Beck or Hannity goes off on a rant. I feel little sympathy for much of the sentiment behind those rants, but the President is supposed to be a little thicker-skinned than this. So what is Beck says something ludicrous - ignore it if possible, or rebut with facts. Don't scream, yell and cry for Momma. Like all modern politicians, Obama has made full use of the media when it suits his purposes, even 'permitting' ABC to broadcast, from the White House, a full-throated defense of his approach to health care reform. When the President of the United States engages in a particular attack on one media outlet, ignoring the bias of the very outlet on which those accusations are made (by proxy), he looks the fool.