Obama's Strict Code Of Conduct

From The American Spectator:

Obama's 'Strict Code of Conduct'


By George Neumayr on 6.24.10 @ 6:08AM



General Stanley McChrystal's derisive comments about pols look mild compared to General George S. Patton's assessment of them. Patton called the "tin soldier" politicians of his day "lily-livered bastards."



"You just wait and see," Patton said at the conclusion of World War II. "The lily-livered bastards in Washington will demobilize. They'll say they've made the world safe for democracy again. The Russians are not such damned fools. They'll rebuild, and with modern weapons."



Imagine what Patton would have said about the cravenly half-baked Afghanistan policies of a wimpy faker like Barack Obama and an open buffoon like Joe Biden.



The hysterical harrumphing about McChrystal's remarks (or more like his aides' remarks) by the laughably sanctimonious Inside-the-Beltway crowd captures the nothingness of America's 24/7 political culture. An ill-advised, but in the grand scheme of things minor, McChrystal-assisted article in a rock magazine somehow became an oh-so-crucial "test" of Barack Obama's leadership, and he duly obliged the chattering class with a touchy firing.



Why, they gasped, one of McChrystal's aides dismissed a dinner with a French minister as "gay." Oh my. CNN's Rick Sanchez, with his usual self-important huffing and puffing, spoke about the remark as if the aide had committed treason. And maybe in Obama's America he has; such comments clearly have no place in Barack's new LGBT military.



The suddenly prim New Yorker found the general's behavior and language in the article "crude." His resentment at having to attend the aforementioned dinner with the French -- "I’d rather have my ass kicked by a roomful of people than go out to this dinner," he said -- "shows contempt for political and diplomatic processes," sniffed New Yorker senior editor Amy Davidson.





So Obama has finally found someone to fire and confront: not the CEO of BP or the hack bureaucrats who contributed to the Gulf mess, but a general who has risked his life to defend America. The same superficial gabbers who egged Obama into firing McChrystal hailed it afterwards as a "brilliant" decision. This is one for the history books, they burbled. Right. Only a president as shallow and easily rattled as Obama and an equally glib press corps could treat a Rolling Stone interview like the Cuban Missile Crisis.



In his statement announcing the firing, Obama couldn't resist some self-pitying narration about the weighty demands his job places on him, saying that "it was a difficult decision to come to the conclusion that I've made today," and that it didn't stem from a "sense of personal insult." But that's all it comes down to. In order to appear "tough" after the Gulf fiasco exposed his fecklessness, he had to can McChrystal, thereby depriving America of a talented and brave general at the very moment it can least afford to lose him.



An administration of immature twerps like Rahm Emanuel had the gall to fire McChrystal on the grounds that he lacked the requisite "maturity" to lead. Or as Obama put it in his rooster-like Rose Garden performance, he had violated the military's "strict code of conduct." Since when has Obama cared about the military's strict code of conduct? He campaigned on abolishing it.



The reason he wants respect restored for "civilian control of the military" is not to maintain its strict code of conduct but to eliminate it through political correctness. Cowing generals into accepting laxity -- from gays in the military to women on submarines -- is now the name of the game for civilian leaders.



The Rolling Stone article, White House officials intoned gravely, called McChrystal's "judgment" into question. Actually, the few quoted remarks in it confirmed the accuracy of his judgment: he appears to understand conditions on the ground in D.C. as clearly as those in Kabul. Moreover, when has insufficient respect for Joe Biden ever constituted evidence of dangerous judgment?