Cloud cuckoo land
The six point speech. No, wait, the three point speech. Or was it the four point speech?? From initial enthusiasm you could see (and practically smell) gradually yet steadily fading interest among the cadets and their officers. Eyes glazing over. Disbelief. A disconnect between the speaker and the assembly. I've spoken to enough live audiences — hell, I've spoken at West Point — and I know when that rapport breaks. The BS didn't fly. His policy amounts to cut and run on a timetable... so every one of those cadets is wondering why, if we're going to cut and run, should we delay? After he'd finished he waded into a throng of cadets to shake hands. More than a few turned their backs. On television. I almost feel sorry for the poor deluded fool.
Posted by George Kenney on December 1, 2009 8:35 PM 
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Comments
Well from the news reports I am reading here in London I do not read/hear the same reaction as you. Have you seen any reports from the US media with the same reaction you have?
[Nope. And I've been looking. I'm going by what I saw live on television, on PBS. Here's a link to that exact broadcast. Anyhow, if in the next few days the consensus reaction is completely different than mine, that's OK. g.]
Posted by: Gary in London | December 2, 2009 4:20 AM
GREAT paragraph. (Worth all the verbiage we're already drowning in since last night.)
Unlike Gary, I sorta felt the same way. Obama seemed like one of those arrivistes in school or at work who try too hard to be everyone's friend.
The guy's a traitor. If one still believes in the American Republic, the guy's a traitor. Quisling Obama owes his election to the tidal wave of disgust toward all things war-like & deceptive. (Among other things.) And doesn't this lock in political discussions over the next three years into a right-wing framework?
What a heartbreaking disaster, killing (for now) what hopes progressives had that the system was reachable and changeable.
Posted by: EJK | December 2, 2009 9:22 AM
All this war. Watching last night, and now listening to Kucinich's and Andrew Bacevich's takes on how very, very wrong this is... I'm getting more and more used to lights of the oncoming train.
What a disaster. This country is very likely to soon be in possession of that which it apparently deserves.
A humble pie the size of a planet. Splat.
Posted by: Peter | December 2, 2009 10:52 AM
Here is an analysis that is deeply trenchant from the far left and well worth your time to discover:
http://www.chris-floyd.com/
The writing is consistently on the mark and touches many of the issues George does, but from further down the angry/radical-left perspective. And my hunch is that this perspective will start to move more into the mainstream as the body politic begins to understand what is really in play.
Posted by: anonymous | December 2, 2009 3:36 PM
Came across this tape-recorded dialogue last night, between the Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff Admiral Arleigh Burke and some guy named Kennedy, as the Bay of Pigs fiasco unfolded, April 1961:
KENNEDY: I don't want the United States involved in this.
ADMIRAL ARLEIGH BURKE: Hell, Mr. President, we are involved. Can we send in a few Navy jets?
KENNEDY: No, because they could be identified as United States planes.
BURKE: We can paint out their numbers.
KENNEDY: No.
BURKE: Can we get something in there? Anything?
KENNEDY: No.
BURKE: If you let me have two destroyers, we'll give gunfire support and we can hold the beachhead with two ships forever.
KENNEDY: No.
BURKE: One destroyer, Mr. President?
KENNEDY:No.
No.
Posted by: EJK | December 4, 2009 9:41 AM