For the last week, the election debate has been focused on the
existential question of how much impact will result from Mitt
Romney's "47%" remark. The campaign suffers from a malaise that can
only be cured by a real crisis such as Obama replacing Joe Biden
with Paris Hilton or Dave Letterman.
In that same week, there's been a steady flow of SGO ("s**t going on," in the comprehensively useful acronym coined by former SEAL Al Clark), events far more important which are going almost unnoticed. Consider just a few.
The treacly flow of information from the Obama administration about the war in Afghanistan is more reminiscent of Vietnam each day. "I think we are on track, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said last Friday in announcing that the last of our 33,000 "surge" troops have been withdrawn. Panetta also said that the surge had met "…its objectives of reversing the Taliban momentum on the battlefield and dramatically [increasing] the size and capability of the Afghan national security forces."
The latter remark would be comical if it didn't come in the context of cessation of joint operations with Afghanistan forces below the battalion level, resulting from another "green on blue" attack on U.S. troops by the Afghan troops they are supposed to be training. Training operations have been slowed as well, while new "vetting" procedures are used to re-clear Afghans who are supposed to be trainees.
Read more: http://spectator.org/archives/2012/09/24/as-the-world-burns
In that same week, there's been a steady flow of SGO ("s**t going on," in the comprehensively useful acronym coined by former SEAL Al Clark), events far more important which are going almost unnoticed. Consider just a few.
The treacly flow of information from the Obama administration about the war in Afghanistan is more reminiscent of Vietnam each day. "I think we are on track, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said last Friday in announcing that the last of our 33,000 "surge" troops have been withdrawn. Panetta also said that the surge had met "…its objectives of reversing the Taliban momentum on the battlefield and dramatically [increasing] the size and capability of the Afghan national security forces."
The latter remark would be comical if it didn't come in the context of cessation of joint operations with Afghanistan forces below the battalion level, resulting from another "green on blue" attack on U.S. troops by the Afghan troops they are supposed to be training. Training operations have been slowed as well, while new "vetting" procedures are used to re-clear Afghans who are supposed to be trainees.
Read more: http://spectator.org/archives/2012/09/24/as-the-world-burns
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