[Peace-discuss] Obama tells another joke: Petraeus

[John W.]

This one was excellent.  Is this the same guy who owns Huber's, the little
bar on W. Church St.?



On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 5:39 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>wrote:



>        Heard Any Good War Jokes Lately?
>        by Jeff Huber, June 22, 2010
>
> The pratfall Dave Petraeus took face-first into his microphone during his
> farcical testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee last Tuesday
> channeled the Twix candy bar commercial that asks: “Need a moment?” As the
> New York Times put it, the Teflon General was facing some intense
> questioning on the president’s order to begin reducing American forces in
> Afghanistan next year when he “slumped toward the microphone on his table.”
> Maybe Dave just needed some time think things over. Maybe he needed to stall
> while his driver ran out to see if he left his crib sheet in his government
> sedan.
>
> The general returned to the floor a half hour after later claiming he “just
> got dehydrated.” Must have been from all the heat he was catching from the
> committee.
>
> The hearing’s running gag was a manhood dance between committee members who
> wanted Petraeus to come right out and say Obama’s withdrawal timeline for
> Afghanistan makes dirt look smart and Petraeus wanting to agree that Obama’s
> timeline makes dirt look smart without coming right out and saying it. This
> bit of patter between Petraeus and committee chairman Carl Levin deserves an
> Emmy:
>
> Levin: “Do you continue to support that July 2011 date for the start of
> reduction in U.S. forces from Afghanistan?”
>
> Petraeus: “I support the policy of the president, Mr. Chairman…”
>
> Levin: “When you say that you continue to support the president’s policy …
> does that represent your best personal professional judgment?”
>
> Petraeus: “In a perfect world, Mr. Chairman, we have to be very careful
> with timelines…”
>
> Levin: “Do I take that to be a qualified yes, a qualified no, or just a
> non-answer?”
>
> Petraeus: “A qualified yes, Mr. Chairman.”
>
> When the senior half of the comedy team McCain and Lieberman* asked
> Petraeus if he told Obama, as per a recent book by Joseph Alter of Newsweek,
> that he’s “confident we can train and hand over to the ANA” in 18 months,
> Petraeus’ qualified non-answer was, “Well, Senator, I’m not sure it’s
> productive to comment on conversations that took place in the Oval Office.”
>
> After a three-Twix-bar think about it I couldn’t conjure a single thing
> that could possibly have been more productive at that testimony than
> commenting on Petraeus’ discussion with Obama in the Oval Office concerning
> withdrawal timelines. McCain apparently could, though, because he said, “I
> understand that. I understand that.” He must have said it twice in case
> nobody believed him the first time.
>
> Petraeus’ next non-answer was an unqualified masterpiece of bull-feather
> artistry. McCain asked “Do you agree with the comment of [Afghan] President
> Karzai’s former intelligence chief that Karzai has lost confidence in the
> ability of the United States and NATO to succeed in Afghanistan?”
>
> Petraeus replied that his protégé Stan McChrystal, commander in
> Afghanistan, had “no sense” that there was “a lack of confidence in the
> United States’ commitment to Afghanistan.” To further support his position,
> he added, “The fact that we have more than tripled … our forces … is of
> enormous significance.”
>
> Note Petraeus’ sleight-of-tongue here: the issue was whether the United
> States could succeed in Afghanistan, not whether it would commit to
> Afghanistan. They are not the same thing, at least not in any sane
> interpretation of the terms. We cannot possibly succeed at anything in
> Afghanistan other than running our ship of state aground. Committing to a
> course that will run us aground, however, seems to be the war mongrels’
> goal, hence Petraeus’ observation that tripling our number of forces there
> constitutes “success.”
>
> McCain then called Petraeus one of “America’s great heroes” but cautioned
> that he continued to worry about “the message we are sending to the region”
> by not making an even larger, even more open-ended commitment there than
> we’ve already made. That’s when Petraeus did his Chevy Chase impersonation
> and they carried his skinny carcass out of the room. Here’s how the dialogue
> went when Petraeus came back:
>
> Petraeus: “Senator, my apologies.”
>
> Levin: “Are you kidding?”
>
> Petraeus: “I got a little bit light-headed there. It wasn’t Senator
> McCain’s questions, I assure you.”
>
> Levin: “I know, it was mine.”
>
> Petraeus: “No, it’s just that…”
>
> Levin: “Clear me, too, would you, with the same breath, if you would? Just
> kidding.”
>
> Can these guys be bloody serious?
>
> Testimony the next day by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs
> Chairman Mike Mullen was equally bathetic, perhaps even more so. Gates and
> Mullen both asked the committee to be “patient” and allow them to make
> America’s longest war even longer. They’re like the lunatics who think we
> needed to have more patience with the Vietnam War. After all, we only
> committed a decade and a half-million troops to that conflict. Just think;
> if we had redoubled our efforts in Vietnam we’d still be winning there.
>
> Gates, predictably, blamed the media for America’s disaffection for the war
> in Afghanistan. “The narrative,” he rued, is “too negative.”
>
> Hmm. We’re backing a crooked ruler who stole an election and relying on his
> drug lord brother for intelligence. McChrystal himself called the Marjah
> offensive an “open sore,” and he had to delay the Kandahar offensive because
> nobody in Kandahar wants us to liberate them. We can’t even make up our
> minds who the enemy is. Is it the Taliban or is it al-Qaeda or is it the
> Pakistani security forces or is it Iran or maybe even the Turks? Wait: I bet
> it’s those crafty Chinese people! Or maybe that Venezuela guy we don’t like,
> Chavez or whatever his name is.
>
> The comedians who put on last week’s Senate Armed Services Committee
> burlesque should retire from their day jobs and write full time for Saturday
> Night Live. Lord knows the present manifestation of SNL needs all the help
> it can get. In fact, the best stratagem for fixing both our failed foreign
> policy and our bad television programming might be a role reversal: put the
> incompetent generals and politicians in charge of our wars on Saturday Night
> Live and put the incompetent comedians on Saturday Night Live in charge of
> our wars.
>
> The only thing genuine in the Senate hearing came from a lone protester who
> shouted “This is mass murder” as she was escorted out by police.
>
> No kidding, lady. No kidding.
>
>
> http://original.antiwar.com/huber/2010/06/21/heard-any-good-war-jokes-lately/
>
>

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