Keith Olbermann outdid himself Monday night on the eve of President Obama—finally—announcing his strategy for the war in Afghanistan. (video link above)
He told the President to "get out now," because the General advising him is a liar, and that the generals advising him are "in the war business," conduct "war for the sake of war," are looking for quagmires to keep the "war business" going, and compared them to 12 year-olds who don't want to go to bed.
Dreading just such a reaction from the fruit-loop wing of his party, President Obama has delayed sending needed reinforcements for troops in the field, and dithered away the summer season when offensive operations could have been most effective.
And it was a waste, Mr. President. The radical Left is not going to respect your "thoughtfulness" if the decision allows for even the possibility of the projection of American power, or the killing of America's enemies.
It was predictable. Olbermann challenges Obama to live up to his "hope and change" rhetoric, deliberately ignoring the constant drumbeat from the candidate that Afghanistan was "the good war," and the "necessary" one. Afghanistan was a hammer against George W. Bush and Iraq. Now that the focus is Afghanistan, they no longer want to fight it. It was predictable.
Because to the Left—and to Olbermann and Obama—the Afghanistan issue was NEVER about beating al Qaeda, it was about beating Republicans. That's why Olbermann now thinks it's time to "declare victory and go home."
In a rant that was filled with 60s cultural and political references—and could have been subtitled, "Everything I Know about the Pentagon I Learned at SDS Rallies and Reruns of Dr. Strangelove"—Olbermann did everything but chant, "Hey Hey, how many kids did you kill today?"
General McChrystal has doubtless served his country bravely and honorably and at great risk, but to date his lasting legacy will be as the great facilitator of the obscenity that was transmuting the greatest symbol of this nation's true patriotism, of its actual willingness to sacrifice, into a distorted circus fun-house mirror version of such selflessness.
Friendly fire killed Pat Tillman. Mr. McChrystal killed the truth about Pat Tillman. And that willingness to stand truth on its head on behalf of "selling" a war or the generic idea of America being at war to turn a dead hero into a meaningless recruiting poster, should ring essentially relevant right now.
Wait just a minute. Who is using Pat Tillman as a political tool? And in a cause directly opposed to the one he gave his life supporting?
Only the deepest recesses of the paranoid Left buys the slander that McChrystal deliberately was involved in any cover-up in the reporting of the Pat Tillman death.
But let's examine that just for a minute. The media focus HAS robbed Pat Tillman of his heroic status and made him merely a victim. The evidence against McChrystal is that he put out the word that the fact that Tillman braved intense enemy fire to protect another soldier should not be de-emphasized.
Well of COURSE, it shouldn't! Tillman got a Silver Star for braving enemy fire to save a comrade in a blistering firefight—no matter whose bullet actually killed him.
From the very center of a part of our nation that could lie to the public, could lie to his mother, about what really happened to Pat Tillman, from the very man who was at the operational center of that plan, comes the entire series of plans to help us supposedly find the way out of Afghanistan? We are supposed to believe General McChrystal isn't lying about Afghanistan?
Didn't he blow his credibility by lying, so obviously and so painfully, about Pat Tillman? Why are we believing the McChrystals? Their reasons might sound better than the ones they helped George Bush and Dick Cheney fabricate for Iraq, but surely they are just as transparently oblivious of the forest.
"The McChrystals?" I'm sorry, did I miss that this is a family business? Of course, this sleazy tactic enables Olbermann to put anything he wants to in General McChrystal's mouth, then say, "I didn't say HE said it, I said people LIKE him said it."
But General Stanley McChrystal is an individual, and an uncommonly distinguished servant of his country. Therefore, he must be destroyed. By any means necessary.
So, Keith implies that Stanley McChystal is a sociopath, in the leadership of a club of sociopaths, whose only purpose in life is to send our nation's finest into the meat grinder for no discernable purpose.
The Pentagon… is in the War business. You were right, Mr. President, to slow the process down, once a series of exit strategies was offered to you by men whose power and in some case livelihoods are predicated on making sure all exit strategies, everywhere, forever, don't really result in any service-man or woman actually exiting.
We cannot afford this ethically, Sir. The country has, for eight shameful years, forgotten its moral compass and its world purpose. And here is your chance to reassert that there is, in fact, American Exceptionalism. We are better. We know when to stop making our troops suffer, in order to make our generals happy.
Yes, the object of the Pentagon is to look for unwinnable quagmires so that they can stay in the "war business." I'm not sure Michael Moore even believes that.
Then the full moon insanity really manifested itsef, as Keith addresses the President with the world's weirdest conspiracy theory, but tries to inoculate the inherent insanity in it, by admitting it's paranoid but putting it out there, anyway:
And upon arrival you were greeted by a Three Mile Island of an economy, so bad that in the most paranoid recesses of the mind one could wonder if the Republicans didn't plan it that way, to leave you in the position of having to prove the ultimate negative, that you staved off worldwide financial collapse, that if you had not done what you so swiftly did, that this "economic cloudy day" would have otherwise been the "biblical flood of finance."
Yes, 30 years ago, Republicans deployed ACORN, Jesse Jackson, and Barney Frank to attack banking standards in the name of racial equality in order to bankrupt the economy so that a future liberal messiah would be constrained in his spending… no wait, he's spending trillions… uh, forced to continue a war… no, can't connect that… what was I talking about again?
You know this, Mr. President: we cannot afford this war. Nothing makes less sense to our economy than the cost of supply for 35,000 new troops.Nothing will do more to slow economic recovery. You might as well shoot the revivified auto industry or embrace John Boehner Health Care Reform and Spray-Tan Reimbursement.
"Nothing?" Really? Even the inflated numbers put out by antiwar activists about the cost of the war, put it at about 5% of the so-called "stimulus package," about 3% of the cost of Cap and Trade, or about 5% of the Harry Reid plan to insure another 10% of uninsured Americans.
And we in Michigan would like some evidence of this "revivified auto industry."
What does it cost to lose a war? That is incalculable. What did 9/11 cost? Keith admits its even likely that Afghanistan will again be occupied by foreign invaders, it would just make him feel more noble if it were not us. So, create a safe haven for al Qaeda. What could that cost?
But as Keith reveals, the Left never believed anything Obama said about Afghanistan was more than convenient rhetoric. They supported Obama from the beginning of the primaries because they expected him to lose wars and abandon the efforts. Now, they are going to hold him to it.