Brooding Cynyc

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

PRESIDENT OBAMA DISAPPOINTS IN DALLAS

USES MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR A SPEECH

ON RACE RELATIONS

President Obama delivering remarks at memorial Service for slain Dallas Police Officers

TAGS: PRESIDENT OBAMA SPEECH IN DALLAS, FIVE DALLAS POLICE OFFICERS

KILLED IN THE LINE OF DUTY, INAPPROPRIATE COMMENTS MADE BY OBAMA,

NO PLACE FOR A SPEECH ON RACE AND COMPLAINTS AGAINST POLICE

Brooding Cynyc Commentary/Opinion

(Tuesday July 12, 2016 Dallas, TX) The President of the United States, any President including the current occupant of the Oval Office, bears several titles based on the unique powers vested in that, the highest Office in the land. He is the Chief Executive of the US and the Commander in Chief of the mighty US Military. He and he alone possesses great authority such as the issuance of Executive Orders that bypass Congressional approval or consultation. Among all the Presidential powers and titles there is no expectation nor recognition codifying he be the “Healer in Chief”. Yes, the President has the prerogatives that come with the “Bully Pulpit” of that exalted Office. It is good and proper that a President address the citizens at times of crisis and tragedy. Some have been more effective in this duty than others. This President, Barack Obama, has often found himself confronting circumstances that require a very high degree of verbal deftness and oratorical dexterity. As the first African American President he has been forced to shoulder unusually high expectations during times of national unrest. Every element of every speech is dissected for his choice of words and phrases, his references to Scripture, and even the basic cadence of his delivery as well as the appropriateness of any speeches contents and context.

President Obama came here today to participate in an interfaith memorial for the five Dallas Police Officers killed in the line of duty last Thursday night just as a peaceful march against “police brutality” was winding down. In a show of unity, he was joined on the dais by his predecessor, George W. Bush. The audience was comprised mostly of family and friends of the fallen Officers as well as local political leaders and representatives of the Law Enforcement Community(LEC) from across the country. Granted, this was a tough audience and President Obama had a tough task in finding an emotional balance in his remarks without sounding like just another politician delivering just another speech.

He began strongly enough taking the first nine or ten minutes of his speech to pay homage to the Officers and acknowledge the perils inherent in their chosen profession; of the self-sacrifice, bravery and courage it takes to do that job day in, day out often confronting violence, hostility, and blatant disrespect while carrying unusually high expectations. He did recognize that we ask too much of our LEC. He could have ended his speech at that point and it would have been touted as an effective piece of rhetoric that did in fact strike that sought balance. But, he did not end at that point.

President Obama then sharply veered from the solemn sentiments the service called for and launched into a repetitive, undisciplined, lecture on the social ills beginning with, “If we are to sustain the unity we need to get through these difficulties, if we are to honor these five outstanding officers who we have lost, then we will need to act on the truths that we know … America, we know that bias remains” … Then, the President of “all the people” began a mildly impassioned defense for the Black Lives Matter movement by giving voice to some of their basic grievances, their rationale for existing and protesting as they do, “We also know that centuries of racial discrimination, of slavery, and subjugation, and Jim Crow; they didn’t simply vanish with the law against segregation. They didn’t necessarily stop when a Dr. King speech, or when the civil rights act or voting rights act were signed. Race relations have improved dramatically in my lifetime. Those who deny it are dishonoring the struggles that helped us achieve that progress”. From that point on the President disrespected not only the five Officers so callously murdered last week but also the men and women of the LEC writ large. The President’s remarks about the state of race relations, the widespread distrust of the Police in the Black Community, the litany of social pathologies that continue to plague most inner city African American neighborhoods as well as other locales far and wide, were better suited for a different forum; just about any other forum than the time and place he unfortunately chose to deliver them.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/full-transcript-president-obamas-speech-dallas-police-memorial/story?id=4052115

Monday, May 30, 2016

MEMORIAL DAY IN THIS AGE OF PERPETUAL WAR

LONGEST WAR IN OUR HISTORY

CONTINUES WITH NO END INSIGHT

TAGS: WAR ON TERROR, 9/11/01, MULTIPLE DEPLOYMENTS,

JSOC, SPECIAL FORCES OPERATIONS, UNSHARED BURDENS OF SERVICE,

THE LETHALITY OF ARMED CONFLICT, REMEMBERING OUR

KIA’s, MILITRY COMMENTARY, EDITORIAL, OPINION

(Monday May 30^th, 2016 Pier 86, NYC) The retired vintage WWII aircraft carrier turned museum, the USS Intrepid is permanently moored to Pier 86 at W 46th St & 12th Ave. on the Westside of Manhattan and stands as an impressive piece of naval hardware. To walk her flight deck though, it is not hard to imagine just how small a vessel it was out in the often raging open seas. It is dwarfed in sheer size and technological capability by the nuclear powered “Super Carriers” of today. Today’s carriers are literal floating cities boasting well trained crews of over 5,000 sailors while serving as home base for up to 75 various types of aircraft. The superior advancement in technology and science in all disciplines as evidenced in our daily lives is also on display in the military machinery from our aircraft, warships, and field artillery and infantry equipment, to our aircraft, satellites, helicopters and drones. From the development of Stealth aircraft architecture to radar, sonar, “smart” bombs and other munitions technology has revolutionized modern warfare so totally that most of what is taken for granted today could not have even been dreamt of a few decades ago.

What has never changed about warfare is its lethality. Sure, our weapons can be launched from afar to deliver death quickly and efficiently. Unmanned drones are controlled by “pilots” half a world away from the battle fields. Our Army Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps boast the best trained and equipped troops the world has ever seen but death, to most the main goal of meting out death to our “enemy” is as old as our species.

We seem to now expect our battles to be served up cold. We are willing to engage whomever where ever provided we can do so with as few “boots on the ground” as strategically and technologically possible. This is, of course, naïve and, as a practical matter, it is simply not realistic. Military conflict be it of the “conventional” strategy and tactics fielded for centuries, or the newfangled “asymmetrical warfare” we confront today, still requires putting members of our military into “harm’s way”. There is no way around it if the mission is to be successful.

Now, in our 15^th year of perpetual war on many far-flung “battle spaces” as they are euphemistically called, we have time and again asked our military to serve multiple deployments, to do “more with less” as was the credo of the Cheney/Bush era failed Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld and his “neo-con” acolytes, as we continue to spend our precious blood and diminishing treasure in so many ill-defined battle spaces where tangible “victory” may never be realized. Still our troops fight on. According to a recent status report by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) there are currently Special Forces including Navy SEALs, Army Rangers and Delta Force, USMC Maritime Raid Force (MRF) operating in over 100 countries. Let that sink in; we have some of our most elite troops spread around the world in over 100 countries.

Our troops are doing what they have always done. They are fighting, largely anonymously, and dying in the same manner. Even their own families, their closest next of kin have scant information regarding where their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, mothers and father are fighting and dying. Since the inception of an “all-volunteer” force the once shared sacrifice of military Service is borne by less than one tenth of one percent of our population. And on this day more so than any other, we are compelled to mourn our unknown, unseen, “anonymous” dead.

There is something lost in translation regarding Memorial Day. Billboards and placards displaying “Happy Memorial Day” are missing the mark. There should be no “happiness” in Memorial Day. It is, after all, a day specified to honor our military dead, those who perished on land, sea and in the air in all our collective wars. Included also are those who succumbed to battlefield injuries after the fact. This is not to suggest that this holiday be a dour time for the families of those lost during our military conflicts. Not at all. This is the time to remember who they were and what they did for the greater good. The time for “happiness” in celebration is Veterans Day for that is the day we honor and yes, celebrate, all those who have and are currently serving in all branches of the Military. The distinction between these two national holidays is not simply a matter of description but an important point of order.

Death is our great equalizer. We all will die one day of causes from the mundane to the unexpected and every condition and circumstance in between. Those who are called to fight our wars live with death, the unlikely combination of man’s fragility and resolve; of that which motivates those we call our enemies and what it takes for our Military to defeat them. The battlefronts of today are like none before. Terrorism, the rabid, radical Islamic stock in trade presents challenges for our Military and domestic Law Enforcement the likes of which remain relatively new and novel. But that harsh reality is but a side bar to the truths that have always defined warfare.

In the earliest days of our continuing war against radical Islamic extremists, a large percentage of our standing Military Forces had enlisted primarily to earn the right to aide for their higher education. Most of those enlistees having joined during a period of peace for the United States had never really considered the fact that they might one day see combat action in some far off land. For many of them serving in the Reserves and National Guard it was only due to the attractive financial incentive that motivated them to enlist. Little could any of us imagined up to September 11, 2001, that our nation would be thrust into an asymmetrical war with a terrorist element, a network of Muslim jihadists, the vanguard of which would deliver a devastating blow in the form of four suicide attack hijackings that brought down the formidable Twin Towers in NYC, severely damaged The Pentagon, with the last plane crashing into a remote field in Pennsylvania as the doomed passengers fought the hijackers. Yes, our world, and our role in it was forever altered by the events of that clear blue sunny Tuesday in September of 2001.

Our young service men and women more than rose to the challenge. As the rightful battle campaign in Afghanistan quickly vanquished the Taliban and cornered Osama bin Laden and the surviving cadre of al Qaeda in the rugged mountainous region of Tora Bora it appeared that total ‘victory’ was at hand. But, our troops were betrayed by the Cheney/Bush neo-con agenda determined to attack Iraq and topple the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein. This shift of focus has proven to be disastrous. Had we finished the mission in Afghanistan and began to assist them in finding their own tribal ways towards peaceful coexistence without the iron-handed rule of the Taliban and their misguided interpretation of Sharia law, the mission would have wound down perhaps as early as 2003 or 2004.

But, true to form and in the proud tradition of the United States Military, our troops adapted and responded to the task at hand. They had no way of knowing that the ill-conceived incursion into Iraq would spawn an insurgency, internal conflict, and ferocious resistance to the US Military presence. Some of the battle grounds will go down in history as so many other battlefields from our past have. Places like Ramadi, Fallujah, Mosul, Tikrit, Baghdad, and more anonymous stretches of desert and land will become part of Army Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps lore.

We are right to memorialize our war dead on this day. There are plenty of other days to raise a fist, wave a flag, apply some patriotic bumper sticker, or generally boast about what a bad assed country we are ready to open a can of whuppass on any one who dares cross us. This is the low brow idealism of those who have never worn the uniform, who have never known the brutality of combat, who have never been indoctrinated to sacrifice their life for that of a fellow brother in arms. And, perhaps, that is just fine. The military is certainly not everyone’s calling. But there is the tremendous distinction between patriotism and service, between love of country, life and liberty and the bonds formed in the white hot heat of combat for it is from those bonds that cohesion among our troops is forged.

We mourn those killed in action and should pause for a moment during the backyard barbecue, shopping spree at the mall, or whatever activity we choose on this three-day weekend to recognize the sacrifices of our young men and women who went to war and never came back.