Rank Has Its Privileges

President Obama, responding to Sunday’s massacre of sixteen Iraqi civilians by an American soldier:

“We need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”

Oops, we’re sorry. Wrong statement:

“I fully support Secretary Panetta’s and General Allen’s commitment to get the facts as quickly as possible and to hold accountable anyone responsible.”

We understand. Once you hit six figures, responsibility is rendered quaint.

Statement by the President on Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan [White House]

Obama Reluctant to Look Into Bush Programs [NYT, 1/11/2009]

10 Comments

If nothing else, this incident and the government sanctioned murders of “goth” kids in Iraq should remind us of the massive clusterfuck this president inherited when he took office.

Obama going to the My Lai playbook. Here’s a tip: the best way to handle this is simple: GTFO of Afghanistan, now.

@Dodgerblue:

GTFO is inevitable now. No way the “mission in Afghanistan” whatever the fuck it was supposed to be, survives this insanity.

@Serolf Divad: I read an article by a Soviet Spetznatz guy who said the USSR left on its own terms when they wanted to. It’s his story and he’s sticking to it.

@redmanlaw: Then the Russkis’ puppet dictator got hanged from a lamppost by the Afghan rebels. Was that his choice too? Ya think Karzai is nervous?

@redmanlaw:

Who’d have guessed that their own terms would be “abject humiliation & disgrace.”

@Dodgerblue, Serolf Divad: I’ll scan and post the article over in da Club if I can’t find it online.

@libertarian tool: Photographers are already gathering in Kabul to get the Helicopter Money Shot.

@nojo:
It’s premature. Proper application of game theory will push any unpleasantness off until after re-election. As we speak Obama/Clinton/Axelrod are poring through the Kissinger/Nixon tapes for guidance:

August 1972

Kissinger: If a year or two years from now North Vietnam gobbles up South Vietnam, we can have a viable foreign policy if it looks as if it’s the result of South Vietnamese incompetence. If we now sell out in such a way that, say, within a three- to four-month period, we have pushed [South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van] Thieu over the brink– we ourselves– I think, there is going to be– even the Chinese won’t like that. I mean, they’ll pay verbal– verbally, they’ll like it–

Nixon: But it’ll worry them.

Kissinger: But it will worry everybody. And domestically in the long run it won’t help us all that much because our opponents will say we should’ve done it three years ago.

Nixon: I know.

Kissinger: So we’ve got to find some formula that holds the thing together a year or two, after which– after a year, Mr. President, Vietnam will be a backwater. If we settle it, say, this October, by January ’74 no one will give a damn.

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