Hey, Obama? Put down the shovel on Iraq

First, Dear Leader announced last Friday, which I blogged about, that he was going to use air strikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. In making his announcement, he ignored such things as the possibility that ISIS might have Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.

The fact that he said this:

“I don’t think we’re going to solve this problem in weeks,” Mr. Obama said before leaving for a two-week vacation on Martha’s Vineyard. “This is going to be a long-term project.”

Followed by this:

“The most important time table that I’m focused on right now is the Iraqi government getting formed and finalized,” the president said before boarding Marine One.

And knowing the reality of the last pre-election government under Nuri al-Maliki, made me wonder if he was willing to condone a coup, or a semi-coup, to change course in Iraq.

That said, we now see that Dear Leader is getting derped.

First, there's this: ISIS is playing 11-dimensional chess against Obama on the airstrikes.

So, how does he respond?

By talking about using ground troops for "humanitarian" missions.

On that latter?

“What he’s ruled out is reintroducing U.S. forces into combat on the ground in Iraq,” Benjamin J. Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser said. He added, using an alternative name for (ISIS), that the deployment of ground troops to assist a rescue was “different than reintroducing U.S. forces in a combat role to take the fight to ISIL.

And, why is he proposing this in the first place? This, from the same link:

But he added that something would have to be done to help get the refugees off the mountain because “we don’t believe it’s sustainable to have permanent airdrops” of humanitarian aid.

Oh, there's a nice "duh."

Dear Leader proposes the equivalent of a photo op at Mach 2. Gets trumped by Islamic militants having more brains. Then shovels more arms, and arms on the ground, no less, into the mix.

And, overlooks an important "yeah, but," as in ...

Yeah, but ... this is just like the Stinger situation with airstrikes. U.S. troops get shot, and U.S. troops are going to want more manpower to fire back.

In short, this is Shrub Bush's Iraq strategy run through a sieve of neoliberal micromanagement.

And, without any eyeball on the Vietnam parallels.

"Soft bigotry of low expectations" strikes again. Obamiacs and Obots consider Dear Leader a brilliant success just because he's following George W. Bush, even as he repeats some of Shrub's mistakes, and on things like snooping on Americans, even doubles down on Shrub's authoritarianism.

Meanwhile, on a related front?

Iraq's president,  Fuad Masum, who was attempting to shunt aside acerbic, authoritarian current/acting prime minister Nuri al-Maliki by naming a new prime minister candidate,  Haider al-Abadi, to replace Maliki? Maliki says he ain't going anywhere. Now, he's not promising a coup, but he already has asked Iraq's Supreme Court to take a look.

And, if anybody wonders if Masum didn't get a nudge, then a round of applause, from Dear Leader for doing this? Well, of course he did. Read between the lines of this:

But the United States, during whose occupation Maliki first rose to power, made clear again that it has had enough of him - the White House said it would be glad to see an Abadi government and urged Maliki to let the political process move forward.

He is, with his appeal to Iraq's Supreme Court, moving the political process along, by a legal means. Just not the moving along "we" like.

Obama WILL 'look backward' -- on bad Vietnam generals

What is with the White House? Pushing the rehabilitation of Vietnam War general John Lavelle, who falsified airstrike claims and conduct of them in that war?

Bob Rubin = Bob McNamara of financial crash?

With the death of former Secretary of State Robert McNamara, and discussion over whether his Vietnam War mea culpas were deep enough or sincere enough, Harold Meyerson speculates about when we will have any similar mea culpas about the financial meltdown, and who will be, or could be, its McNamara.

His answer? Former Clinton Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs chair, and guru and mentor to many of Team Obama’s financial “whiz kids”: Robert Rubin. Click the link for more thought on why Rubin fits the “guilty” bill and whether his whiz kids will learn or not.

Neil Armstrong on Apollo 11 anniversary

The always-reticent first man on the moon has a few brief comments here on the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11; liftoff from Earth was 40 years ago today.

Although I don’t consider myself fully a part of the baby boom, this was the first of three big, big events in early childhood that are still remembered today.

This was the first, when I was 5 years old.

Next, just after my ninth birthday, was the announcement of the Paris peace accords to “end,” or Vietnamize, the Vietnam War. (My oldest brother was a high school sophomore, so that’s part of why this was important.)

Then came Aug. 9, 1974 — President Nixon’s resignation.

Apollo 11 stood, theoretically, was a counterpoint to Vietnam, race riots and assassinations. But, it couldn’t hide that Nixon got us basically nothing better than we could have had four or five years earlier on Vietnam. Nor did his basking in the glow of Apollo success put his paranoiac mind at political rest.

And, as people like Buzz Aldrin push — very prematurely in terms of technology and safety issues — for a manned voyage to Mars, the triumph of Apollo 11 couldn’t erase questions of whether all that spending was worth it.

It wasn’t just a question about whether any technological advantage offset the costs.

It was whether, given Vietnam and other issues, whether alleged psychological advantage of victory over the USSR wasn’t a hollow shell, or the dregs of bitterness.

Will AfPak be Vietnam for Obama?

E.J. Dionne raises just that question in the larger context of Obama’s apparently ongoing attempts (Dionne is being charitable here, IMO) to straddle the two chairs of centrism and liberalism.

More bad news for Wally-World and the dollar

Between the following dollar and home-grown inflation in Southeast Asia, the price of imported goods at Wally-World, Family Dollar, Dollar General, et al could start skyrocketing. And, it’s not just China where that’s happening:

At the same time, inflation keeps rising: the Philippines announced that its inflation at the consumer level had doubled in the last five months, showing a 6.4 percent increase in March over the same month a year ago. And weekly inflation at the wholesale level has accelerated in India, reaching an annual rate of 7 percent in the week ended March 22, up from 3.1 percent as recently as last October.

The story notes that in Vietnam, it’s so bad the central bank has had to order businesses to take a certain amount of dollars.

When Vietnam won’t take dollars, you know it’s in the crapper. Plus, because many Southeast Asian countries, again, led by China but not just it, are still trying to peg their currencies to the dollar, their inflation is getting even worse, beyond rising costs in raw materials and food.

Vietnam is among countries trying price controls, but that’s not likely to last. When businesses find enough ways around that, either through loopholes or the old-fashioned developing world answer of bribing government officials, inflation will go even higher.

Wally-World isn’t mentioned by name, but another company is – Pier 1. A Vietnamese supplier is listed as jacking prices on its product 10 percent while noting that doesn’t cover all the 30 percent increase in production costs.

Hey, America, the gravy train is over.

Hey, rich America and government leaders, the bread and circuses is getting pricey.