To our independence we owe that our first among firsts President, George Washington, labored to keep a poorly supplied army in the field. George Washington had at his back a Jew, Haym Solomon, largely responsible for obtaining crucial funding. (See below) Now we have as President a man of another stripe, whose commitment to our security and the lives of our fighting men and women is summed up as WTF! That seems his attitude toward others’ as well, say Israel for example, or to be made an example of his pusillanimity.
Jules Crittendon and Herschel Smith bring us, sadly, up to date.
First Crittendon:
Bob Woodward on the ground at Camp Leatherneck reported this morning in an article ridiculously headlined, Preventing Another Iraq/US Says Key to Success in Afghanistan: Economic, Not Military, that the Obama admin considers it a “new era.”
The headline is not Woodward’s fault, except to the extent he buried and obfuscated his lede. He reports after the jump that National Security Advisor James L. Jones briefed commanders on the ground that there won’t be more troops, that requests for more troops will prompt a “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” response in the Oval Office.
That’s your lede, Bob. There’s your hed, Washington Post copy desk. Obama to Troops: “WTF?”
…
…Jones knew when he took the job it would involve smiling through a lot of shit sandwiches. Shit sandwiches like telling other Marines, going into combat, “Sorry boys, you don’t get what you need. Not because we can’t give it to you. But because President Nancypants won’t give it to you. Doesn’t like the way war looks on him and he’ll go all Whiskey Tango Foxtrot if you try to foist it on him. So suck it up.”
…
Too bad. It’s something American troops have dealt with before and will most earnestly endeavor to deal with now. Maybe they can pull it off. The United States military, after all, has proven remarkably resourceful, resilient and adaptive not just in these wars but in all the wars it has fought. It would be helpful this time, going into this difficult task, if the Commander in Chief’s attitude toward the expertise of the men who will to the heavy lifting was something other than “What the fuck?”
Now Smith concludes:
So we now know that the current administration sees Operation Enduring Freedom as the WTF? war. We know that the National Security Advisor doesn’t have the fortitude to whisper the hard things in the ear of the President. We know that the President doesn’t really want to deploy more troops to Afghanistan, and we also know that the Colonels want more troops to cover their area of operations.
This sets the stage for the coming phase of the campaign. We have seen this before in Iraq: hasty turnover to the ISF and more difficult counterinsurgency than had previously been planned. The dissimilarity is a President who was willing to send the necessary forces to get the job done.
Now, Wikipedia on Haym Solomon:
Solomon negotiated the sale of a majority of the war aid from France and Holland, selling bills of exchange to American merchants. Solomon also personally supported various members of the Continental Congress during their stay in Philadelphia, including James Madison and James Wilson. Acting as the patriot he was, he requested below market interest rates, and he never asked for repayment.[4]…
In 1975 the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp honoring Haym Saloman for his contributions to the cause of the American Revolution. This stamp, like others in the "Contributors to the Cause" series, was printed on the front and the back. On the glue side of the stamp, the following words were printed in pale, green ink:
"Financial Hero—Businessman and broker Haym Solomon was responsible for raising most of the money needed to finance the American Revolution and later to save the new nation from collapse." The Congressional Record of March 25, 1975 reads, "When Morris was appointed Superintendent of Finance, he turned to Solomon for help in raising the money needed to carry on the war and later to save the emerging nation from financial collapse. Solomon advanced direct loans to the government and also gave generously of his own resources to pay the salaries of government officials and army officers. With frequent entries of 'I sent for Haym Solomon,' Morris' diary for the years 1781–84 records some 75 transactions between the two men."
Haym Solomon died unpaid back and broke.
We may have thought things had improved in America over the past centuries of attaining greatness. But, then, we got Obama.
