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 Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by! October 12, 2009 Whaddya know, Joe?By GreyhawkIf you can make it to the end of Newsweek's Joe Biden profile (this week's cover story) you'll find this: Biden, it should be noted, has not always showed the most clear-eyed judgment. In 1990 he voted against American involvement in the first Gulf war, which turned out to be a relatively low-cost success, whereas he voted for the invasion of Iraq, which turned into a near fiasco. He opposed the 2007 Iraq surge, which rescued the American effort from near defeat. Which means you can bet against him with a high degree of certainty. But if the flood of "inside information" gushing from anonymous White House "administration officials" (from the time of McChrystal's assessment to last weekend) is to be believed his ideas on how to approach combat in Afghanistan are now viewed as serious alternatives to those of the president's more experienced military advisers. Not that Newsweek doesn't provide insight into Biden's own war time experience: "...he has always been a member of the Vietnam generation, and, unlike some younger members of the administration, including the president, he has a firsthand memory of American defeat." Although that's an odd way to describe a guy who received five student deferments before graduating... ...and then A month after undergoing a physical exam in April 1968, Mr. Biden received a Selective Service classification of 1-Y, meaning he was available for service only in the event of national emergency. Asthma as a teenager, it seems. Those were rough days; I'm the same age as President Obama (okay, a few months younger) but unlike him (at least, unlike the president Newsweek describes in this Biden story) I actually do remember the final years of America's alliance with South Vietnam. (In fairness, a few years after being declared "1-Y" Biden successfully campaigned to become the nation's youngest senator after calling for withdrawal, and later voted to cut off funding for South Vietnam - so he can claim involvement in the war.) Bob Woodward remembers Vietnam, too: "The Pentagon Papers, in 1971, came out eight years too late. . . . I've been in the trenches before, going back to Nixon" he said, explaining his decision to publish McChrystal's assessment.
But enough ancient history. (The Obama White House isn't open to Bob Woodward anyway - he makes them "nervous", at least, those old enough to know who he is.) If Biden today can be labeled as worse than a coin toss on military issues, at least he's now taken more seriously than most of the kids on Obama's staff - who Newsweek describes as snickering at him, to the point the veep finally had to complain to his boss. Biden felt insulted. Through staffers, Obama apologized, protesting that he had meant no disrespect. But at one of their regularly scheduled weekly lunches, Biden directly raised the incident with the president. The veep said he was trying to be more disciplined about his own remarks, but he asked that in return the president refrain from making fun (and require his staff to do likewise). But he who snickers last, as they say. And thanks to one of last week's many leaks from "administration officials", we know those youngsters aren't feeling like such hot shot smart alecs now. "It was easy to say, 'Hey, I support COIN,' because nobody had done the assessment of what it would really take, and nobody had thought through whether we want to do what it takes," said one senior civilian administration official who participated in the review, using the shorthand for counterinsurgency. You couldn't have gotten a better quote from Biden himself. But in all the dust up that's resulted since the leak of McChrystal's report (and the daily flood of leaks since - reporters could go whitewater rafting on the White House lawn these days) Joe Biden is one guy who hasn't been quoted on the topic - not even in the Newsweek piece. The well-connected American number two man (Biden "knows all the players," says Emanuel) is certainly living up to his promise to the president to be more disciplined about his own remarks - proving at long last that 1-Y or not, he's a good soldier after all; and first and foremost a company man.
Posted by Greyhawk / October 12, 2009 2:17 PM | Permalink 1 TrackBackWhen it comes to Afghanistan - America's top national security concern today - the "leaks" from the administration have amounted to a flood, with new and seemingly contradictory reports appearing daily in the global media. It's been going on for months... Read More 2 Comments |
November 26, 2010America@war [Greyhawk]
I think anyone who's ever pondered the "comment" option - once only available on blogs and bulletin boards, now ubiquitous on almost any web site - will appreciate this:
The so-called faculty of writing is not so much a faculty of writing as it is a faculty of thinking. When a man says, "I have an idea but I can't express it"; that man hasn't an idea but merely a vague feeling. If a man has a feeling of that kind, and will sit down for a half an hour and persistently try to put into writing what he feels, the probabilities are at least 90 percent that he will either be able to record it, or else realize that he has no idea at all. In either case, he will do himself a benefit. That's wisdom from the past, captured for posterity at the US Naval Institute, shared via the web on the institute's 137th anniversary. From their about page:
"The Naval Institute has three core activities," among them, History and Preservation: The Naval Institute also has recently introduced Americans at War, a living history of Americans at war in their own words and from their own experiences. These 90-second vignettes convey powerful stories of inspiration, pride, and patriotism. Take a look at the collection, and you'll see it's not limited to accounts from those who served on ships at sea, members of the other branches are well-represented. I'm fortunate to have met USNI's Mary Ripley, she's responsible for the institute's oral history program (and she's the daughter of the late John Ripley, whose story is told here). She also deserves much credit for their blog. ("We're not the Navy nor any government agency. Blog and comment freely.") We met at a milblog conference - Mary knew (and I would come to realize) that milbloggers are the 21st-century version of exactly what the US Naval Institute is all about. Once that light bulb came on in my head, I mentioned a vague idea for a project to her - milblogs as the 21st century oral history that they are. "Put that in writing," she said (of course - see first paragraph above!) - and here's part of the result. Shortly after the first tent was pitched by the American military in Iraq a wire was connected to a computer therein, and the internet was available to a generation of Americans at war - many of whom had grown up online. From that point on, at any given moment, somewhere in Iraq a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine was at a keyboard sharing the events of his or her day with the folks back home. While most would simply fire off an email, others took advantage of the (then) relatively new online blogging platforms to post their thoughts and experiences for the entire world to see. The milblog was born - and from that moment to this stories detailing everything from the most mundane aspects of camp life to intense combat action (often described within hours of the event) have been available on the web... And et cetera - but since you're reading this on a milblog, you probably knew that. And you know that milblogs aren't just blogs written by troops at war, that many friends, family members, and supporters likewise documented their story of America at war online in near-real time, as those stories developed. The diversity in membership of that group is broad, the one thing we all have in common is the impulse to make sense of the seemingly senseless, and communicate the tale - for each of us that impulse was strong enough to overcome whatever barriers prevent the vast majority of people from doing the same. Everyone at some point has some vague idea they believe should be shared - we were the people who, from some combination of internal and external urging, found and spent those many half hours persistently trying to write it down. But where will all that be in another 137 years? Or five or ten, for that matter. That's something I've asked myself since at least 2004 - when I wrote this:
Membership in the ghost battalion has grown in the years since, and an ever growing majority of those abandoned-but-still-standing sites are vanishing. Have you checked out Lt Smash's site lately? How about Sgt Hook's? If you're a long-time milblog reader you know the first widely-read milblog from Operation Iraq Freedom and the first widely-read milblog from Afghanistan are both gone from the web. If you're a relative newcomer to this world you may never even have heard of them - or the dozens upon dozens of others who carried forth the standard they set down. If you have a vague notion that something should be done about that, (a notion I've heard expressed more than once...) then you and I and the good folks at the US Naval Institute are in agreement. Preserving the history documented by the milbloggers is just one of the goals of the milblog project, the once-vague idea that we're now making real. And it's a big idea, if I say so myself - too big to explain in one simple blog post, so stand by for more. Likewise, it's too big a task to be accomplished by just one person. So if you're a milblogger (and exactly what is a milblogger? is a topic for much further discussion on its own) I'm asking for your help. All I'll really need is just a little bit (maybe just one or two of those half hours...) of your time, and your willingness to tell the tale. We've already made history, it's time to save it. (More to follow...) Posted 4:02 PM | Permalink |
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The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him. They prefer to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.
 
 
 Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house. I like having visitors to my house. I hope you are entertained. I fight for your right to free speech, and am thrilled when you exercise said rights here. Comments and e-mails are welcome, but all such communication is to be assumed to be 1)the original work of any who initiate said communication and 2)the property of the Mudville Gazette, with free use granted thereto for publication in electronic or written form. If you do NOT wish to have your message posted, write "CONFIDENTIAL" in the subject line of your email. Original content copyright © 2003 - 2011 by Greyhawk. Fair, not-for-profit use of said material by others is encouraged, as long as acknowledgement and credit is given, to include the url of the original source post. Other arrangements can be made as needed. Contact: greyhawk at mudvillegazette dot com  Tending Distant Far from hearth and home, watching What tales we'll tell When things grim Some distant sunset, vision fading Saluting fallen friends whose names - Greyhawk, Baghdad, December 2004 |
Asthma as a child... why does that sound familiar?
Oh, yeah. That's right. Mike Monsoor has asthma as a child, too.
Joe makes for good theater.:)
If one watches Senate Foreign relations closely...someone always advocates the road that isn't going to be taken.
It's part of the job description on Senate Foreign Relations, to demonstrate to our friends and foes that the US always has other 'acceptable' options.
Joe advocated partitioning Iraq into 3 separate countries...which was the least acceptable option to Iraqi's. I can't help but come to the conclusion that it was a negotiating position.
There has been some recent sharp criticism of the Afghan governments performance...someone has to send the message 'Get your act together or we are taking our marbles and going home'.
That is his job.
Or it could be that he is always wrong...and as such is a 'useful idiot'.