Plus ten points to the first person who links the song reference. Ten. Whole. Points. No other math involved, I promise.
It's a post. I like it. I have no fucking idea about the song reference.
Army officers gathered at a convention in Washington this week said senior White House officials should not have rebuked Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, for saying publicly that a scaled-back war effort would not succeed.
We have the Shineski problem here in a nutshell. If the military gives its best advice (right or wrong) and the politicians don't like it, then everyone gets mad. Then the military gets mad back. R's were made at Shineski. D's are now mad at McChrystal. (Fair point: McChrystal is clearly putting more effort into trying to influence the politics of the situation.) If they sack him, then we get the Shineski 'he got fired for being right' thing going. I think the underlying basis of the problem is that the individual services were group together under DoD, which prevents them from competing with each other, which in turns helps neutralize this stuff, combined with the fact that the military is simply being used too much.
It's a citizen-controlled military. Back off.
It is. Then again, the optics are terrible. Obama will have to make the right military call, and then he'll still get screamed at. (After all, there was an outburst of planted stories about how we have to get the Iranians RIGHT NOW, earlier this week.) Too many people want us to be involved pretty much everywhere for the military not to accrue this kind of power.
To get this sort of thing out of politics would require doing this sort of thing a lot less, and no President appears to have the will or desire or ability to do so.
max
['Personally, I wouldn't rule out an attempted military coup in the next decade.']
Because max is one of my favorite commenters.
Stanley
['It's fun, as videos and songs go. Yay!']
It's Queen and David Bowie, of course. One of my favorite songs.
(Though for some reason I was thinking of a Devendra Banhart song for a good two minutes.)
Because Parenthetical is one of my favorite commenters, yay, stuff! Any stuff. Seriously. Any stuff you're yaying, I'm supes yaying.
Did you just revoke McChrystal's citizenship?
McChrystal tried sitting on a fence, but it don't work out.
So the military should just shut up while our soldiers die pointlessly because Obama doesn't want to make a decision? There are times you have to raise or fold.
Obama wins the Nobel peace prize? What, seriously?
It's possible that in a few years he'll have earned it, but then they'll already have shot their wad.
His Russian policy have been quite sensible, I guess.
He's been president for nine months!
"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future."
During the announcement I think you can hear the journos gasp.
And the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to the guy who hasn't ended either war he inherited? That's curious.
sarsly, folks, I love obama too, but WTF?
I just think you have to see it as a mixture of relief (qv predecessor) and encouragement - maybe like the Brandt prize in the early 1970s? They've not really been subtle about US policy in the past few years. (I'm sure if Bush had been able to get a third term they'd have given one to his father.)
Also - not exactly wild-eyed radical loons, the Nobel committee. I'm sure they're very supportive of the war in Afghanistan.
10: So the military should just shut up while our soldiers die pointlessly because Obama doesn't want to make a decision?
In Obama's position, I would have volleyed the ball back to McChrystal: 'What happens if 40k is not enough? How far do we go? How much do we spend? To do what? If the general wished to weigh in publically, then he can certainly answer some questions about this other stuff. In public. Is General McChrystal saying the choice we have to go all in or get all out? If so, how would he go about getting all out? Or perhaps General McChrystal is saying we have to go all in, regardless, and if it doesn't work, we go all in some more?'
Although I would have a lot longer list of questions.
16: And the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to the guy who hasn't ended either war he inherited? That's curious.
Nobel Peace Prize FAIL.
max
['Thanks for helping out conservatives there, Norwegian persons!']
Their criticism is bit off given that McChrystal is the one who chose to take the disagreement public. But it really isn't something I feel very outraged about--just annoyed that it feeds wingnut tropes about Dems and the military.
And it certainly ain't nothing like the steaming pile of shit that the Nobel Prize Committee has just delivered to the nutter maggots. I suspect a few of them might just keel over and die from the richness. A poor choice on many different levels.
15 and 16: Thank you! I heard that on the radio this morning, and I thought it was a joke. I wondered whether there was an autumn equivalent of April Fool's.
Apparently, he got it, because his tone is more multilateral. WTF?
20: For maximum explosiveness they should have given him the Literature Prize, and mentioned "Dreams from my Father" specifically.
Hey I'm for disarmament too! Hopeychange!
And I need the money more than Barry.
4: It's Queen and David Bowie, of course. One of my favorite songs.
AHA! Is that what they were saying? I heard the lyrics plenty of times, but never understood them. I just knew it was that song they played relentlessly on MTV.
Because max is one of my favorite commenters.
Stanley! I didn't know you cared! Retaliation is called for!
['It's fun, as videos and songs go. Yay!']
After a brief moment of consideration, I conclude that Crazy Little Thing Called Love (Youtube, 2:34) is my favorite Queen song. Leather, lingerie.... Freddie Mercury macking on girls. Fun for the whole family!
However, I should offer an age-relative song choice (since I was small when this song appeared) (so small, in fact,I hadn't quite bothered to be conceived): House of the Rising Sun (HQ, 4:16), featuring the giant head of Eric Burdon, before he really kind sucked. BUT! Because I am Obamaesque in my indecisiveness at times, I also pony up another favorite, Tales of Brave Ulysses (HQ, 2:54) featuring a... painting.
And lastly, because I have been dragging this around trying to figure out what to do with it, another favorite... song, all 17 minutes of it: You & Me & Rainbows (Part 1) (9:05) and Part II (7:43). Please to ignore the whole mandlebrot-fractal-spacey-really-high thing which is as big a relic as lava lamps, but was 98.3% lame to begin with. I include it here because I was so shocked to find it, having long ago worn out the vinyl - and I'm sure, should you listen, you won't be surprised to find my favorite movement starts at 5:10. Anyways, back in the day, I thought it was a dark, dreary love song... which it is. Kinda.
max
['Sodon'treadthelyricsjustlisten.']
20: A poor choice on many different levels.
If they were short of people to give the Prize to, they should've given it to Sarkozy, since he was the one that got the Russians to back off of hanging whatshisname by the balls, and got whatshisname to go along with it.
max
['Sarkozy might be a right-winger, but we need more right-wingers like that. Especially since he actually did something.']
I count it as a good year if the prize doesn't go to an actual war criminal.
re: 26
This isn't a good year, then?
Does anything think it's a good idea to give Obama the Peace Prize?
||
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/10/it-will-be-sunny-one-day.html
>
less bad than the kissinger or arafat wins, but...what? I guess it will be kind of funny watching wingnuts go into completely justified spasms of outrage, just for a change of pace.
let's just hope that nobel prize judges from the future came back in time and gave it to him on the basis of his mega-awesome solution to the israeli-palestinian problem in 2011.
Without reading the comments, somehow I bet this post title is from a different song than I happened to be singing today:
One more chance, won't you put your arms around me?
One more ...
Oh wait, I think it's One More Try.
Living all these lonely nights without you,
Oh baby, can't we give ourselves one more try?
Isn't there a Phil Collins song that goes
One more chance
Gimme just one more chance?
I bet Stanley is a closeted Collins fan and this is his S.O.S. Against All Odds, stanster, I heard your call.
I like the letter in 29 a lot, but it hardly seems to merit the Nobel Peace Prize.
I have never noticed any of the lyrics to "Under Pressure" before. The only song I could think of was the one by the Notorious B.I.G..
how could you never have noticed the lyrics to "under pressure" before? it's a moving song, one of my supes totes faves.
Ee doh ba-ba. Ee doh bababap. Um ba bap. BAH-lahp. People on the streets. Dee dah dee dah day.
38: Oh! Now I recognize it! The Vanilla Ice song! Cool!
I bet Stanley is a closeted Collins fan and this is his S.O.S. Against All Odds, stanster, I heard your call.
This cracked me up, Heebers.
39: To dignify the work of Vanilla Ice with the word "song" is an outrage, sir. An outrage.