September 8, 2012

Poker Force

Hatched by Sachi

On August 31, the weekend before the Democratic National Convention, President Barack "Withdrawal" Obama visited Fort Bliss, Texas and met with a less than enthusiastic audience... of American soldiers.

President Barack Obama was greeted with fleeting applause and extended periods of silence as he offered profuse praise to soldiers and their families during an Aug. 31 speech in Fort Bliss, Texas.

His praise for the soldiers -- and for his own national-security policies -- won cheers from only a small proportion of the soldiers and families in the cavernous aircraft-hangar.

The troops were not awed by the appearance, nor were they rapt with attention; summoned to the campaign event, they clearly decided to give the Commander in Chief the respect required and nothing more:

The audience remain[ed] quiet even when the commander-in-chief thanked the soldiers' families, and cited the 198 deaths of their comrades in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The audience's reaction was so flat that the president tried twice to elicit a reaction from the crowd....

CNN and MSNBC ended their coverage of the speech before it was half-over. [Emphasis added throughout quotations.]

Hardly a surprise that the cable mainstream media were too mindful of the Lightbringer's dignity to continue the embarassing coverage.

Why the cold shoulder? Several possible explanations:

  • You might say because Obama has not exactly been supportive of the military in the war against radical Islamism.

Despite the tremendous victory George W. Bush and Gen. David Petraeus finally achieved toward the end of their tenure, Obama is determined to quit, to yank the troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq... without the least concern for our Iraqi allies left behind, or for the negative effect such cutting and running will have on future military campaigns, future allies and alliances, our national security, and even the reputation of the American flag around the world:

The silence deepened when the president lauded his strategy of withdrawal from the war. "Make no mistake, ending the wars responsibly makes us safer and our military even stronger, and ending these wars is letting us do something else; restoring American leadership," he said amid complete silence.

(I don't mind when Barack Obama says "make no mistake;" I just wish that one day, he would take his own advice!)

  • Or maybe the silence was due to the report that President B.O. evidently used an auto pen to sign letters to the families of fallen Navy SEALs; was Obama's hand too tired from those one hundred rounds of golf?
  • Or perhaps the soldiers of Fort Bliss know that veterans are having a difficult time finding civilian work after separation, despite the president's election-year conversion to job creation.

Those may very well be part of the reason these soldiers were unhappy at being made into political actors. But their unhappiness might derive from a much simpler reason, as Russ Vaughn at the American Thinker blog explains:

I'm an old non-com who, as a bachelor lived in the barracks, and as such I'm well aware of the excitement that permeates any military barracks in the days leading up to a four-day, holiday weekend like Labor Day. Virtually every soldier has made big plans to escape his military existence for four precious days and spend that time with family or friends.

A day to get there, and a day to return to Fort Bliss; that leaves but two days with family and friends: Two lousy, infinitely precious days with parents you might not have seen for months, childhood friends, the town you grew up in. But wait -- not two days, but only one! Why? Because...

[S]ome hotshot in the Obama campaign, feeling badly stung by the sparse turnouts for the president's visits to other locales, gets a bright idea of how to produce a really big crowd for a photo op: "Hey, let's schedule one for some military facility where the commander can be ordered to produce a big audience in a sufficiently impressive backdrop."

As a result, the holiday reunions for many soldiers and their families were ruined. Gone are their (possibly non-refundable) flights and difficult to get hotel reservations; gone also is half the time they expected. Not to mention all the wasted money they couldn't afford to lose. All gone.

And for what? Because of a military emergency? A hurricane or other natural disaster? For what lofty reason were these soldiers forced to donate their time, the most precious resource for an active-duty soldier? To listen to a classless, clueless politician talk about how concerned he is about military personnel... while using them as a prop in his own reelection campaign, without regard to whether they want to become part of his next campaign commercial, or even whether they support his reelection in the first place.

I'd say the poker-faced silent treatment Obama received was no more than he deserves. The brass can order the troops to assemble and be respectful to the Commander in Chief, but they cannot order them to cheer spontaneously.

Hatched by Sachi on this day, September 8, 2012, at the time of 12:18 AM

Comments

The following hissed in response by: Dale Gribble

Barry want's to be like Truman in Korea. Truman surrendered to the commies after McArthur won the war.

The above hissed in response by: Dale Gribble [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 8, 2012 11:59 AM

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