IM
(an American citizen with an inquiring mind):
AM (an American seasoned combat aviator with an inquiring mind), last
month, Gadfly and I discussed a segment on The
O’Reilly Factor. The
gist of our discussion was how easy it is to spin reality even when one is
critical of any such spin.
Old
Gadfly: Did you see spin in yesterday’s press
conference with the President?
IM: Absolutely!
Especially the part about Benghazi.
In fact, the rhetoric went well beyond spin.
IM: Epimenides was a philosopher from Crete. There is a modern paradox based on Epimenides
and it refers to self-referential logic.
It starts with the premise, all Cretans are liars. Epimenides then declares himself to be a
Cretan. He appears to be honest in his
declaration. Yet, if the premise is
true, then he must be lying. Do you see
the paradox? The premise is critical in
self-referential logic.
AM: Yes, but I’m trying to see how this links to
Benghazi.
IM: The President called the Benghazi
investigations “political circuses,” “political sideshows,” and “politically
motivated.” Yet, it is clear now that
the Susan Rice talking points during the five Sunday news programs were deliberately
spun
to present a false narrative.
AM: I remember Rice wanted viewers to believe
what happened was the result of a spontaneous mob motivated by an anti-Muslim
video. What initially struck me about
this scenario is why was Rice the one selected to deliver the narrative. The combat mission planner in me quickly realized
this action was straight out of a chapter in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, on tactical dispositions.[1] Sun Tzu said, “The good fighters of old first
put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an
opportunity of defeating the enemy.”[2] Rice is African American and a woman. To attack Rice would be an attack on African
Americans and women. Symbolically, any
such attack would be labeled racist and misogynist. Thus, the incumbent and his lieutenants were
placing a shield around the “premise,” or narrative told by Rice. Jonah Goldberg explains this tactic in The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas.
Old
Gadfly: Excellent analysis, AM. The tactic described by Sun Tzu implies a
temporal context when he said, “and waited for the opportunity of defeating the
enemy,” obviously Romney in this case.
Did context shape the tactic?
AM: Shack!
IM: What do you mean by “shack”?
AM: It’s aviator jargon for “bulls-eye.” Keep in mind, the attack on Benghazi was on
the anniversary of the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11,
2001. So, there are two “shacks” in what
happened here. The first was on the part
of the terrorists who demonstrated that “terrorists are not on the run,” which was a major campaign argument in
favor of the incumbent in the presidential campaign. Despite these circumstances and given the
incumbent was within two months of the general election, it was existentially important
to keep the terrorist victory (and the false premise) a secret until after the
election. If this tactic worked, then
who would care about what happened at that point? After all, the spoils of victory go to the
winner. This was certainly demonstrated
by Hillary’s “what difference does it make” declaration.
Old
Gadfly: So, would you conclude that the
spinning of Rice’s talking points was politically motivated?
IM: Yes, and the irony is that the
president-elect, perhaps more justly named President Epimenides, accuses
Republicans of engaging in a dishonest investigation based on political
maneuvering. He wants the public to
believe Republicans are Cretans, which is why the public is so confused. If the premise that Republicans are liars is
true and they advance arguments that the Administration is guilty of presenting
a false narrative, then Republicans are lying which by default makes the
narrative advanced by Rice true.
Further,
President Epimenides shows little diversity in his tactics. When his gun control legislation went
nowhere, he blamed a lot of his opponents (which should have included Democrats
who also were against the legislation) as
liars. President
Epimenides was confident that the “gun control” premise, shielded by family
props, would be sufficient to pass in a
Democrat-controlled Senate and then fail in the Republican
House. This would have been powerful “ammunition”
for demonizing the GOP. As analysts have
already indicated this was part of a broader
strategy to position the political battlefield for 2014
elections.
AM: As for me, having served with great Americans
who demonstrated outstanding leadership during tough circumstances, I am
embarrassed to see an amateur diminish the greatness of a once great office of
leadership. And, when I think about one
of the two investigators of the Accountability
Review Board being a former Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and now a board director
for General Motors, I cannot help but smell “conflict of interest” when the
incumbent and his sidekick loved to brag “bin
Laden dead, GM alive” throughout the presidential campaign.
Old
Gadfly: It looks like Americans are
getting a potentially lethal dose of Lord Acton’s dictum: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power
corrupts absolutely.” What happens next?
AM: It will be difficult to connect all the
dots. Remember, when Congressman Issa’s
Government Oversight Committee was getting close to a smoking gun on the Fast
and Furious Operation that killed two Border Patrol Agents and hundreds of
Mexican citizens, President Epimenides imposed
executive privilege. This
action indicated either (a) prior knowledge of the operation when publicly
claiming no such knowledge or (b) abuse of executive privilege power. Now, we hear about the IRS
targeting certain conservative groups and the Justice Department secretly
seizing phone records of Associated Press editors and reporters.
IM: Unless the liberal media realizes and
attempts to mitigate how they have been duped beyond their ideological
complicity, people will agree with President Epimenides, who shrugged off what
happened in Benghazi as a speed
bump.
AM: Complicating any attempt to find a moral
compass to navigate these politically rough seas are attempts to eliminate or
emasculate any spiritual inspiration or set of principles. I was disappointed, and quite concerned, to
see current
efforts to criminalize
expressions of faith within the military.
Being a fellow Air Force Academy graduate, I just do not understand Mikey
Weinstein’s motivation for what he does.
Old
Gadfly: Ironically, just last weekend, a
friend encouraged me to check out the Mexican
Constitution and its history. Religion was completely suppressed until the
1990s. In the 1930s, “socialist
education” was mandated for all schools, public and private. It makes me wonder about the political
orientation and logical affiliations of our Latino immigrants, legal and
illegal. It may explain certain
behaviors stemming from our own political ideologies. Perhaps we can discuss this topic at greater
length in a future conversation.
IM: Meanwhile, remember: President Epimenides went to a Christian
church in Chicago.
AM: You mean the church whose Pastor declared,
“God Damn America”?
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