Folklore, ISIL, and the Unkempt Bed

Old Gadfly:  Gentlemen, let's play the game of “Jeopardy.” Here is the answer to the question:  folklore, ISIL (i.e., the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant), and the unkempt bed.[1]

IM (An American citizen with an inquiring mind):  Beautiful set of metaphors, Gadfly.  The question is:  How will objective historians (which eliminates any Howard Zinn disciple) characterize candidate, then President, Obama’s policy agenda?

Old Gadfly:  Bingo, IM.

AM (an American combat aviator with an inquiring mind):  What a clever yet meaningful way to evaluate the context and unanticipated consequences of getting caught trying to transform America by deceptively engineering public sentiment.

Old Gadfly:  AM, your perception of the meaning of those related metaphors appears to be moving in the right direction.  Let’s unpack some of the assertions in your comment, such as “deceptively engineering public sentiment,” “unanticipated consequences,” and “getting caught.”

AM:  Engineering public sentiment refers to the folklore concept.  Dictionary.com defines folklore as “1.  The traditional beliefs, legends, customs, etc., of a people; lore of a people.  2.  The study of such lore.  3.  A body of widely held but false or unsubstantiated beliefs.”  In this regard, candidate Obama argued that he had superior judgment when it came to understanding the Middle East, diminishing his predecessor in the process.  As President Obama, he argued that he had decimated al Qaeda leadership and that al Qaeda was on the run.  He pulled the wool over the eyes of the American public by lying about the Benghazi attack to win an election.  Yes, I know it seems harsh to use the “lie” word.  But even the word “quibble” does not even come close to mollifying a deliberate attempt to deceive the American public; and, remember, the four Americans were mere speed bumps on his way to a second-term.  Just so there is no doubt, Dictionary.com defines a lie as, “A false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.”  Dictionary.com defines quibble as, “An instance of the use of ambiguous, prevaricating, or irrelevant language or arguments to evade a point at issue.”

IM:  So, technically, Susan Rice quibbled on the Sunday morning talk shows and Secretary of State (at the time) Hillary Clinton quibbled when she shouted, “What difference does it make?”  Interestingly, Alan Colmes authored an article in the Huffington Post attempting to perpetuate the folklore of this deplorable Benghazi incident.  There seems to be tremendous resistance among the folklore subscribers to any contrary evidence, as we discussed in our “Connecting the Dots” conversation.

AM: As a matter of scale to drive home the dishonorable nature of these deceitful behaviors, Gadfly and I personally know of Service Academy cadets who were dismissed from the institution for simple quibbling.  Obvious lies and quibbles reek of hypocrisy when members of our armed forces observe their commander-in-chief getting away with far worse.

Old Gadfly:  Good point, AM.  Now, explain the unanticipated consequences.

AM:  ISIL epitomizes the cascading failures of a feckless foreign policy.  Obama and his disciples suffer from what I call ILOC.  The ILOC phenomenon was inspired by a fighter pilot phenomenon known as GLOC, which is an acronym for G force-induced loss of consciousness.

IM:  Help me out, AM.  What’s a G-force?

AM:  “G” refers to gravity, and fighter pilots can experience “G forces," or "Gs” in excess of 8 times the force of gravity when maneuvering a fighter in a dog fight, causing blood to pool in their lower legs and feet.  A 200-pound pilot weighs 1,600 pounds when pulling 8 Gs.  Depending upon the duration of the high G-force maneuver, the lower leg pooling of blood leads to hypoxia and can result in loss of consciousness.

IM:  Thanks.  I think I now see where you are going with ILOC.

AM:  Good, in this case ILOC stands for ideology-induced loss of [national] consciousness.  In other words, ideology now competes with what once constituted the American consciousness before someone decided to transform what that used to mean.

Old Gadfly:  My good friend, Dennis Haugh, developed the best definition I have ever read about what it means to be an American:  “A well-rounded individual who in time of competition or crisis will use his unique talents to the best effect possible. When the competition or crisis is over, he will return to being a responsible individual. He is NOT a member of 'the Borg'.”  (Dennis’ reference to the Borg refers to the Star Trek concept of a collective mind hive into which all individuals eventually assimilate).

IM:  Powerful definition.  We have observed nearly six years of deliberate attempts to fundamentally transform that meaning, that sense of American consciousness.

Old Gadfly:  AM, what did you mean by “getting caught.”

AM:  The meaning refers to the unkempt bed.  Because of Obama’s ILOC, American foreign policy is a disaster.

          Old Gadfly:  Yet, the unkempt bed is similar to the secular proverb, “you made your bed, you sleep in it.”  Unfortunately, it is not Obama who has to sleep in it.  Americans and the entire international community have to “sleep in it.”  

---

[1] I want to thank my good friend D.K. who inspired me earlier this week to better understand the role motifs and folklore play even in modern, civilized culture.

Secretary Kerry's Defense of Fiddling

Old Gadfly:  Gentlemen, earlier this week we suggested President Obama is fiddling, that is, political campaigning while America and the rest of the world are burning.  Today, Secretary Kerry went on most or all of the Sunday talk shows to defend the fiddling.  Of course, I pictured my daughter learning to hit a baseball with the ball sitting on a stationary tee when David Gregory kicked the interview off with Obama’s criticism of his predecessor in his book, The Audacity of Hope.

AM (an American combat aviator with an inquiring mind):  Gregory sets the stage by suggesting Obama’s grasp of foreign policy is superior to Bush because Obama says so.  What a joke.  If this were Jeopardy, and the emcee asked to whom this quote was directed among the 43 American presidents, I suspect most sufficiently educated contestants would say either Jimmy Carter or Barack Obama. Yes, bin Laden is dead (technically a battlefield execution in violation of international law and norms) but Islamic extremists are proliferating.  A President with superior judgment regarding foreign policy might have demonstrated the courage to actually apprehend bin Laden to put him on public trial.

Old Gadfly:  Do you think much could have resulted from such a public trial?

AM:  Do you remember the Scopes trial?  While it pitted religion against science, in the end it demonstrated the power of ideology—whether it be religious or scientific dogma.  A bin Laden trial could have put such ideology on trial.  That’s what our war on terrorism is all about.  And now we see a caliphate emerging in portions of Syria and Iraq.

Old Gadfly:  Why do you think this option was not considered?

AM:  There would be no political capital to be gained from a trial.  But to declare “bin Laden is dead” made for great political capital in election campaigns.

Old Gadfly:  That’s interesting.  When President Bush exercised bipartisan Congressional authority to invade Iraq in 2003, his popularity was nearly 90% and I remember seeing members of Congress, both Democrat and Republican, holding hands to demonstrate national unity.  Within a year after the invasion, harsh criticism from Democrats and the left-leaning media began.  I offered an op-ed to the Wall Street Journal that attempted to explain the quick reversal by the left-wing.  I called it the political dilemma (a spinoff of the prisoner’s dilemma used in game theory).  In the article I explained that if Bush were successful in achieving stability in Iraq and the region, this would result in significant political capital for Bush and by association the Republican Party.  This would not be good for Democrats.  Thus, the left-wing undermined Bush’s effort in Iraq.  To Democrats, the outcome must be win-lose—Democrats win and Republicans lose.  If this outcome is not achievable, then the alternative outcome needs to be lose-lose.  If Democrats cannot win, then by God, Republicans won’t win either.  In the Iraq scenario, this tactical objective was achieved (Democrats eventually won large majorities in both houses of Congress).  But not part of the political calculus was a strategic major win for the terrorists and insurgents in Iraq--as we see in Syria and Iraq today.  I am terribly disappointed when I hear or read people say today’s circumstances in Iraq are based on conditions established by the Bush Administration.  The Bush Administration had to fight a two-front war, the one against Iraqi insurgents and the other against political opposition on the home-front.  Democrats demonstrate more animus towards conservative Republicans than they do against militant jihadists/Islamists.  As they say in the Middle East, an enemy of my enemy is my friend.    

IM (an American citizen with an inquiring mind):  Well, Kerry did defend Obama’s foreign policy by laying out what he called “facts,” such as Obama’s team is far more engaged in foreign affairs than any predecessor.

AM:  Some, I for one, would argue “being engaged” in this case is more accurately described as ”tampering,” or if you prefer, “fiddling,” with existing norms and traditions that produced stability in the international system.  For example, the left euphemistically referred to the eruption of chaos in northern Africa and the Middle East as “the Arab Spring.”  This happened under Obama’s watch.  How would anyone celebrate the Arab Spring today?  Yes, North Korea is quiet for now—wow!  I’m sure any North Korean that is not a member of the government appreciates that consoling thought.  China continues to advance its strategic reach militarily, while America mothballs equipment and gives folks pink slips.  Then, there is Putin and the Ukraine situation.

Old Gadfly:  Watch and listen to (or read the transcript of) to Kerry’s outrage about the Malaysian airliner shoot-down.

IM:  Amazing . . . utterly amazing.  Here are some incredible statements by Kerry:

·         So there's a stacking up of evidence here, which Russia needs to help account for. We are not drawing the final conclusion here. But there is a lot that points and the need for Russia to be responsible. And what President Obama believes and we, the international community, join in believing, everybody is convinced we must have unfettered access.

·         And the lack of access, the lack of access, David, makes its own statement about culpability and responsibility.

Old Gadfly:  What is the significance and irony of these statements?

IM:  The “stacking up of evidence,” a lot of points and the need . . . to be responsible,” “we must have unfettered access,” “the lack of access makes its own statement about culpability and responsibility.”  Yes, there were nearly 300 casualties (to include some Americans) in the airliner shoot-down and the killing of innocents demands culpability.  Yet, in our own country, we see an Administration that seems well beyond culpability when we hear about hundreds of Mexicans being killed from weapons involved in the Fast and Furious operation.  Erik Holder refused to completely cooperate with Congress in its investigation, getting top cover through Obama’s use of executive privilege TO DENY UNFETTERED ACCESS to evidence.  How about the IRS scandal (to censor opposing voices)—Lois Lerner’s invoking the Fifth Amendment as a public servant, the loss of emails, and other points or “stacking up of evidence” that suggest deliberate efforts to deny unfettered access?  And while there are certainly other notable examples, the same critics of Russian attempts to delete social media information regarding who was involved with the Malaysian airliner shoot-down, accuse critics of Administration motives for blaming a video for the attacks at Benghazi as conspiracy theorists, right-wingers, or extremists.  Many of these same critics deride those who watch Fox News as a leading and reliable source to learn about many of these points that become a “stacking up of evidence.”  Of course, if you don’t get an alternative narrative, then the only narrative one knows is reality, even if it’s not true.  Many people in other parts of the world only get the narrative the state wants them to know, such as in North Korea, many parts of the Middle East, and so forth.

AM:  Recall our recent discussion, “Yes We Can!”  The Obama Administration wants to control the narrative to distract Americans from knowing about the need for culpability in our own nation.

IM:  For those who believe in immortal culpability (and accountability well beyond the state), there is great wisdom in Matthew 7:3:  "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? (New International Version)”