House of Eratosthenes

President Barack Obama met Monday evening with his national security team to finalize a plan to dispatch some 34,000 additional U.S. troops over the next year to what he’s called “a war of necessity” in Afghanistan, U.S. officials told McClatchy.

Obama is expected to announce his long-awaited decision on Dec. 1, followed by meetings on Capitol Hill aimed at winning congressional support amid opposition by some Democrats who are worried about the strain on the U.S. Treasury and whether Afghanistan has become a quagmire, the officials said.

Pffft…democrats worried about the strain on the Treasury. They. Really. Do. Think. We. Are. That. Stupid. Tell me another one, guys.

Anyway, nice job Mr. President. Now why in the world did that take so long? Are you any more certain this is the right move now, than you would’ve been several ~~weeks~~ months ago? What’s that? You are? Really? That’s good enough for that “Really?” segment on Saturday Night Live…not that I’ll be holding my breath for it.

Maybe now you can start growing into the job. Make some decisions. Vote on things in some other way besides “present.” Believe it or not, millions of the people over whom you “rule” have to do that kind of thing every damn day. Some of them even might have voted for you…although most did not and will not. They just live in that kind of world. No “good” choices available, and yet a decision has to be made anyhow.

That’s life, Mr. President.

Anyway — let’s stop picking on Mister Wonderful for a minute or two. This is my biggest concern about people in general, walking around, calling themselves grown-ups, when they have yet to grow up. Some decision comes up and they are OH! SO! DECISIVE! about it…because there’s some option available that makes them look like good people if they happen to choose it.

And then a real carbuncle of a leadership decision comes along. A classic adulthood-test decision. All options available, suck big green eggs. Any decision you make will make you look like a creep. Do we buy a new engine for the family car, or junk it and buy another? Do we spend more money at the vet, or do we put the dog down? More tough choices come from the movies. Do you throw your little brother in the blast furnace now that aliens have taken over his body? Do you unlock the door and let the guy in when zombies are chasing him?

And faced with classic avoidance-avoidance conflict, these grown-up children do what President Obama did. LOOK FOR A CHOICE THAT MAKES YOU LOOK GOOD. IF THERE IS ONE, MAKE THAT. IF NOT, STALL FOR TIME AND GO BACK TO STEP ONE. That is not leadership. And if that is not the situation — you know what? Your “leadership,” however you define it, hasn’t really been tested. Leadership is only tested when the leader faces a plurality of options, and each one sucks.

Obama has faced His first real test of leadership as President.

Hopefully, He’ll do better next time.

My take, and it’s what I thought the moment He decided that none of His options were good enough, is that it isn’t stalling at all. He, and hordes of people like Him, though that that WAS the wise and wonderful decision to make. He could have gone until 2012 without ever mentioning the word Afghanistan again, and anyone questioning Him would have been sternly scolded to remember that He made the only possible good decision on the matter, which was to do nothing. We’re all just too simple to understand that.
- Andy | 11/24/2009 @ 08:31
That’s a sensible theory, and maybe even a likely one.

But all it would mean is that, rather than actually being one of these quasi-adults who can’t make real decisions, He Who Argues With the Dictionaries is simply representing those people. Which is practically the same thing, isn’t it?
- mkfreeberg | 11/24/2009 @ 08:40
I don’t know if he is representing them, abusing them, mocking them, or just manipulating them for dinner-time joke material, but I do know that the “decision of no decision” is another droll tool of the dimwitted – or as I am sure they would like to be called, “creatively intellectual” – crowd who follows the calling-dangerous-things-safe policy that you have outlined. These people still think it is abstractly discerning and wise to be presented with a situation in which only “A” or “B” are even remotely viable, and then answer “C!”

It is a sad irony that when you are completely full of shit, telling someone that he just doesn’t understand you becomes an unassailable defense.

I suppose that last bit sort of obtusely ties in to the subject. Maybe not. Either way, it was a cool thing to say.
- Andy | 11/24/2009 @ 10:30
Andy’s last remarks deserve a post, Morgan. Particularly this sentence;

It is a sad irony that when you are completely full of shit, telling someone that he just doesn’t understand you becomes an unassailable defense.

A home truth, well written.
- Daphne | 11/24/2009 @ 15:43
I dunno if they deserve their own post, but I was certainly thinking as I read that sentence “dayum, I wish I’d a-written that.” It’s a brilliant contribution, Mr. Havens.
- mkfreeberg | 11/24/2009 @ 15:55
I should probably be getting off my ass and posting something about them, shouldn’t I? Busy boy these days.

Thanks heartily to both of you for the compliment.
- Andy | 11/24/2009 @ 16:24
Feh. Does anyone else miss Bush yet?

Love him or loathe him, at least you knew where he stood. Bush was seen by some as the devil incarnate and by most of the rest of us as “not as bad as that other fellow.” But I miss his wartime leadership, his humility, his plain-spoken manner, and his insistence on taking the fight to our enemies. I miss the way he pissed off our fair-weather friends in Europe and exposed them as a gaggle of corrupt socialist mudpuddles who were in bed with Saddam. I miss the way he got the former Soviet bloc countries to trust us and see themselves as part of a new NATO, rather than just former members of the Warsaw Pact. I miss the way he showed the entire world that freedom is the dream of every human being.

He never dithered, he rarely wavered, he didn’t change his mind. Some of his decisions were piss-poor: signing McCain-Feingold, not vetoing a hell of a lot more bloated, pork-laden budgets, letting Ted Kennedy write the No Child Left Behind legislation, saying “Islam means peace,” telling us that he could see Vlad Putin’s soul.

But that’s the mark of a leader, isn’t it? One who acts decisively, even when it’s the wrong decision. It was such a refreshing change, from eight long years of Clinton’s wetting his finger & sticking it up in the wind. It felt so good back in 2001 to have adults in charge of the White House again.

This clown we have now is even worse than Clinton was. I never thought I could dislike any president more than I did Slick Willy. I was wrong.
- cylarz | 11/26/2009 @ 23:45

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The Dithering is Over?Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

The Dithering is Over?
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009