{"id":188763,"date":"2010-08-02T18:31:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-02T23:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/08\/02\/call-me-a-cynic\/"},"modified":"2010-08-02T18:31:00","modified_gmt":"2010-08-02T23:31:00","slug":"call-me-a-cynic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/08\/02\/call-me-a-cynic\/","title":{"rendered":"Call Me a Cynic\u2026\u2026\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So Barack Obama has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/08\/03\/us\/politics\/03prexy.html\">repeated his promise to be out of Iraq by August 31<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Note that this involves a lot of weasel words, the core phrase being, &#8220;America\u2019s combat mission in Iraq would end.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That doesn&#8217;t mean that there won&#8217;t be soldiers there, and that they won&#8217;t be shot at, but rather that they are providing &#8220;Training and Logistical Support.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Shades of American advisers in Vietnam.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t think that Obama wants to stay, but he does not have the strength to tell the Pentagon to get the F%$# out and shut the F%$# up, and because the generals still want a little war, because it&#8217;s good for careers, and because a real peace dividend would interfere with their consulting gigs in retirement.<\/p>\n<p>I am not suggesting that the Pentagon is unpatriotic, any more than I would suggest that the telemarketing industry is, but they view their benefit to be an independent good for the nation, which does not serve the nation.<\/p>\n<p>This is why robust civilian control of the military is essential for a civil society.<\/p>\n<p>I may be wrong in my prediction, I am wrong more often than not, but I fear that I am right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So Barack Obama has repeated his promise to be out of Iraq by August 31. Note that this involves a lot of weasel words, the core phrase being, &#8220;America\u2019s combat mission in Iraq would end.&#8221; That doesn&#8217;t mean that there won&#8217;t be soldiers there, and that they won&#8217;t be shot at, but rather that they &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1142,1063,1098],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-iraq","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188763"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188763\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}