Postcard from the Beachhead

by Jeff Huber

13 Sep. 2011

Aloha, y’all:

The great thing about living at a beach is how much it simplifies one’s late summer vacation travel arrangements.  You don't have to go anywhere to take a vacation.  And you don't really have to quit working to take one either.  

Wake me when the
war is over.

Shady and I are enjoying the last of the summer sun here at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, though I’m still full steam ahead working on finishing the current draft of Sandbox Generals (we’re just now getting to the point in the narrative where Fix Felon regains the throne of the Pentarchy by eating King David alive, lending credence to protagonist Jack Hogan’s long held suspicion that Fix is, in fact, an undead mother groper).

And of course I’m keeping up with our woebegone wars—12 of them at last count.  I see over the weekend where Uncle Leo is foursquare behind keeping three or four thousand troops in Iraq beyond the year-end deadline.  Pentagon echo chamberlain Eric Schmitt of the New York Times tells us that Uncle Leo’s plan keeps considerably fewer troops in Iraq than “proposals presented at the Pentagon in recent weeks by the senior American commander in Iraq, Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, to keep as many as 14,000 to 18,000 troops there.”

You sure have to wonder how Schmitt got that quote from Austin, and why he might stenograph it for us when he already got the “official” word from the “boss” that the “Pentagon” only wants to keep three or four thousand troops after the deadline.  Maybe if we only keep three or four thousand troops in harm’s way for the hopeless cause of supporting a corrupt government, it won’t seem so bad.  After all, that general man wanted to keep lots, lots more, didn’t he?

Oh, but then if we don't give the general as many troops as he wanted and things don’t go well, it will be somebody or other’s fault for not listening to what his generals said, won’t it?  

Our goal in the Arab world
 is Peace without
Humidity.

One also has to wonder what prompted Schmitt to write that the proposal to keep troops in Iraq until brown cows give chocolate milk reflects “the tension between Mr. Obama’s promise to bring all American forces home and the widely held view among commanders that Iraq is not yet able to provide for its own security.”  Schmitt doesn’t bother to mention that Iraq is not yet able to provide for its own security in spite (because?) of the fact the man in charge of training Iraqi security forces clear back in 2004 and 2005 was none other than our own, our very own Teflon General, "King" David Petraeus. 

Schmitt also doesn’t bother to pose the question of why, if miracle worker Petraeus’s Surgin’ Safari in Sumaria was so rootin’-tootin’-high-falutin' successful then how’s come we still gotta leave us troops there to get blowed up?  And Schmitt ponder the puzzler that if seven years weren’t enough for the Iraqis to get their own security act together, how many years will it take them?  (As many years as there are left?) 

Schmitt makes the vanishing Iraq deadline sound like news.  It’s nothing of the sort. The Pentarchy started its hell-no-we-won’t-go media campaign the second Candidate Obama made his 16-month withdrawal promise and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki said why, sure, that sounded kosher to him.  Joint Chiefs Chairperson Mike Mullen went so far as to write an article in the summer of 2008 for Joint Force Quarterly, his personal glossy propaganda rag, that warned of the danger that a Democrat in the White House would pose to the mission in Iraq. 

And General Lloyd J. “Harrumph” Austin III’s proposal to keep 14 to 18 thousand troops in Iraq for an unspecified amount of time rhymes with General Ray “Desert Ox” Odierno’s statement in early 2009 (via the "dean" of the Pentagon press prostitution ring Tommy Ricks) that he wanted to see 30,000 or so U.S. troops in Iraq until 2004 or 2005.  Or so. 

Troop Tent Trollop Tommy was also the bull feather merchant chosen to throw a brass gauntlet in young Mr. Obama’s face in an early 2009 episode of Meet the Press, when he laid out the case to NBC fop David Gregory that Obama will have betrayed the troops if he withdraws them from Iraq against the generals’ wished because of a darn old campaign promise.

“Cave Man” Obama took a ten count vis-à-vis the New American Praetorians’ agenda a long time ago.  He won’t start standing up to them now.  Stand by to support the troops to your grave.  And theirs. 

I'll be posting here sporadically through the fall as I wrap up Sandbox Generals.  It's fun but taxing work.  Think 1984 meets Blazing Saddles. 

Ciao, hounds!  

Jeff

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword. Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books), a lampoon on America's rise to global dominance, is on sale now.