Mood:
chattyTopic: "Blame Game" (3)
Joe Biden has no chance to be the next President of the United States. The "nattering nabobs" who grace the black-and-white project him as a screen test for the position of Secretary of State in a sane and competent Presidential Administration. Frodo would have no problem with that eventuality. Although Frodo has always looked back upon the Senate Judiciary Hearings relative to the appointment of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court as one of the truly comic moments, and Joe Biden's participation as borderline schizophrenic, he has great admiration for Biden's incisive awareness of the Middle East and its role on our small blue planet. That is why Frodo pored over Biden's words earlier this week.
Who is responsible? Joe Biden was saying that he felt supreme frustration over the fact that no one in the Executive Branch was willing to accept any responsibility for anything. Nearly everyone, on every side of the issue, from whatever angle, concludes that the Pre-Emptive War has been conducted poorly. By whom, asks Frodo? Surely no one is alleging that the young men and women doing the fighting and the dying are not doing a good job. If not them, then the next possibility is the military leadership. Have our West Point graduates been as ineffective as the British during the American Revolution, unable to deal with "freedom fighters" with muskets fired from behind trees? From top-to-bottom the conclusion seems to be that they just weren't alloted enough men and proper equipment to meet the challenge. So, the military is not to blame, assumes Frodo.
Those who advocated, and called for, a military struggle in order to introduce democratic principles into the Middle East appear on talk shows to argue that the objectives were sound, but the execution was poor. Bill Kristol, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, are adamant that the War was just, that it serves the purpose of the United States, and that it is the only course of action that ensures our national survival. They were right, they conclude, so therefore they are not to blame for the present internecine struggle.
The Incomparable Moron could not recall any mistakes he had made when so queried by Tim Russert. The Secretary of State, the unaccomplished Ms. Rice, said that "thousands" of mistakes had been made, but once it became necessary to remove her foot from her mouth, she declined to be specific about the identification of the errors and who exactly committed any of them? Cautious references to Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Bremer, George Tenet, Tommy Franks appear as miasma in conversation from White House staffers, but nobody says "this guy" did this, or didn't do that. Nobody, and Frodo means nobody, says anything about anybody who is anything other than out of the present line of decision-making.
What grinds Frodo's butt is that when anyone points a finger, it is immediately bitten off by someone prepared to defend the pointee. Those who advocate the impeachment, for example, of the Vice President of the United States are seen as far-leftie members of "MoveOn. org," who have no credible evidence other than their inherent dislike of Mr. Cheney. Then the charges are answered by the "obfuscation" of attention-shifting assertions, and a new line of questioning by the befuddled. In the end, no one is responsible. This whole mess just happened. That is, it could have been avoided if Bill Clinton hadn't lied to the Grand Jury about a blow job.
Dear reader, it happened because you weren't angry enough. It happened because it wasn't your kids, brothers, husbands, going off to War. It happened because we elected political leaders who knew how to campaign, and we accepted their inabilities. Frodo will not conclude however with the over-used mantra that the enemy is us, he will simply tell you that the Atlanta Braves had a 9-5 lead in the top of the 9th inning last night, and gave up a grand slam home run to an unknown player from Houston. They lost the game, although they fought back brilliantly, in the 14th inning, 12-11. They lost because they figured they couldn't.
