Why the Press Loves Petraeus
LTC Bob offers a great explanation for the sometimes breathless coverage of Petraeus. It rings very true in my experience. I'd amplify one point and add a few others. He writes:
So imagine that you are a reporter in Iraq. Embedded or unembedded, either way you are dealing with my peers. The battalion commander is leery of you, the brigade commander is distant and borderline hostile, the division commander might not even deign to talk to you at all, and there is a Public Affairs Officer who you feel is constantly trying to “spin” everything you see. (That would be your perception anyway.) So there you are, lonely and alone. A journalist peer of yours sends you an e-mail saying, “Hey, write to General P, he’ll answer.” You doubt this could be true, but you give it a shot. About 30 minutes later you get an e-mail from Petraeus himself, with his aide on the cc line, setting up an interview.
Perhaps a bit overstated, but the broader point is unassailable. Petraeus relishes the back-and-forth with the press, in my experience. Now, that has strategic value: winning over reporters is not something Petraeus does to be nice. But, unlike many, many generals -- mid-career officers aren't, I find, like this -- Petraeus is willing to entertain points of view that don't correspond to his own, even if it's to offer pushback. In short, you can talk to Petraeus like a human being. For a lot of reporters used to getting canned answers, evasions or outright silence, that's irresistible.
But that's only one part of it. To really understand why Petraeus came out of the gate with such glowing coverage when he went back to Baghdad in January 2007, you need to understand the role he played in the media when he was a division commander, when he ran the training of Iraqi security forces, and when he commanded the Combined Arms Center at Ft. Leavenworth.
So it's 2003 to 2006. Everyone with half a brain knows the war is going first not-good, then disastrously, then nightmarishly. Reporters on the ground see it, write it that way, and get attacked for it. Meanwhile, everyone up the chain of command that they have to interview says that black is really white and questions their integrity for suggesting otherwise. Except for this one general that they know they can go to for a background or off-the-record recognition of reality. Petraeus earned a lot of goodwill by not telling the same old lies. And making the mythology even more intense, Petraeus leaves Iraq in 2006 and doesn't get a lucrative command. He gets an academic post in Kansas, where he changes the Army's curriculum for mid-career officers. It feels like an insult to defense reporters, who come to believe that the Army is punishing Petraeus for his candor.
As a result, Petraeus has gotten away with a fair amount. The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler reported that under Petraeus' watch, the Iraqi training program lost 190,000 weapons. It's at least arguable that some other general would have been forced to resign after a mistake of that magnitude.
There's one last element at play here. The press, being a generally brainless horde (except for me! and my friends!), tends to establish a certain pecking order for taking its cues. Generalists follow respected beat reporters at respected places. So when, say, a junior CNN producer is trying to figure out how the on-camera talent should treat a statement made by Petraeus in January 2007, when he's relatively unknown, she pulls up some clips from ace defense reporters like Tom Ricks of the Post or Greg Jaffe of the Wall Street Journal and sees that Petraeus gets a passing grade. Then the other generalists, when they see CNN or NBC or another such TV network treating Petraeus kindly, follow that cue. Pretty soon you've got coverage of a demigod, not a man. While Petraeus doesn't exactly mind that, he'd be the first to admit that such a thing is, to say the least, problematic.
Think that Obama reached that tipping point to demi-god status in press coverage as well?
March 19, 2008 4:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Spencer's tale of Petraeus reminds me a lot of the rise of John McCain as the press' candidate of choice. It's all about offering access, friendliness and the illusion of candor to a group of people who are generally starved for such things. Of course there's also the desire to keep access once it's granted. Don't backhand the mouth that quotes for you.
March 19, 2008 4:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Even though we liberals often like to bash Petraeus for being the face of the war, we ultimately have to admit that his candor is a refreshing change from the Bush administration line. If the rest of the Bush administration was like Petraeus, we would still have to deal with an unacceptable world view, and we would have many disagreements, but not the same level of rancor or deception, and we may not even be in this whole mess in Iraq.
This is what makes McCain more formidable. Even if his world view is more conservative than Bush, he "appears" to offer more honesty and candor. The positive is that we can hopefully have a real debate about ideas with him, which is the only debate that can create a lasting liberal majority. The negative is that many "average Joe" Americans are stubbornly conservative in their ideology (especially foreign policy).
March 19, 2008 6:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
the rap on Petraeus is precisely that he lacks candor. that he is in fact a sycophant who has advanced his career by kissing ass.
the most apt description is to John McCain who schmoozes the press by giving them access, inviting them to his sprawling ranch for a catered bbq and pretending to be buddy buddy with them.
this is Fallon's main beef with Petraeus.
clinton pointed out during the original surge hearings that according to the very Counter-Insurgency manual written by Petraeus a much greater surge of troops than was being proposed by Bush was necessary leading one to wonder why he had suddenly agreed to become the front man for a plan, that by his own reasoning, was inadequate.
Like Colin Powell, another military man used up and discarded by this Administration, a crucial element of Petraeus's path of advancement in the Army was through serving as an aide to senior generals. He was assistant executive officer to the Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Carl Vuono, and later executive assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Henry Shelton. His experience taught him that cultivating senior officers is the key to success.
In sharp contrast to the lionisation of Gen. David Petraeus by members of the U.S. Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus's superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting.
Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickenshit" and added, "I hate people like that", the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior.
The policy context of Fallon's extraordinarily abrasive treatment of his subordinate was Petraeus's agreement in February to serve as front man for the George W. Bush administration's effort to sell its policy of increasing U.S. troop strength in Iraq to Congress.
In a highly unusual political role for an officer who had not yet taken command of a war, Petraeus was installed in the office of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, in early February just before the Senate debated Bush's troop increase. According to a report in The Washington Post Feb. 7, senators were then approached on the floor and invited to go McConnell's office to hear Petraeus make the case for the surge policy.
Fallon was strongly opposed to Petraeus's role as pitch man for the surge policy in Iraq adopted by Bush in December as putting his own interests ahead of a sound military posture in the Middle East and Southwest Asia -- the area for which Fallon's CENTCOM is responsible.
During the summer, according to the Post Sep. 9 report, Fallon began to develop his own plans for redefine the U.S. mission in Iraq, including a plan for withdrawal of three-quarters of the U.S. troop strength by the end of 2009.
The conflict between Fallon and Petraeus over Iraq came to a head in early September. According to the Post story, Fallon expressed views on Iraq that were sharply at odds with those of Petraeus in a three-way conversation with Bush on Iraq the previous weekend. Petraeus argued for keeping as many troops in Iraq for as long as possible to cement any security progress, but Fallon argued that a strategic withdrawal from Iraq was necessary to have sufficient forces to deal with other potential threats in the region.
Fallon's presentation to Bush of the case against Petraeus's recommendation for keeping troop levels in Iraq at the highest possible level just before Petraeus was to go public with his recommendations was another sign that Petraeus's role as chief spokesperson for the surge policy has created a deep rift between him and the nation's highest military leaders. Bush presumably would not have chosen to invite an opponent of the surge policy to make such a presentation without lobbying by the top brass.
Fallon had a "visceral distaste" for what he regarded as Petraeus's sycophantic behaviour in general, which had deeper institutional roots, according to a military source familiar with his thinking.
March 19, 2008 9:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
General Petreaus was in charge of the training of Iraqi army battalions from Jun 2004 to Sep 2005
Sep 2004–Petreaus, in an election-time WaPo Op-Ed: “Six battalions of the Iraqi regular army and the Iraqi Intervention Force are now conducting operations. . .Within the next 60 days, six more regular army and six additional Intervention Force battalions will become operational. . . Nine more regular army battalions will complete training in January”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49283-2004Sep25.html
Sep 2005–Gen. George W. Casey Jr., who oversees U.S. forces in Iraq, said there are fewer Iraqi battalions at “Level 1" readiness than there were a few months ago. . . The number of Iraqi army battalions that can fight insurgents without U.S. and coalition help has dropped from three to one, top U.S. generals told Congress yesterday.
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2005/tr20050930-secdef4002.html
Feb 2007-General David Petraeus was named commander of multinational military forces in Iraq, a testimony to his "refreshing candor" in this Bizarro World. In the Bizarro world of "Htrae" ("Earth" spelled backwards), society is ruled by the Bizarro Code which states "Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World!".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bizarro_World
March 19, 2008 7:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Before deploying to Southeast Asia for eighteen-months of desultory duty in the Nixon-Kissinger Fig Leaf Contingent (Vietnam 1970-1972) I endured eight months of language training at DLIWC and almost three months of "oounter insurgency" (i.e., native-resistance suppression) training at Coronado Island, San Diego. In book theory, we learned to "win the hearts and minds" of our "little brown brothers." In practical application, though, we quickly learned to "grab them by the balls, and their hearts and minds will follow." The careerist lifers loved it all and quipped: "Don't knock the war, it's the only one we've got." We drafted or bullied-into-enlisting types replied "We are the unwilling led by the unqualified to do the unnecessary for the ungrateful." That sounds about like how the majority of Americans feel today after another needless military-industrial fleecing.
Both thirty-five years ago and today, we American "advisors" have destroyed the native political and economic structure of a country and made beggar-whore supplicant dependents of a formerly self-sufficient people. Then we Americans start going broke from the unsustainable "guns AND butter" expense of maintaining our self-created dependency. Then we have to cut off the bleeding dependent to save our own bankupt asses. Then the dependent collapses and takes decades to revover once we Americans take our lunatic "advice" and leave the locals to rebuild what we've broken. Once the American military quits screwing pooches and fucking up every soup sandwich they can locate in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and America, then the brutalized and battered victims, both foreign and domestic, can start regaining their health. The "responsible," ticket-punching generals will continue failing upwards to ever-greater rewards and benefits, however, just like their Enron-executive oounterparts in the civilian sector.
At any rate, I spent almost two-and-a-half years learning why calling a colonial occupation a "counter insurgency" neither legitimizes the occupation of a foreign country nor implies that the American military can do anything meaningful to "counter" the native resistance that such colonial occupations, by their very nature, provoke and fuel. Hearing over recent years that General David Petraeus had somehow produced a "new" field manual for obfuscating colonial occupation as a "counter insurgency" only further convinced me that the man (despite three tours in Iraq) has never bothered to learn anything more useful than those Owellian public-relations gimics that serve to further his own fuck-up-and-move-up career. Put simply: he and his rampantly careerist ilk cannot FINISH anything. They can only make excuses, stall for ever-more-time-and-resources, and hope to pass along the problem to someone else after securing their next promotion.
Put in simple, algebraic formula: PARKINSON'S LAW + THE PETER PRINCIPLE = LUNATIC LEVIATHAN. For those unacquainted with the two iron laws of bureaucratic growth on the left-hand side of the equation, (1) "work will expand to consume the time alloted for its completion" and "in any hiercarchy, people tend to rise to their level of incompetence." Put diplomatically, as a former South Asian ambassador once told me about why his government refused America's offer of military assistance: "If the Americans come, they will just draw an arbitrary line through a temporary problem and make it permanent." Put poetically, this all comes out as:
"Boobie Counter Insurgency"
If offered help you'd best refuse
For if you should relent
They'll draw an arbitrary line
Through problems transient
And complicate them all so as
To make them permanent
They’d like to spend a “night,” they say
To get inside the door
But after years you’ll find them fast
Asleep upon your floor
In no apparent haste to end
Their stay that you abhor
Like suitors of Penelope
They make themselves at home
In yours – till you will marry them
Or read to them a tome
That ends when brave Ulysses comes
From back across the foam
They start with talking of a “race”
But just as a pretense
Once underway, the “journey” talk
Begins to change the sense:
“Accomplished” missions leading to
No perfect in their tense
A hanging concentrates the mind;
No hangings, the reverse
When no one hangs for screwing up
Results become perverse
Rewards buy more incompetence
And gild the golden purse
Incompetents attract their ilk
They know no other kind
And so they concentrate like sludge
A residue refined
To gum up all the moving parts
And leave them in a bind
The Law of Parkinson explains
Bureaucracy’s demands
Just make more room to make more work
For still more willing hands
There’s room enough for everyone
When all the yeast expands
The Peter Principle sets in
And all float to the top
The good get out; the bad stay on:
Promotion will not stop
It doesn’t matter what they do,
Or how they fail and flop
“You fuck up then you move up” goes
The slogan of the day
Republican philosophy
For how to make some hay
Insurgencies have payrolls that
Would tempt a Kenneth Lay
To “counter” the insurgency
You first put on your crown
And then “elect” your puppets till
You start to spiral down
To end up with the worst of all:
George Bush and Michael Brown
Great nations, so the saying goes,
Cannot fight little wars
It just makes them look little
Like the whores that staff the bars:
Those widowed native women folk
Whose men died for our cars
We had to have the oil, it seems,
To make our gas and fuel
No matter that the price has soared
While Halliburton gruel
Fed to the troops to keep them fit
Has made them mean and cruel
But when a bloated, idle firm
Has little real to do
It either lays employees off
Or makes a pooch to screw
Then buys up some screwdriver stock
With options for a few
And then consultants come to call
To market mantras cool:
Some jaundiced, jaded, jargon jive
To mesmerize the fool
Which Dick and Don have taught to George
To make of him a tool
The trophy chief executive
Requires the use of sound
A propaganda catapult,
Some noise he needs to pound
He doesn’t have to know “above”
From “under” or “around”
Deciding to decide he picks
Decision as his guide
He chooses choices chosen for
The options that they hide
He puts them “on the table” then
Onto the floor they slide
He turns both tides and corners and
He chews gum as he walks
Then chokes and stumbles, yanked by strings,
As his bad puppet balks
Refusing to “eliminate”
The “enemy” he stalks
Technology will save the day
Or so we have been told
Our vastly overpriced machine
Will keep away the cold
Although “insurgents” wreck it with
“Improvisation” bold
The war to have more war again
Has made war without end:
Careers for all the supple ones
Whose rubber ethics bend
Until their “honor” turns to rust:
A blood-stain’s reddish blend
But why not send some campaign staff?
Those smarmy puerile jerks
Who masturbate to thoughts of “war”
With all its rank and perks
Who find “good bidness” where it “is”
And who cares if it works?
They’ll camp inside the castle walls
Some hamburgers to munch
And never go outside the wire
To brave the deadly crunch
While talking tough about Tehran
Where they’d be someone’s lunch
The days and weeks and months go by
With more excuses still
For why the costs keep rising while
The “enemy” we kill
But, What the hell? It’s free-lunch war!
The kids will pay the bill
Republicans can talk a fight
Until the buildings fall
They then attack the innocent
And squawk a shrieking squall
Producing only years of talk
To cover for it all
So “Hell is on the way,” alright,
Dick Cheney’s vow fulfilled
They fell asleep on watch and got
Three thousand of us killed
Then ran off half a world away
To have some oil wells drilled
In only six more months of this
The numbers will accrue
To show we’ve lost three thousand more
With no apparent clue
Explaining why we’ve spent more time
Than fighting World War Two
We used to have great enemies
But now we’ve only small
We shot a cannon at a wasp
Collapsing hive and hall
And now upon our bee-stung ass
The insects swarm and crawl
We’ve bought another cannon, though,
Because it makes more bang
And generates huge profits for
The ones who hire the gang
Who, when the sand gets in the gears,
Ignore the clunk and clang
The blowback, though, comes round in time
No one has yet escaped
Vietnamized; Iraqified;
Corrupted by the raped
The “victors” become vanquished by
The monkeys that they aped
Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2006
We've lost the straight-talking Admiral William Fallon and kept the "ass-kissing little chicken shit" General David Petraeus." It figures.
March 19, 2008 7:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Political poetry must be consumed on the premises." I heard that once in English class. Although I liked Murray's poem, this tome is locked in the time frame of our little war in Iraq. It is not, however, for generations to come. Still, the poem bites and must have been fun to write.
As to Petraeus after five years, I find it hard to believe anybody when they speak glowingly about the nightmare of Iraq. Names like Bremer, Cheney, and the rest will haunt us for years to come.
Our politicians must think Americans are morons. Hearing about Fallon, it is good to hear even now, that some military men have had enough of the President's destructive policies to resign. causing endless suffering going on over there.
I find it interesting that the reporters, who have been in Iraq, have not given up their 'crap dectectors', and question anything that comes out of the military mouths.
Go bite them journalists...!
March 19, 2008 9:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
ultimately, this is not the military's fault. i think everyone will agree that the military has been corrupted in much the same manner as the rest of the executive branch.
i am sure petraeus is a capable officer. he has, however, been selected for his position precisely because he will do the adminstrations bidding. that is how the rule of law has planned it and on whole i would rather have the military obey than not.
i even concede the press is not entirely to fault for falling at the sleep at the wheel while this administration lied us into war. there is A LOT they could have done better. too much miller and not enough hersh.
even jay rosen has a point in that the press displayed a real failure of imagination in the sense that they missed the REAL story and swallowed the administration's lies because they imagined it no more important than your typical beltway gossip. yes, there were voices of sanity in the woods, but the press had to come to terms with the magnitude of the lies and just how baddly they'd been suckered.
once baghdad was taken, the press improved and they began to analyze the lies, while simultaneously reporting a better sense of the violence. ultimately, the press is not at fault for this quagmire.
that the press has not entirely failed can be evidenced by the fact that most americans now believe the war was not worth fighting and should be ended now. at worst, even if in despite of themselves, the information is out there.
the internet, particularly sites like this one, should be included as the press as it does a superior job of political analysis and it has provided a great service to our country by removing the MSM as sort of a controlling middleman.
the real question, and the one that I think is moving inexorably towards us, is do we impeach bush as a corrupt and utterly unacceptable president... on principle.
lord knows he deserves it.
just a little mea culpa as i realize i may have been a little too wound up.
i have never been so stirred up politically.
March 19, 2008 9:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
ALCON,
I don't want to get into the Fallon/Petraeus thing too much, in no small part because I have to prepare my own next posting, so I'll confine myself to a few small points.
A. Fallon himself, in the very same article which many (correctly) cite as being the reason for his retirement (the Esquire article by Barnett), says that the whole "Chickenshit" line was completely made up from whole cloth. I would submit that I am quite a few degrees of seperation closer to the situation myself, and while I am not contending that the two 4-stars were busom buddies, it does appear that that characterization (which came from a British tabloid) was, well, imaginary.
B. I know less about Fallon as a CENTCOM commander, but I would suggest that any 4-star who begins to make his own foreign policy (as opposed to that set and directed by the Chief Executive) should be benched. Should Clinton or Obama become President surely you would not want a 4-star talking to the press about how they're doing something opposite of what the President wants, right?
C. It is *not* a matter of "corruption" in the highest ranks, for the most part. (Being a historian I try to avoid absolutes.) And it is certainly not in the case of either Fallon or Petraeus. Both men walk(ed) the same delicate line that any officer who is in the public view (and here I guess that includes me) must walk, between personally held convictions and expressed opinions and actions.
D. Last week General Petraeus made a pretty damning indictment of the Iraqi political system (at the national level). I don't think that could have been construed as "glowing" when you use words like "failure."
E. I would contend that neither Iraq pre-2003, nor Afghanistan pre-2001, had anything approaching a viable "native political and economic structure of a country" and our being there did not change those things. Nor did we change the culture of either nation and make the people "beggar-whore supplicant dependents of a formerly self-sufficient people." If you would like to debate that off-line you're welcome to e-mail me. We did a lot of things wrong. We always do. But (and I'll confine myself to Iraq for a moment) if you know anything about the pre-2003 socio-economic-political structure of Iraq I find it amazing that you'd refer to the system there as "formerly self-sufficient" in any viable way. Hell, *that* is one of the things we've been wrestling with the most, particularly with the Ministry of Interior.
F. The "colonial" term is a shibboleth. C'mon man, move into the 21st century at least with your critique. There are plenty of legitimate criticisms to make. Dozens of failures at the highest levels, and hundreds at lower levels. Playing the "colonialism" card is not one of them, nor is it useful in reasoned debate as it has little to no substantive evidence underpinning it.
Regards,
Bob Bateman
March 20, 2008 8:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think the media love Petraeus because the public is sick of hearing about Iraq. Horror stories have lost their impact, and they don't sell very well anymore. Whatever faults Petraeus has, he is competent as a general. So the nation gives a collective sigh and sticks its head in the sand even though chaos and mayhem are continuing.
March 20, 2008 12:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
To No Exit:
Garth, I LOVED your post.
March 20, 2008 2:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
I learned long ago to discard miliary jargon as duplicitous bunk. Mr. Bateman expects us to take him at his word and "in" his own words. No thanks. When I hear or read "force oriented zone reconnaissance," I substitute "patrolling" or "picking a fight." When I hear or read "surge," I substitue "trickle, dribble, splurge, splat!" Or, "incremental escalation." Or, "mission creep." When I hear or read "counter insurgency," I just substitute "bungled colonial occupation." When I hear or read "no good options for leaving (wherever)," I simply recall James Carroll writing back in pre-invassion 2003: "Only a fool defines a problem in such a way that he cannot solve it."
See? It gets really easy to cut throught he crude Orwellian crap with only a little practice. I survived Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon at their maximum mendacity. So I've had more than enough practice to easily see through pusillanimous pricks like Sheriff Dick Cheney, Deputy Dubya Bush, and anyone else ethically compromised enough to try and spin their larcenous lies.
If Mr. Bateman and his military media manipulators knew what to do in Iraq and Afganistan, they would have done it long ago. At least the Taliban could stamp out the opium poppy crop. Our manic military morons have just brought the narco-state trade back to world-record production levels -- and then tries to dump the blame on our hapless NATO camp-followers. So what business does such an incompetent assemblage of invaders as the American military have lecturing to the Afghan tribesmen about "government"? What would THEY possibly know about the subject?
At any rate, as Francis Fitzerald wrote about a similar, seemingly endless quagmire long ago in Southeast Asia: "Once any war goes on long enough, it can only begin and contiue to repeat itself." In Iraq and Afghanistan, the American military has once more proved the truth of that observation. Time to pull the plug on the professional procrastinators. They've squandered enough blood, treasure, and national reputation -- once again -- for nothing.
I'll dissect Mr. Bateman's rather inept responses to my previous post about Bad-Puppet Dependency Disease (BPDD) later, but for this entry I'll just take off on a poetic riff from the (previous, before-Deputy-Dubya) Crusades in which the local Middle Easterners called the Christian armored Knights who assaulted them "the terrible worm in his iron cocoon." Call this one:
"Peace With Horror"
A leper knight rode into view
Astride his mangy steed
A harbinger of violence
A plague without a need
An apparition of discord
Upon which fear would feed
His unannounced arrival meant
He'd lost his leper's bell
And yet his ugly innocence
Could not conceal the smell
His good intentions only paved
Another road to Hell
With mace and lance and sword deployed
He vowed in peace to live
Through rotting lips he promised not
To take, but only give
He swore to only kill the ones
Whom he said shouldn't live
He did not speak the language and
He did not know the land
So why the healthy shrank from him
He could not understand
Why did they want the water when
He'd offered them the sand?
Committing to commitments he
Committed crimes galore
As steadfast in his loyalties
As any purchased whore
A mercenary madman like
His slogan: "Peace through War"
His slaying for salvation masked
An inner, grasping greed
A lust for living good and well
While looking past his deed
A dead man walking wakefully;
A graveyard gone to seed
He planned to leave in "phases," so
He said to those back home
Who'd heard some nasty rumors rife
From Babylon to Rome
Of murders in their name meant to
Exalt their sacred tome
But still he needed to "protect"
Some pilgrims on the road
Who for "protection" glumly paid
A portion of their load:
For this decaying derelict,
An object episode
When asked to give a summary
Of what he had achieved
He shifted to the future tense
The gains that he perceived
And spoke in the subjunctive mood
To those he had aggrieved
"The future life to come portends
More suffering than now
Through me alone can you avoid
What I will disavow:
The promises I never made
While making, anyhow."
"I unsay things that I have said
And say I never did;
Then say them once again to pound
The meaning deeply hid,
Down where the lizard lives between
The ego and the id."
"I've given you catastrophe
And called it a success;
If you want other outcomes then
Step forward and confess
That you believed a pack of lies
With no strain, sweat, or stress."
"You know the meaning of my words
Lasts only just as long
As sound takes to decay in air
So that you take them wrong
If you assign significance
To my sly siren song."
"A 'propaganda catapult'
I've called myself, in fact;
A damning human document
Which I myself redact
At every opportunity
With no concern for tact."
"If you think what I've done before
Has caused me to repent
Or dream that I, in any way,
Might let up or relent
Then I've got wars for you to buy,
Or maybe just to rent."
"I've little time to live on earth,
So why should I reflect
Upon the dead and dying souls
Whose lives I've robbed and wrecked?
I care not if they hate, just that
They know to genuflect."
Thus did the ruin of a world
Continue in its curse;
The great man on his horse relieved
The faithful of their purse
And gave them bad to save them from
What they feared even worse
So onward to Jerusalem
He staggered as he slew
In train with sack and booty that
He only thought his due
For spreading freedom's germs among
The last surviving few
Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2007
I fully realize that this depiction of our own terrible worms in their Imperial Storm-Trooper space-suits and "up-armored" iron cocoons does not conform to General Petraeus's self-serving public-relations image of himself and our "good guys" now disastrously mis-occupying someone else's country, but the local Middle Easterners (like the East- and Southeast Asians before them) pretty much see our unprovoked assaults on them as one-of-a-continuous-kind uninterrupted over many centuries. I do not expect the unlettered (even with a Princeton Ph.D.) military mind of General Petraeus to grasp this historic truth, but then his rampant careerist agenda doesn't change the facts of things one iota. America's political/military/corporate "leadership" really sucks -- again -- and the news has begun to leak out of the punctured hot-air balloon.
March 20, 2008 10:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Michael,
Using a discussion site as a way to advance your doggerel is an interesting new take. As you've copyrighted the material, one presumes you want to make money off it. Congratulations, you've taken the first obscene step towards the commercialization of the anti-war movement.
When you find the time to climb down off that very high horse you rode in on, perhaps you might find the time to engage in dialog instead of diatribe?
You wrote, "I learned long ago to discard miliary jargon as duplicitous bunk. Mr. Bateman expects us to take him at his word and "in" his own words. No thanks. When I hear or read "force oriented zone reconnaissance," I substitute "patrolling" or "picking a fight."
Which "military jargon" terms did I use Michael. Was it shibboleth that threw you? Uhhh, that's Hebrew bud. Perhaps, "socio-economic-political structure"? While not a single word, that's academese, not "military jargon." C'mon guy, even for somebody off in the boonies of Taiwan you can't be *that* far out of it to think that I was using "military jargon."
I do, however, look forward to your promised (and long delayed now) dissection of my response. You and Victor Davis Hanson will then be two peas in a pod, as it appears both of you dislike reading what I write.
Bob Bateman
March 23, 2008 9:30 AM | Reply | Permalink