Granolakrieg!
Here are a couple that come at the same target from two different directions. First, my new favorite Kraut, Gabor Steingart, drives his Panzer through Obama’s speech. Then, we’ll strap on the granola feedbag for a ride with an old-school American commie symp … Tom Hayden … who’s leveling his old Chicom flamethrower at his own Obama bumpersticker. Yeah, it’s that serious.
Here’s the smoking rubble at Der Spiegel, where Steingart just unloaded some Sturm and Drang all over Obama:
It was as though Obama had taken one of his old campaign speeches and merged it with a text from the library of ex-President George W. Bush. Extremists kill in the name of Islam, he said, before adding that it is one of the “world’s great religions.” He promised that responsibility for the country’s security would soon be transferred to the government of President Hamid Karzai — a government which he said was “corrupt.” The Taliban is dangerous and growing stronger. But “America will have to show our strength in the way that we end wars,” he added.
It was a dizzying combination of surge and withdrawal, of marching to and fro. The fast pace was reminiscent of plays about the French revolution: Troops enter from the right to loud cannon fire and then they exit to the left. And at the end, the dead are left on stage.
Steingart’s Bush-Obama Frankenstein stitch is spot on. But to be compared with anything having to do with the French revolution … poor Obama! I almost pity him. That Steingart’s one cold Fritz, just marched hobnailed all over the guy! (Technically, I believe the French revolution actually entered stage left and exited extreme stage right, but never mind that. The minute a Heinrich fires up a French revolution theater comparison, you can be pretty sure it isn’t because he admires Obama’s grand sense of history’s dramatic sweep. Forgive the blitzkriegcentric metaphors, BTW, Gabor. All in good fun. It’s reflexive, like a bad case of Teutonic Tourette’s Syndrome, acquired by by watching too much Hogan’s Heroes. That and hanging around a lot of your countrymen over the years.) Anyway, Steingart gets the job done. Gott in Himmel, I love it when Euros make sense. Here’s Steingart a few days ago mocking O’s Carter fears, suggesting he’s about to get his Bush on. Apparently O didn’t quite manage it.
OK, let’s get a chant going. Hey hey, ho ho, Barry O has got to go! … And it’s one two three what are they fighting for? Don’t ask me I don’t give a damn. I’m not going near that ‘Stan!
We’ll work on that. Meanwhile, here’s Tom Hayden at The Nation. (Remember how he scored Jane Fonda? If you’ve ever seen Tom, then you know the woman was making a serious political statement. Of course, he wooed her in North Vietnam, so he probably was probably putting off some pretty intense anti-imperialist military industrial complex animal magnetism.) Sorry, divergence. Back to Tom re Obama and Afghanistan:
It’s time to strip the Obama sticker off my car.
Obama’s escalation in Afghanistan is the last in a string of disappointments. His flip-flopping acceptance of the military coup in Honduras has squandered the trust of Latin America. His Wall Street bailout leaves the poor, the unemployed, minorities and college students on their own. And now comes the Afghanistan-Pakistan decision to escalate the stalemate, which risks his domestic agenda, his Democratic base, and possibly even his presidency.
The expediency of his decision was transparent. Satisfy the generals by sending 30,000 more troops. Satisfy the public and peace movement with a timeline for beginning withdrawals of those same troops, with no timeline for completing a withdrawal.
Obama’s timeline for the proposed Afghan military surge mirrors exactly the eighteen-month Petraeus timeline for the surge in Iraq.
We’ll see. To be clear: I’ll support Obama down the road against Sarah Palin, Lou Dobbs or any of the pitchfork carriers for the pre-Obama era. But no bumper sticker until the withdrawal strategy is fully carried out.
Wow. It isn’t exactly Chicago, but Hayden isn’t messing around. Talk about acting locally. He’s going into full bumper-sticker withholding mode. For a flaming lefty, that’s pretty intense. How do you even get just one Obama sticker off without ruining ”01/20/09″ “Unelect him again in ‘04″ “McGovern 72″ “Fonda Jane” ”(North) Vietnam Veteran” “Save The Polar Bears” “Love Your Earth MILF” “My Other Car Is A Prius Too” “Hacking Emails Is Illegal!” or whatever he’s got slapped around the O stickers. But he’s going to need to make room for “STOP This (Obamist) War!” ”HOPE (He’s not still a fascist warmonger in 2012)” and “Obama Lied, People Died.” To mix metaphors from earlier in the post, it sounds like Hayden’s headed into Der Bumperschticker Bunker. It’s pretty dire. This is the equivalent of calling in fire on your own position. Danger close! Granolakrieg! Anyway, if you read on at the link, you’ll see Tom sops up Taliban prop like he once went for the commie variety. He’s got the good sense not to visit these victims of Yankee imperialism, though. Beheading stops a beating heart!
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Topics: Afghanistan, Germans, Obama, commies
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 12:29 am Comments (4) on Thursday, December 3, 2009
4 Responses to “Granolakrieg!”
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December 3rd, 2009 at 1:43 am
“His flip-flopping acceptance of the military coup in Honduras has squandered the trust of Latin America.”
Obama out of Honduras!
I’m sure Tommy can relate to that one.
December 3rd, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Let us HOPE that the Obama presidency is the last gasp of these old commie dinosaurs.
December 3rd, 2009 at 11:03 pm
[...] there have been many missteps. And the left is turning on the President, despite saying (during the Iraq War) that Afghanistan is the “just [...]
December 7th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
[...] Crittenden diagrams the latest in Prussian counteroffensives, or as he calls it the “Granolakrieg!” Here are a couple that come at the same target from two different directions. First, my new [...]