“The [squad leader, platoon
commander, Company Commander, Battalion Commander, Regimental Commander,
Commanding General] is responsible for everything his unit does or fails to do.” FMFM6-1, et seq. This sentence is identical in the Fleet
Marine Force Manual series on the role of the units which make up a Marine
Division. That is why command is so
exciting and professionally rewarding. With
the absolute authority of command comes the absolute responsibility for the
commander’s decisions and leadership.
Unless, apparently, you are the President and Commander-in-Chief.
The Obama White House is famous for
insisting that anything good that happens on his watch be credited to him alone. Good news may
not be announced by the departments and agencies; it must come from the
President.
“What about bad news,” you
say? That’s another story. The last seven days have not been
fun for the President and the Nation.
First, last fall, it was impossible
to escape hearing the President’s campaign claim that he was responsible for getting
Osama bin Laden and getting rid of Moammar Ghaddafi and protecting American
soil from terrorist attacks. That’s fine—he
was President when it happened and he is responsible for everything that
happens on his watch.
Then came
Benghazi. The airwaves were full of claims
that the attack came out of nowhere, with no advance warning, and all due to
some fifth rate con man (I apologize to other fifth rate con men, but I had to
pick a number) who made a “movie” that displeased Muslim fanatics. The attack was so sudden that nothing could
have been done to save our people. And
it simply wasn’t an attack by terrorists.
Now we learn that bad news was
covered up. Why? In the midst of a heated campaign, State (“the
leadership in my buildings”) needed to cover, so as not to embarrass the
President. One of Secretary Clinton’s
hatchet women insisted that the CIA not give a true accounting of the
background of the attack, including the fact that the warning signs were there
that real live, honest-to-god terrorists were
planning to do us harm on the tenth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and Washington did nothing before the attack to
beef up security. Then, during the
attack, our guys were hung out to dry.
Next, we learned that the IRS, the
outfit that will be a lead agency in implementing Obamacare (which is a tax) of which the
President is so proud, intentionally targeted conservative political action
groups, delaying their applications for tax-free status and actually demanding
to see their membership lists. You know
this is bad when top-level Democrats are appalled. They have donor lists, too. But the President says, “if”
it happened, he will look into it. Not
his fault. The White House had no clue
it was happening (except the White House Counsel’s office, we now learn).
Finally, we learn that the
Department of Justice executed an unprecedented collection of information about
two-month’s-worth of telephone records of the Associated Press and many of its
employees. Why? To discover sources who leaked information that the White House did not want leaked. (As opposed to information that the White House wanted to leak, an old and bi-partisan practice in Washington.) Seems the current administration has an equal
lack of respect for both the first and the second amendments.
So, where does this lead us? I suggest that this administration is just
what it wanted to be. It took a liberal
agenda, shoved it down the people’s throats, used the press to cover its
tracks, and then ran from its record when things went bad. The people don’t want health care to be
nationalized if it costs them their current insurance and raises premiums
substantially? Use the press to deny
that information. Lie about it, and use
the IRS to go after groups that are trying to get at and get out the truth.
Want to gut the national defense in
order to fund bread and circuses (through redistribution of the wealth)? Tell everyone that the war is over, and when
the enemy doesn’t get that message, cover up that inconvenient truth.
When the press does anything other
than parrot your line, get them and their sources. (Disclaimer: In the past, I have wished that
we could go after a “hate America first” press that often actually went out of
its way to hurt our national defense. I
still do, but embarrassing the President is not such a case.)
The question, then, is this. Will the American people let him once more get
away with this kind of manipulation that damages our Constitution, or will they
finally stand up and say “Enough!”
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