It's My Platform And I’ll Decry If I Want To

The Morning Joe Rebuttal for December 8th, 2009


Observations:


1) Jobs, the vigil continues. At this point, we have to prepare for an eventuality of the jobs situation improving and what to expect from the Morning Joe crew as it watches the business cycle change for the better while having never really participated in the debate.


There is an opportunity every day to take the situation on the ground in the United States and break it down for the American people. We patiently await your participation.

Yes, I saw the Alabama Mercedes segment. My inability to reconcile an answer for jobs being an outsource to German industry is that long term we will be in this same position at some other business cycle yet perpetually unable to control our own fate. It is helping, but we need long term solutions to minimize the effect of the next business cycle.

2) Bob Woodward’s point about every Afghanistan success for the US Military bolstering the corrupt Karzai regime by proxy was invaluable and one not before recognized in this or any forum to my knowledge. The reaction of JS to point out the Pakistan similarity to Cambodia was also interesting but I felt like the consensus left out that the South Vietnamese government was absolutely not respected by it’s people and by reverse proxy made the people unite against the US. Only those with fear of retribution were solidly behind the US in Vietnam and when the eventual abandonment occurred, they either became boat people or met a not so nice fate. That is a more salient expectation for Afghanistan, should Woodward’s premise hold true.

3) This depiction of Secretary Gates as an out of control maverick undermining the Obama message is so off the mark it makes its perpetrators seem like dime store spinsters. We all want to be out of Afghanistan in 18 months, I think we’ve established that. Gates wants to be out too, he just recognizes that he will have a different kind of conflict to manage in the region for the decades that come after a multinational military presence as it is now. The thing is, this is a trap and the right can’t help but lose a limb to it. A Democratic regime may not invoke the autocratic messaging of a lockstep Republican regime, but it’s not weakness of message its just a more deep rooted decision making process. It, in fact, allows a Republican Secretary of Defense to do his job with an adequate amount of separation and to be singularly effective. Roll back the clock and ask yourself if message police planted throughout multiple facets of the Bush government aided or abetted dynamic thoughtful operation of this country. Whether it was the EPA or the Pentagon, so many necessary steps to the prosecution of a war or an environmental strategy were weakened by Bush message vetting. When it happens in reverse here, calling it a wedge issue is analytical failure.

That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.