From "swift boaters" to "psychopaths"

In response to The ‘Swiftboating’ Dogwhistle:

It didn’t take long for the Obamanoids to escalate from calling the troops who served with Bergdahl “swiftboaters” to labeling them “psychopaths,” in the words of the drone from Housing and Urban Development who was dispatched to drop the bomb.  Judging by the backlash, that little gambit is going to backfire on Team Obama, which has already moved along to claiming that the President broke the law because the Taliban ordered him to, on pain of executing its prisoner, who was either a POW, a hostage, a “child,” or a war hero, depending on who piles out of the Administration clown car at any given press conference.

It might seem odd to send a cubicle gnome from HUD, of all places, on this particular mission, but it’s important to launch the attack from a position high enough to command attention, but low enough to give the Obama high command some plausible deniability.  It couldn’t really be anyone from the White House (which can’t go further than the “swiftboating” smear) or State.  It had to be someone with a military background.  There probably aren’t that many redundant mid-level bureaucrats with the right resume who also enjoy quoting Chairman Mao on their Tumblr pages.

And while the backlash might warn Obamabots away from launching even more severe attacks at the troops, the “psychopath” mission might have been reasonably successful.  It plants the meme that Bergdahl’s unit was troubled, and gives the Kos Kidz something to get worked up about.  And it keeps the mad blur of lies, outrages, and walkbacks blowing into our faces like the kaleidoscope tunnel Willy Wonka’s boat runs through – a shock-and-awe media approach that confuses the public so much that they start wishing the story would just go away.  Scandal fatigue has always been Obama’s ally.

I continue to think the Rosetta Stone for understanding this incredible clusterfark is Obama’s need to have the whole thing be theatrical, dramatic, and exaggerated, so he and his minions could pounce on Republicans who dared to raise objections to the deal.  Obama didn’t think troops who served with Bergdahl would speak out against his theatrical exaggerations.  He didn’t understand how angry military people would become at the spectacle of a deserter “getting the royal treatment” while “our kids came home in the baggage part of an airplane,” as the mother of one of the men who died searching for Bergdahl put it.

So now Barack Obama goes to war, and it’s the kind of war he and his people have a real appetite for – a nasty exchange of political artillery and stealthy character assassinations on the media battlefield.  The targets are American soldiers, who some Democrats are growing visibly nervous about attacking.  Even Joe Biden doesn’t seem to want any part of this debacle, and we’ve seen Hillary turn on Obama with lightning speed.

Could all of this have been avoided if Obama just told the truth?  What if he began this story by admitting Bergdahl was a likely deserter, but it’s still important to leave no man behind; promised a full investigation of Bergdahl’s disappearance; and included a warm salute to the men who died searching for Bergdahl in that Rose Garden ceremony?

Ah, but then the nature of the awful trade would have become the focus of the story, and it would have become difficult to justify breaking U.S. law to make it.  People do perform cost-benefit analyses on these decisions; five Taliban capos with a list of bloody war crimes to their names, traded for a deserter, just doesn’t sell itself to the American public very well.  The rapidly changing stories about how time was of the essence require a high level of B.S. to push… and if Obama had complied with the law to notify Congress, he would have encountered stiff criticism that might well have turned much of the public against his deal. 

And he would have utterly lost the political advantages he was looking for: a distraction from the V.A. scandal, a shot of poll-goosing Commander-in-Chief razzle-dazzle, and the chance to unleash his shout-show hounds on Republicans who objected to the deal.