Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
The Nobel Peace Prize time line comment is just too easy, so I won’t say it. Oh, ooops . . .
I think that goes a bit beyond dithering and moves to indecisive.
The Obamanation is incompetent. I wish that weren’t the case, but, alas….
This isn’t about winning the war. This is about reading the political winds domestically: The key to flexibility is indecision.
Strategically and in terms of real leadership, this guy is out of his depth in a White House parking lot rain puddle. Hope isn’t a method but that is what he is relying on. He is hoping that what is already in place works so he won’t have to make any tough decisions but will get the credit if it works and blame the Bush administration if it doesn’t. That excuse isn’t cutting it for most of the unwashed masses anymore. The tough decision is to commit. Schmooze got him him elected along with Dem and Chicago machine politics. He is nothing but a smooth speaking empty shirt like many of us said he was two years ago. The only people who like change are babies in a crap filled diaper. Apparently more Americans have been making it to the can since election day.
What do you expect from a state senator with record of voting “Present”. Ah yes, so nice of you to show up today. How ’bout we get something accomplished, make a decision?
Try 1,011 days. That’s the number of days since he announced his candidacy. Even assuming that anything he said prior to February 10, 2007 was just political posturing, on that day he declared himself a candidate based at least in part on his self-professed ability to fight this war better than anybody else, especially the incumbent. It’s not like this whole Afghanistan war was a surprise that blind-sided him on inauguration day. He’s had three years to come up with his plan.
I will be traveling to the afforemention par tof the world over the next few weeks….I’ll have to send along my “man-in-the-sandbox” point of view…..hopefully, I’ll be able to report better info than the vaunted media.
SK1
Best of luck over there.
P.S. shouldn’t that be LS1 by now?
His Chief’s been mushrooming him.
I think the difference is easy to explain. It’s the difference between routing a foreign government and army whose firepower are ridiculously weaker than your own, and, on the other hand, attempting to turn a fragemented, feudal society into the equivalent of Belgium. Somehow we got lost on the trail of nation building in Afghanistan, on the false assumption that only if we turned Afghanistan into a modern Western style democracy could the Taleban be defeated. Plus, it’s also the difference between fighting the Taleban in Afghanistan, and fighting them in Pakistan. Big difference.
Has anyone in the military tried to explain to him the concept of the OODA loop / being one step ahead of the enemy / controlling the decision cycle so that your fighting on your terms and not your enemy’s? Not sure it would make any difference, but just wondering . . .
As to him not liking any of his options . . . Welcome. To. Leadership.
Glad he’s making all the rookie mistakes (i.e. waiting for a better option when all your options are unpalatable) as head of the world’s most powerful country vice any other venue. This guy truly hasn’t even run a hot dog stand and now he’s in the toughest leadership job in the world. God save us.
Chatting with one of my cow-orkers (ex USAF) about the same subject, and we decided that Obama doesn’t have an OODA loop, just an O loop. Or perhaps a line, since there seems to be no evidence that anything he observes influences his behavior. There’s no evidence he will ever decide or act.
This delay is getting rediculus… and telling!
Tick…tock…tick…tock…bang? Is that what it’s going to take?
Somebody needs to call this guy at 3am to get a decision. He promised us that he was capable, so maybe that’s how it orta git dun.
@Prowler re.
Ain’t it a bitch, sometimes?
Sure is. Started watching Band of Brothers again for Memorial Day and was struck by the episode where they had to take Foy with a new, political check in the box Lieutenant at the “helm.” Sgt. Lipton’s take was dead on: Lt Van Dyke wasn’t a bad leader because he made bad decisions, he was a bad leader because he made no decisions.
P.S. Hope LS1/SK1′s Chief isn’t mushrooming him too hard. I laughed my a$$ off at that comment!