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“Navy SEALs: Obama’s Secret Army”

An otherwise sensibly written article about the contributions of special forces in our quotidian bug hunts, with a dreadful title.

The SEALs, like the rest of the military, serve at the pleasure of the president. Who at the moment, happens to be Barack Obama.

But it is the office they serve, and the country it represents. Not the man. The office endures, like the Republic.

Men, they come and go.

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21 comments to “Navy SEALs: Obama’s Secret Army”

  • Scott

    What do you expect from a partisan rag like the Daily Beast? Tina Brown has yet to see the leftist she doesn’t fawn over.

    But I had to laugh at this line:

    Such missile strikes had been a hallmark of the Bush administration.

    Were you asleep for the preceding eight years? Miss the indictment eve wag the dog TLAM shots?

    • Leland

      Were you asleep for the preceding eight years?

      They apparently missed Obama using drone missile strikes to kill terrorists. I wonder if the choice of drones or SEALs is based on whether the President considers the target an American citizen or not?

  • Paul L. Quandt

    A couple of decades ago I subscribed to and read Newsweak, one of five weekly newspapers/magazines that I read every week. I considered it (Newsweak) to be a comic book in comparison with the others. Also, in several years of reading, I never once saw them correctly identify a weapon or weapon system.

    More garbage from the microcephalic.

    Paul

  • Skip

    I’m not sure the folks I drank with in ‘a bar’ in Coronado would agree.

  • Quartermaster

    Alas, the Republic is on its last legs too. The average age of Republics at the time of their fall is around 200 years. Venice was the longest lasting, but we have no one in positions of influence to maintain the tradision that mde the US great.

  • SK1

    The hypocrisy of these feckless idiots propping up the Village Idiot from Chicago knows no bounds. Obama has no right or credibility in claiming any of the honor that is bestowed upon our nation by the US NAVY SEALs. He is lucky that such strong & honorable men devoted themselves to selfless service while he was sitting on his pompous arse pissing on the military from his perch at Harvard.

    Obama has been a detractor of all that our fine military stands for and for anyone to credibly believe that now he is their ” patron saint ” is pathetic….We need to send this poser packing.

    OMG – Obama must go.

  • virgil xenophon

    Obama is just the latest in a long line of lefty “Maximum Leaders” that just luuuve to utilize as their own personal Palace Guard (in their eyes) capabilities of the armed services that, if they and their party had had their druthers in years prior–had their ideology prevailed in the budgeting process–would never have come into existence; indeed would have been strangled at birth, leaving present-day lefties no military toys to play with. No little savage irony in that. Reminds me of the mind-set of LBJ as recounted in Halberstam’s “The Best and the Brightest” when he describes LBJ landing at Langley on AF1 and, as he was transitioning to Marine 1 helo an aide pointed the way and said: “Your helicopter, Sir!” Pointing to all the other helos on the pad, LBJ replied with a sweep of the hand: “They’re ALL my helicopters, son!” LOL

  • The LBJ story reminded me….A woman I know was Treasurer of a mid-sized company. She was in the break room getting something when the founder/CEO came in, put some money in the Coke machine, and got nothing.

    “$#@$(“, said the CEO. “My own $*#& Coke machine steals from me!”

    “But it’s not your Coke machine,” said Brenda. “It’s only 7.3 percent your Coke machine.”

    The kind of thing leaders need to hear.

  • grizzledcoastie

    I love what Roy Boehm allegedly told JFK when he was discussing Specwar.

    “I sure as hell didn’t vote for you, Mr. President, but I’d sure as hell take a bullet for you.”

    The SEALs are not Obama’s army. That’s the SEIU (the Purple Shirts) and the other unions.

    But guys, consider the source.

    Speaking of Newsweak, they’re about as legit now as Mark McGwire’s home run totals or Congressional “budget cuts,” which are nothing more in reductions in the rate of increase.

  • Zane

    SOF and SPECWAR are always political tools. Always. Rumsfeld changed the rules about how they are being used now, don’t blame Obama. They’re cheap and expendable, we can always make more. B-2s, not so much.

    And I don’t think the article ever implies that the SEALs think they are Obama’s Secret Army. What Obama thinks, I don’t care to speculate on.

  • virgil xenophon

    “What Obama thinks, I don’t care to speculate on.”

    Well, Zane, in that regard allow me to put my Professor of Poli-Sci hat on and observe that, historically,, authoritarian “strong-men”–be they of the African or S. American variety–from Allende to Big Daddy Amin,–have established “Palace Guards” of one form or another with the aim of securing their loyalty by equipping them with the latest weaponry superior to that of the regular Army; as well as better food and quarters, etc.,,and rapid expansion of their numbers such they became actual rivals to the regular Army., I would only note the current down-sizing of the regular Army and the very public PR job being done on behalf of the Special Ops types by the WH and the stated budget expansion of their role in an otherwise downsized force which certainly parallels the experience of most S. American “Caudillo”/African “Big Man”.Dictators via coup d’etat, as well as that of elected heads of “Single-Party” States.. Now, while I certainly am not suggesting that the US Special Ops Forces are politically influenced/attracted to such blandishments, I AM stating my belief that Obamas’ actions nicely fit right in with the tribal “Big Man” m.o.–a theory more than one observer has written about. When combined with other aspects of Obamas operating style–lavish clothes and vacations for his wife, expensive exclusive parties at the WH, the appointment of unelected “Czars,” responsible to no one, the extreme use of executive orders, the unconstitutional recess appointments, the flouting of the orders of the Federal courts as in the case of the courts findings in both the BP oil-spill regulations he promoted with doctored science; the EPA’s ignoring both Congressional legislation and the finding of (again) the Federal courts that they used doctored science to promulgate Co2 regulations in the face of Congress AND the courts telling them not to as a) they had no legal power to do so and b) they used bad science (one judge said “no science”) anyway,–I could go on, but the dots are certainly there to be connected–and the outline is NOT pretty. At the very least a certain operating mind-set is suggested..

    • Zane

      Paragraphs are your friend, VX. I don’t think you have to look to the southern hemisphere to find authoritarian strong men surrounding themselves. But the real weakness is in ourselves:

      “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
      ― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

  • “Men, they come and go.”… Thank God!

  • Marianne Matthews

    virge …What an excellent summary of the high crimes and personal failings of the present Occupant of the White House! I have nothing to add except florid compliments to you for clear thinking and good memory, and a tireless cheering section for those of us who are determined that This Person must be a one-term President. Even if we manage this, cleaning up The Mess he has made of our laws and other issues is gonna be worse than the Augean Stables Clean-Up.

    Some months ago, there was a posting on the Internet of the results of a conference about this same Mess. The consensus was, “he has made everything worse.”

    Marianne

  • Marianne Matthews

    One more point, friends… Obama has been trying to develop a “secret Army” ever since he took office. First, it was supposed to be a “citizen militia,” sort of like the Hitler jugend that Hitler recruited from the overheated teenagers who, in an excess of eager loyalty were supposed to, and even did, report their own parents as enemies of the country. Enough of the grown-ups in or country pointed out that we already had in place multiple official organizations like the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Coast Guard, the National Guard, the State Police, the Secret Service, to name a few. This made his ill-thought out plan look more than a little silly, so he backed off temporarily. But once he finally learned about the SEALs, he decided he could pre-empt them as his palace guard. But that didn’t work either. There are enough men of good sense sprinkled throughout our military and the Pentagon so that he has been advised that you can’t claim to be cutting expenses while you are building your private Army.
    So what can a foolishly ambitious Commander in Chief do?
    It’ll be interesting to find out. Any suggestions?

    Marianne

  • Hogday

    Over here Prime Ministers come and go. Police officers and military swear an oath of allegiance to The Queen and many’s the time I’ve been glad I did.

  • REP

    I’m suprised Holder won’t share his band of ruffians in Philly.

  • Dust

    Imagine the howling from the Left, including the pinko media if someone said Navy Seals- Bush’s secret army.

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