Narcissist in Chief Selfishly Shortens Soldiers’ Holiday
As noted here Saturday by Rick Moran, the Commander in Chief got a decidedly cool reception from the troops on a whistle stop at Fort Bliss in El Paso Friday. While this president already is not widely popular with our military, the attitude demonstrated by the shanghaied soldiers in that cavernous hangar was demonstrably cooler than at such past events. The conservative media interpreted that indifferent reception to dissatisfaction with Obama’s politics and his repeated failures as CinC, but the event is far more consequential as yet another example of how little the Obama Administration understands the military it commands.
I’m an old non-com who, as a bachelor lived in the barracks, and as such I’m well aware of the excitement that permeates any military barracks in the days leading up to a four-day, holiday weekend like Labor Day.
Virtually every soldier has made big plans to escape his military existence for four precious days and spend that time with family or friends. Many will have to use the first and fourth days for travel to and from distant destinations, which means only two, crucial days of holiday pleasure for them, sandwiched between two less pleasant days of travel, especially if they must fly commercially. Take away just one of those days and many of those soldiers’ plans will either have to be scrapped entirely or the time at home or whatever destination, be reduced to a single day. Plans made long in advance have to be rescheduled, a sometimes quite difficult task when it regards holiday weekend travel: flight changes may be impossible and hotels are booked solid; neither may allow changes in reservations without severe financial penalties.
So, some hotshot in the Obama campaign, feeling badly stung by the sparse turnouts for the president’s visits to other locales, gets a bright idea of how to produce a really big crowd for a photo op: “Hey, let’s schedule one for some military facility where the commander can be ordered to produce a big audience in a sufficiently impressive backdrop.” It was probably some over-eager, politically correct flack in the Pentagon who suggested the massive hangar at the Fort Bliss airfield, but you can bet it was some clueless member of the campaign with no military experience who picked the incredibly dumb date.
And as with so many other aspects of the disastrous Obama campaign, their scheme to produce a huge crowd ended up giving them another embarrassing black eye. They got their huge crowd all right but it was a silent, sullen crowd that was oozing hostility to the oblivious politician who had ruined their holiday weekend at worst and, at the least, had taken away one-fourth of their free time for his own selfish political gain. That from Democrats, who, knowing that the military is primarily politically conservative, are the first to demand political neutrality from those in uniform.
The resentment created by this incident isn’t limited to just those troops ordered to be in that hangar; it is shared by their far-flung friends and family members who won’t forget such a narcissistic, selfish, political imposition on their own holiday plans. Nor will it go unnoticed by other members of the military, their families, and the millions of veterans in this country who realize what an arrogant, selfish insult this was. Whoever it was on the campaign staff who scheduled that particular date for a military campaign stop might as well have said,
“Here, Mr. President, take this pistol and aim carefully for your middle toe…”
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden
#50 was me….hot seating at work again.
When I was stationed at Schofield Barracks in the 90’s President Clinton came for the 50th anniversary of VJ day and we had to give up our weekend. I understood why he came and why we had to attend. The only thing that pissed me off is he showed up 5 hours late and when it came time for the pass and review the 25th ID was half the size that it started out.
When I was stationed at Ft Campbell President Bush came during Thanksgiving weekend 2001. Attendence was completly voluntary (at least in my BN) and was still packed.
Neither of those were in an election year, and I don’t percieve them as being used to drum up votes like this time.
There is a difference between making campaign stops and stopping in to thank the troops. Any time it’s the President, certain things are required, and troops do what they are ordered to do. I have heard from friends, and I see it confirmed here, that several of GWB’s stops were voluntary to attend. I can’t speak to Big Willy, but I can speak to his wife, in that my buddy was required to show up at reserves, when she arrived and disembarked at his hangar, even though it wasn’t a drill weekend.
I never had to go through that, because we never had such dignitaries come through our Post, but I suppose I would bitch a little, too, if it was done on holiday weekend and it was required to attend, just because it was a campaign stop (which this was).
In the scope of things, it is valid to note that Bliss was used as a campaign stop, that it interupted the Troops w/e, and that their vocal response to the campaign speech was muted. But, in the scope of things, more than a notation of things may be overboard.
Apolitical Troops? The Troops never signed away their Rights and did swear an Oath to Protect the US Constitution. It is an implied responsibility to know what is going on in their government. UCMJ prevents them from attending or pontificating their politics in uniform. This is the source for THE MILITARY being apolitical, and is very important. The organization must remain neutral in politics.
But that is a far cry from the Troops being apolitical. So long as those Troops make certain that political viewpoints are their own and not in any way an institutional opinion, they retain the Right to form, to have, and even to voice those opinions. And the biggest violator of that is General Dempsey.
In the scope of things, there are far more important issues than a lost weekend for the Troops to consider in this election. These issues include Admin calls to erode their pay by ending inflation based raises, to throw 100,000 Troops into the unemployment lines, to cut Guard/Reserve monthly drill pay in half, to increase their Retirement Health Insurance costs, to push politics into the strategic and tactical levels of the War in Afghanistan, and other Military Issues.
While I am unhappy with the Romney campaign’s silence on these issues, the RNC has adopted a platform that counters those anti-Military, anti-Troop positions.
@ Poetrooper: The first example you use to show how the President is clearly horrible for the country is the unforgivable sin of .. not wearing a lapel pin of the flag? This is precisely the issue at hand, in my opinion – why in the world does it matter if he doesn’t wear a pin? It’s something of no substance whatsoever, yet is used as an emotional pivot with which to attack the President. And he’s bowed to the Islamists, huh? This is just like the bit where liberals scream about how Bush kissed the Saudis on the cheeks and has close personal ties to them, so he MUST be supporting the terrorists. When in Rome, do as the Romans – if another country has customs which, in respecting them, will gain you a diplomatic edge and doesn’t require some unacceptable compromise, you do them. What would it gain us from insulting, say, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia? As for the bin Laden thing, let’s just take one line to start with – one highlighted by the OPSEC guys, even: “Tonight, *I* can report..”. He’s the one speaking – what’s he supposed to say? He IS reporting; there’s nothing evil, credit-grabbing or in any other way wrong with that use of the word ‘I’. I imagine that had he said, “We can report”, people would criticize him for not being a ‘decider’, since it was a ‘group thing’. And he quite clearly did give credit to the SEALs and IC in that same speech. Nobody, nowhere, honestly thinks Obama himself was leading the raid – that’s an absurd idea postulated by some on the far-right so that it’s easier to ridicule him. But he was CIC, ordered the less-than-easy decision (want to debate that, I’m happy to), and deserves some credit. Had he launched a missile at the house in Abbottabad rather than send in the SEALs, would you give him credit, or would you insist it belongs to the fire team, the engineers who built the missile, the scientists who designed the GPS coordinates, etc.? Now, is Obama… Read more »
@48, Poetrooper, The point I am making is that if the president speaks its political. It makes no difference if he speaks in front of troops at Bliss or in the Rose Garden at the WH. The illustration I tried to draw @1 was that President Bush used a speech in front of the troops to remind us of what we were sacrificing for in Iraq. The date of the speech could have easily been in mid-July, but he chose to do it on the Fourth. In his case, XVIII ABN CORPS pulled out all the stops and tasked units to support his appearance on a nationally televised event. President Obama used a speech in front of the troops to mark a specific date, the anniversary of the end of combat operations in Iraq, and that date happened to coincide with the start of the four day weekend. Both speeches were inherently political.
If he’s still President in 2015, he’ll probably give a similar speech in front of the troops, marking the five year anniversary of the end of combat in Iraq and it will be a full week before Labor Day. Will that make it okay then?
I am unaware that Gallup or some other reputable polling organization executed a survey of mental health professionals that indicated that the strong majority of the respondents believe that the President of the United States suffers from a rather severe personality disorder.
Regarding my background, I’ve worn this uniform for 17 years and served three tours in Afghanistan as an intel guy with some basic level training in personality traits for the purposes of interrogation and human exploitation. I was also married to a boderline personality for 12 years. By the way, I am dating a mental health counselor. She thinks the President is a narcissist.
WRT 4 day weekends, I never even heard of the practice until I got to Bragg in 92. When I was stationed at Lewis from 89-91 all we got were the standard 3 day Federal holiday weekends. Overseas it was the same (Germany 87-89 and Korea 91-92.)
So while the give-the-troops-a-day-off-on-the-Friday-before-a-Monday-holiday has come to be the accepted thing in the modern Army, it’s really a relatively new phenomenon, and I don’t know about anyone else, but I never thought of a 4 day weekend as any sort of “entitlement” that I had earned – I knew that if I had duty on Friday I was going to put on a uniform and work and that’s just the way it was.
So honestly this whole thing seems like a tempest in a teapot. If those troops who were “volunteered” to be at Obama’s speech hadn’t been there I’ll bet a lot of them would have been pulling police call or on CQ or Staff Duty anyway (incidentally, Bliss used to be a Basic Training post, though I don’t know if it still is. If that was the case, well there you go, thousands of young recruits who wouldn’t have had a ‘day off’ anyway.)
And BTW, even though I am a registered republican and definitely NOT a supporter of Obama, I sure as hell would have rather been a ceremony with the president than standing in the blistering heat at parade rest for the retirement ceremony of some old fart I’d never even heard of while he goes on about his days in the brown shoe army.
OK Frosty, Anonymous, Beret Verde, etc., we are obviously not going to see eye to eye on this. You are never going to convince me that this wasn’t a poorly thought out political stunt. As for the argument you’ve all advanced that it’s simply a fact of military life, I agree. We’ve all spent our time in formation under a sweltering sun or freezing our butts off to honor some undeserving asshole, military or otherwise.
BUT, you missed my point that it didn’t have to be. it was an unnecessary imposition on the troops and their families that might not have happened under a more thoughtful CinC.
Frosty, my apology for attacking your credentials. It was late and I was cranky. Old farts do that a lot as you’ll learn some day. I respect your service, including that twelve years with the borderline personality-there should be hazardous duty pay for that, heh. Stick with your current girlfriend-she sounds like a smart lady.
That’s it for me on this piece. No more comments from this direction. I’m writing the next one, perhaps a fawning tribute to General Wun accompanied by that pic Jonn has of Dear Leader in full Stolen Valor regalia.
It was a political stunt. So was the Group Commander who had to have everyone together on a Sunday, so the visiting Corps Commander could see real “Green Berets” in a movie theater, on a Sunday so the group Commander could eat cheese for a better assignment (he got it too!).
I never forgot that the military’s boss is the president, and when he said jump… we did. I was not too keen with some of my bosses or missions, but that was not my say.
Bad bosses make bad decisions. They are everywhere and in every institution. Fortunately, no one got killed in this idiotic move.
It was a tacky, self-serving thing for a politician to do on the campaign trail. So what? Politicians do things just as bad or worse. You either vote for them or you don’t. Let it go. What really counts is whether or not you see the incumbent as having done the job he promised to do. When a reporter asked him yesterday how he would grade himself, he said “incomplete”. You and I both know that an incomplete actually means “failed.” It does not mean “give me more time” or “the dog ate my homework”. It means FAILED, and anyone who claims to have taught at the university level knows that. Or does he really know what it means? Here’s the comparison. Chris Christie is the governor of New Jersey. New Jersey was in financial straits before he was elected. Christie is belligerent, confrontational, aggressive and doesn’t give a crap whether you like his “style” or not (whatever that is). He brought New Jersey into solvency in three years, which is what he said he would do. The incumbent, on the other hand, said if he didn’t get the job done in four years, we could let him go. His own words. The popular opinion is that he didn’t get the job done, and making excuses like repeatedly blaming someone else is pretty lame after all this time. He simply didn’t deliver on his promises. If you hire an independent contractor to do a job for you, he gives you a quote based on time and expenses. If he doesn’t get the job done on time, within budget, you either let him go or you let him finish the job and don’t hire him back. You don’t give him a good reference, either. That’s why Angie’s List was started. Or if you run a business and hire someone to work on something specific, and he doesn’t meet your deadlines but charges overtime, turning his job into a budget-buster, then after more than a few poor annual reviews, you let him go. It is exactly that simple. I find it ridiculous… Read more »
I think Poetrooper does have a point about about Obama and narcissism [not that this attribute is isolated to just one politician].
Obama keeps harping the withdrawal from Iraq as both a fulfilled campaign promise – and – a feather in the cap of his Administration. What he fails to mention, every single time, is that the withdrawal is solely the work of the Bush Administrations negotiations on the SOFA agreement with the Maliki regime.