Our Servants Serve Us Ill

Tonight the pres­i­dent will make a speech about what to do in Afghanistan.  Part of what he is bas­ing his deci­sion upon is a report from his gen­eral there, Gen. Stan­ley McChrystal.

I can’t see the report.  You, unless you are a con­gressper­son or a sen­a­tor or a top staffer, can’t see it either.  It’s clas­si­fied.  But don’t worry.  Those peo­ple who begged us for the chance to serve us are cleared to see it and decide on our behalf what to do with the lives and for­tunes of our sol­diers, sailors, marines, and air­men and the bil­lions of dol­lars this ven­ture will cost.

Susan Fer­re­chio, writ­ing in the Wash­ing­ton Exam­iner, notes

McChrystal’s clas­si­fied report on the war in Afghanistan sup­pos­edly includes his deter­mi­na­tion that as many as a half-​​million U.S. troops will be needed to com­plete the mis­sion there over a five year period.

But most law­mak­ers prob­a­bly haven’t seen that star­tling fig­ure, or the rest of the clas­si­fied report for that mat­ter, because, just as when I first checked in at the end of Octo­ber, few seem to lin­ing up to read it — despite the fact that they will soon have to decide whether to approve fund­ing for a big troop increase.

The report has been avail­able for more than a month.

Most law­mak­ers?  How many is most?

A tip­ster told us weeks ago that few Sen­a­tors and House mem­bers have taken an inter­est in the report, and an infor­mal sur­vey seems to back that up. I did my own semi-​​random sam­pling of more than a dozen mem­bers. Only three said they had read any of it.

Three?  3?

“I have not read it,” said Sen. Sher­rod Brown, D-​​Ohio, who is wary of fund­ing another troop increase.

Well, he’s not one of The Three.

“I can’t remem­ber whether I read the clas­si­fied or the declas­si­fied report. I can’t remem­ber,” said Ike Skel­ton, D-​​Mo., Chair­man of the House Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee, when I asked him about it last month.

OK.  He doesn’t know if he is or is not one of The Three and he’s the com­mit­tee chairman.

These are the peo­ple, recall, who begged to have the priv­i­lege of serv­ing us, to do things like read clas­si­fied reports that we can’t read. Why, one might won­der, would they refuse to do such a sim­ple thing so that when they made a deci­sion on our behalf it would be an informed deci­sion?

Well, if we were won­der­ing that our ques­tion was answered by one senator.

Sen. Jeff Ses­sions, R-​​Ala., a top mem­ber of the Sen­ate Armed Ser­vices panel, said the clas­si­fied report would answer many of the ques­tions law­mak­ers are now ask­ing about why the troop increase is needed.

“The McChrys­tal report is a bril­liant report,” he said.

If they read this bril­liant report that we can’t read they might have to weigh its mer­its and the pros and cons and make a deci­sion for us and for the United States that would be the right thing to do.

So much eas­ier and safer to take a poll and ask us, who can’t read the report, what we think on the day before the vote, and then if it is the wrong deci­sion blame it on us.  Or maybe on George W. Bush.

But not them. They were just fol­low­ing orders.  Read the whole dis­gust­ing mess HERE.

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Tags: just following orders, McChrystal Report, Political Maneuvers, politicians