And Your Question Is…?

      WILL THE LIBYAN WAR TURN OBAMA’S 2012 TO TOAST?
     Q.  Will it?
     A.  I think it could, yes, very possibly. When I saw the demonstrators coming down Wacker the other day….mostly white liberals, some pretty old..I calculated how fleeting the liberal consciousness is.  News that similar groups were marching in Washington D.C., New York and San Francisco clinched it for me.  It tells me that if this “humanitarian” approach can still draw such opposition at the outset…before there are any flubs.. it’s not good for Obama.
    Q.  But this humanitarian thing is far different than your old-style George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush involvements that stressed American defense plus  vengeance against Saddam and the fear of his engulfing taking over Kuwait and/or harboring weapons of mass destruction…Nixon’s bombing the Cambodian sanctuaries.
     A.   Exactly. These initiatives were based on a patriotic appeal.  Liberals are suspicious of patriotic appeals and so their delicate little inner mechanisms stirred by years of secular humanism in colleges and universities  are triggered to oppose it….basically because liberals believe in a global patriotism ala Obama.  Even so, with all the namby-pamby window-dressing Obama applied to it, it  is not going over well and could well present a dagger at his throat.  He was really a fool to let his State Department push him into this thing.
      Q.  Explain.
      A.  This deal was crafted by Hillary’s State Department. You remember that the Pentagon’s Bob Gates quoted Douglas MacArthur saying that anybody who recommends anything like a land war in Asia or elsewhere should have his head examined.  That outraged the interventionist neo-con bulls who believe America must stride the world like a Colossus which gives them….sorry to be rather biologically explicit…tumescence.   I refer to the people who dominate Fox News’ Special Report…the ingenious wheelchair-bound Dr. Charles Krauthammer who wraps up his acerbic commentaries with sad, water spaniel eyes…the ever-smiling purring Billy Kristol of the highly influential Weekly Standard…having spread to the National Reviewcrowd which conducts lip-synch with its dead founder, William F.Buckley who years ago purged the Right of anti-Semitism by firing Sobran and refusing to run  Buchanan.
      Q.  Were they in the case of Sobran and Buchanan?
      A.  Yeah.  That’s why you see Buchanan fairly often in close agreement with veteran Lefty the shrill Eleanor Clift on the old “McLaughlin Group.” Sobran was distinctly so.  Buchanan still prattles on in paleo speak dead ringer parsing to assuage the memory of his late father. Bill.
      Q. Do they have a point—that most Neos have a special concern for  Israel that animates their world view and sets up the U.S. as a colossus?
      A.  Indubitably. That’s the case with Krauthammer and Kristol, with Barnes who as an evangelical nurtures biblical ties.   And The Wall Street Journal editorial board though generally WASP is also on board.
These people aren’t of dual citizenship remember—they just see the U.S. as remaining true to the goal of protecting Israel which is surrounded by bitter enemies which want to drive her into the sea.
       Q.  And you?
       A. As a former foreign service officer I have always been supportive of Israel,  do not adjudge Billy Kristol and Charles Krauthammer as anything other than loyal Americans….but at the same time I see them hyper-ventilating about so many threats to our security—urging us to go military when we are already engaged in two wars.   I want them to cool it.   Krauthammer…not Kristol…is one of the reigning intellectuals of the age—a geo-strategist.   I would like to see his measure taken up to the fullest on the panel….not just have the Land of Nod yes, certainly, Charles!  Right once again Charles!...become continue as a Greek ratificatory chorus.
        Q.  Who would you like to see on the panel occasionally?
       A.  Leslie Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations and a  former New York Times award winning staffer.
       Q.  Without putting too fine a point on it, Leslie Gelb is Jewish.
      A.  Well let’s do put a fine point on it. He is a critic of the Libyan “humanitarian involvement.”
       Q.  Let’s continue with your and Gelb’s critique.
       A.  Tomorrow.  Time for this octogenarian to go to bed: 11:50 pm 3/21.