Canned Questions, Succinct Answers

George Rebane

 
‘Blown away’ is an appropriate description of my reaction to the twenty-five minutes the President spent with General McChrystal in Copenhagen aboard Air Force One.  Here the Community Organizer in Chief is in Copenhagen as part of the Three Egos for Chicago presentation, and the General has flown thousands of miles out of theater to meet with Admiral Mike Mullen in Europe to discuss Afghanistan - it makes all the sense in the world for the President and his hand-picked general to meet and discuss what Obama has always called the “important” and “critical” war to secure America against Islamic terrorists.

So McChrystal flies to Copenhagen to touch base with the Commander-in-Chief, deliver his critical message about new Afghanistan strategy and troop levels required, and answer any questions that his boss would have.  And they spend only twenty-five minutes together.

To me this was extraordinarily revealing.  It turns out the junior birdman from Chicago and the career military man had nothing to talk about.  Obama has never been in the military or in any activity remotely connected with the military.  His knowledge of history, national projection of power, and war is book learning, if that.  He does not know of family separations, of partings that may be final.  His experience is totally local and political, and it ends where the pavement ends. 

Obama most likely had a few politically important ‘Afghanistan questions’ shoved in his shorts by his handlers.  He met the general on AF-1, asked his questions, to which the general gave the appropriate clear, concise, and complete answers - and the interview was over.

A real President would have taken the opportunity of the first meeting with his war theater commander to do more than the bare formalities.  Hell, the ‘opening prayer’ for two guys like that, intent on serving the country, would have taken more than 25 minutes.  That time would have served to get to know a little bit about each other over a freshly opened bottle of Maker’s Mark.  Then they would have spent and hour or two talking about the mid-east, about Iran and Pakistan that border Afghanistan, about the good and the bad of Iraq.  The general is plumb full of good information and assessments of what has worked, and, more importantly, what hasn’t in that region of historical disasters for western nations.  Twenty-five goddam minutes!!

As President, Obama could have come back fully briefed on the situation in the mid-east instead of getting succinct answers to some quick canned questions.  I mean, the damned interview was carried on as if they were in the Red Carpet Room of United Airlines and someone was rushing to catch a flight.  The last I looked, AF-1 was not a scheduled carrier.  That airplane takes off and flies at the pleasure of the President of the United States of America.

Comments

[Russ Steele]

George,

The only reason for the visit was to quell the controversy over only having met with the General once in 70 days. Obama is an empty shell. There was no room for a TelePrompTer in Air Force One. Plus, relying on a TelePrompTer in an interactive conversation is rather difficult to say the least, so without the TelePrompTer he had nothing to say, thus the meeting was as short as possible. Besides the General really wanted to know, "Am I going to get the troops I need", and Obama did not know the answer, he had not heard back from his liberal nutcase handlers yet. In addition, Obama was probably very uncomfortable in the presence of a real leader, thus the shorter the meeting the better for Obama. If the meeting went on too long with out adult supervision it would be come clear to the General he was dealing with a intellectually empty shell. Not the message the General would want to take back to his troops.

[Aaron]

What I want to know is, who on the White House staff came up with this "brilliant" idea?

Can you imagine the advance meeting? "We're taking a lot of flack for the President not having met with the General for two and half months. So we've got a brilliant idea. While we swoop in to seal the deal on the Olympic games, we'll fly the General 600 miles over to Copenhagen, have him meet with the President for 25 minutes, and then release a photo."

In other words, it's amazing to think about the fact that all this was supposed to be was a photo-op, and this was an absolutely pitiful excuse for just a photo-op!

I appreciate the points you've made on the merits, but from a purely political perspective, this is amateur hour and I'm amazed that the staffer who came up with this idea wasn't manning a weather station in Kaktovik, Alaska by noon the following day.