Yesterday, I got to read and watch all about General McChrystal's resignation from his post as the top US and NATO military commander in Afghanistan. President Obama's rose garden address carefully laid out the breach in millitary code of conduct that McChrystal (and his staff) opened in publically deriding the civillian leaders who set policy for the war back in Washington D.C.. Seems that the rules about this are pretty clear and without dispute. All the pundits have left to wonder about is, "what was he (McChrystal) thinking in flagrantly articulating doubt and critique about the administration" during his interviews with RollingStone magazine. I won't pretend to get inside his or anyone else's head and try to construe their thoughts around actions that lend themselves so readilly to getting busted, but it all seems a bit too obvious to me. McChrystal's bad actions seem motivated out of a want for things to change from how they are, to something they are (as yet) not. Well, it worked. Perhaps General Petreus will have a more successful time in helping the administration and the public understand what Afganistan means. Perhaps not. What is clear is that General McChrystal was unable to effect change through discourse with the administration, and instead, offered public critiques that he had to have known would burst the very codes of conduct about how we talk about war when we are a participant in it. Part of me wants to thank General McChrystal. Last week, nobody was talking about Afganistan. This week, everybody has an opinion on it. If this is the direct result of McChrystal's code breach, then Bravo! War is nasty, and anyone who invites us to regularly reexamine our policies and actions regarding it needs to be applauded. I doubt General McChrystal sat down and mapped out a strategy for how this would all unfold. I also doubt that his breach of the military's code of conduct regarding how millitary leaders talk about their civillian leaders was an accident. War is nasty and messy business. People die. Our people and their people die. Today we are talking about Afganistan.
CNN's announcement yesterday that Former NY Governor Eliott Spitzer will be cohosting a primetime news show is sure to tickle the fickle and rankle the rogue. I've seen a number of Spitzer's analytic contributions on MSNBC over the past several months, and have always found him to be smart, pleasant and persuasive. However, I never seem to be able to push aside my recollections that when he was Governor of New York he got busted for paying hookers (or a hooker) to have sex with him. I swing pretty far left, as do most of the folks I associate with, but nobody I know has ever shared with me that they pay hookers to have sex with them. My friends and familly are no prudes, but sex for money is a breach of social conduct that never seems to need reexplaining to anyone I know. I have never been to, or with, a hooker. Hell, the few times I've been to a strip joint all left me feeling sad for the girls who work there. But ... I often like hearing that other people (especially famous people) jeopardize their positions and their famillies by risking getting caught doing something that they know they shouldn't. I'm not really aiming at anything here other than to identify that last week I didn't consider the subject of politician news commentators hanging out with big-boobed hookers and this week I am. Thanks CNN.
My kids were grounded yesterday. Stuck for a full day in their rooms to ponder their conduct breach of avoiding physical conflict with eachother. What was worse, is that they were at the neighbors house when their wrastling and horseplay stopped being playful and led them both to come whinning home about how the other had acted bad. My wife and I agreed on the "grounding" and held firm. Fortunatly, both kids (ages 10 and 7) came through with flying colors and faced their punishment with only a modest amount of "boredom" complaints. Further, by this morning, they were happily playing together in a wonderfully (if not perplexing) collaborative manner. Hurrah! They learned a lesson about how not to problem solve and I got a day off from shuttling them around to friends, pool and play. Sometimes the benefits of bad behavior revise the way we think about the good things we want.
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