Today on the pages of the Washington Post Johathan Finer echoed something I have been screaming about for ages – that the dog-and-pony shows that potentates are treated to when they make a quick trip to Iraq are nothing more than bad kabuki theatre.
I have been pointing out that it is a pain in the ass and a disruption of normal business when these jackasses visit a base stateside during peacetime, and in a war zone these productions are a fucking obscenity.
If it was up to me, every last politician that makes one of these sojourns would have to stay for 15 months and go on patrol. No regular showers, no air conditioning, no special security…if they want to know the score from the "boots on the ground" they can fucking live it like a soldier, or stay their asses at home.
Visits by these self-important chumps are bad enough stateside – they prompt all manner of stupid shit be undertaken. Kids get their bikes confiscated and locked in the garage – can’t have evidence that normal kids are living in those family housing areas, after all. But the thing that sticks out in my mind as perhaps the stupidest thing I ever saw in advance of a dignitary visit was picking all the oranges off the trees on base at Davis-Monthan AFB so none could fall and litter the ground. Seriously.
Yes. Even the fruit trees were in 35-10.
People in the military go to work every day just like everyone else, and they perform jobs. They just happen to perform jobs vital to national security, and they can’t just call in sick when a potentate decides to drop in. When everything gets dropped for a visit by one of these chuckleheads, it disrupts everything. (I have NEVER cast a subsequent vote for anyone who disrupted my life with one of their self-important little trips to grace us little people with their presence. On principle. And I can tell you with certainty I am not alone in this regard.)
A stake should have been driven through the heart of these bullshit trips to see the war when Lindsey Graham got five rugs for five bucks, and six American soldiers a mile away – that didn’t have those Apache gunships and Blackhawk helicopters and an entire company of soldiers fortifying their position – got dead.
It is time that the taxpayers – who foot the bill for these stunts – and friends, that is all they are – stunts – staged productions, set up for the cameras – put a stop to this bullshit. Start calling them on it. Hold them accountable. I know that the Constitution has taken a beating under Resident Evil™ and his minions, but so far as I know it still starts with the three most powerful words I know…We, the people.
And We, the people, have the power to take them to task and hold their perfect perfidy up for public review. So let's get on that, whadya say?
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