NYT
Is it just me, or has the time come to get out the fool’s cap, dust it off and place it smartly on the head of John McCain?
What has happened to that man? He makes a nitwit public remark about the newly “safe” Baghdad in which Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the American forces in Iraq, saunters about without a helmet. When it is learned that the general, being of sound mind, goes out with a small army of Humvees and fully armed bodyguards, McCain is embarrassed.
He backtracks and rephrases weakly, insisting that he didn’t mean to say “without protection.” He should have left it at that and it would now be quite forgotten. Where were his advisors?
Instead, he hops a plane to Baghdad and proceeds to stage (the operative word) what must be one of the strangest travesties in modern political history.
We at home are treated to the sight of a gregarious McCain, shopping and giggling in the marketplace — and wearing no helmet. He is, however, clad in a flak jacket. What’s wrong with this picture? A man in a flak jacket selling safety?
Unseen, we learn, are a surrounding force of more than 100 soldiers armed for action, a small fleet of Humvees, strategically placed sharpshooters and streets blocked off for the theatrical occasion. Above are a Black Hawk and two combat helicopters. Did he think we would not find out the extent of this stunt, endangering not only the troops requisitioned for the performance but also the shopkeepers seen with him, marking them as America-friendly with the usual attendant results?
I pictured McCain as a furious movie director, chewing out his cameraman: “You goddamn idiot, you weren’t supposed to show the flak jacket, the soldiers, the armed might … Now I look like a consummate ass!”
Right.
What will daredevil McCain’s next stunt be? Driving in a Nascar race without a seatbelt?
I’ve tried to think of the appropriate caption for the shot of the bare head of the smiling McCain, there in blood-soaked Baghdad. How about “What, me worry?”
(We later learn that there just happened to be an attack an uncomfortably short time later on the very spot that Knievel John and his troupe of conscripted extras just vacated.)
May we return for a moment to the absent helmet? Makes our soldiers look a little sissy doesn’t it, feeling the need of this apparently dispensable piece of equipment? (Raises another question: could a helmetless head in a combat zone contain anything worth protecting?)
As background to this mindless event, we learn that before, during and after it, a hefty number of our soldiers have been killed, along with the usual boxcar load of civilians.
You hate to say it, but it’s hard to imagine even the “Bushies” coming up with such a silly and dangerous jape. It makes Rove & Co. look like statesmen. What politically does McCain hope to gain these days? What will the voters think? Mightn’t a presidential candidate so ardently cheerleading for the extension of this war fall equally in love with a future one?
*******
At a press conference a day or two earlier, the current president trotted out his oft-repeated remark about being “tired of the people in Congress who think they know more about war than the generals on the ground.” I wish a gutsy reporter would offer, “Mr. President, we are into our fifth year of this bloody war. Is it sacrilege to ask just what’s been so hot about the performance of our generals on the ground?”
And then there’s, “If we announce a departure date, the enemy will just hunker down until we leave.” Isn’t that what most of Iraq’s “army” also will do? (They’re referred to by our troops as the “Keystone Kops.” Except the Kops showed up for work.)
Doesn’t never announcing a date allow them to return to their hammocks and let G.I. Joe continue to absorb the bullets?
And finally, above the smoke and the blood and the flying body parts looms the figure of our elected leader, mouthing once again his favorite three-word phrase, “making good progress.”
Sir, what in the name of the sweet baby Jesus would bad progress look like?
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