RACHEL MADDOW NOT PRAGMATIC

Rachel Maddow needs a lesson in pragmatic politics. She condemns Obama for cabinet appoints. There are no women; not true, there are few women but there are women in the administration and she condemns Hagel for being anti-gay 17 years ago.  Our friends on the right take these two things to mean that we would have been better off if Romney had been elected. This is not what she is implying at all it is how here enemies will view and use her remarks. She is an important liberal celebrity and therefore a target for this kind of attack.

The next point is that she condemns Chuck Hagel for his anti gay remarks made many years ago about an openly gay ambassador. Think about it this way. She and many others have been fighting to have gay people accepted and not shunned in society yet she slams the door in the face of the people their proselytizing have converted to their way of thinking. Chuck Hagel is one of them—actually; her attack on him was rather vicious.

Then we move to John O. Brennan. Yes, he is associated with drone attacks and she and others should confront with that fact. But, do people like Spenser Ackerman and Robert Greenwald, harsh critics of drone strikes who live in a world of intentional ignorance, have a solution to the actual problem Obama is dealing with? They do not. Targeted killings of people are wrong; we all agree with that. Yes, collateral deaths are doubly wrong. Again, we all agree with that. However, there are people in this world who are plotting and planning to destroy us if they can. In addition, these people harbor themselves in various countries with which we are not at war. We should not send Navy Seals into these countries; we all agree that would be an act of war—in the case of Bin Laden Obama decided to risk it. Interpol, a non-military organization, can move across boarder but does not have the power need to control sinister plots. Terrorism is a tactic not constrained by political boarders.

Obama is on the cusp of a world changing reality dealing with the manner of warfare—the solution what ever it is will be historic. He is overseeing the transition from great armies and navies clashing in mighty battles defined by political boundaries to seeking and destroying individuals in isolated cave, homes, and vehicles across and undefined political world. Ackerman is a starry-eyed idealist and Greenwald is trying to make money by promoting a film he is making; they are both advantage takes. Regardless, Obama is taking an approach he has taken before; appoint a person to a position that advocated an unpopular program to correct the deficiencies of that program as best they can.

Here is my take on Obama’s thinking by appointing Brennan, a civilian (the first one in a long time), to head the CIA. He wants the CIA, hence the military, out of the drone business.  He wants the Department of Defense to do the business of killing. He wants Hagel as Secretary of Defense because the right wing politicians have all but taken over the Pentagon. Obama, as Commander in Chief wants that control. In addition, he wants the Department of Defense out of the State Department. I think Obama is a political genius and shuttlecock, my name for Rachel Maddow, should try to catch up to him.