The Military Should Not Be a Shield for the Adminstration's Failures

In the last couple of days I have started to notice a curious new narrative coming out of the White House spin machine and subtly being presented by our news media. It is curious in a disturbing sort of way.

I noticed it first yesterday in a story published over at the Politico entitled President Obama's Evolution as Commander-In-Chief.

The most visible appearances of Obama as commander in chief are the speeches he’s given at military bases, the visit to Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day and the image of him saluting a flag-draped coffin at Dover Air Force Base.

The crux of the article was to show how Obama learned how to render a proper military salute; while being just nuanced enough to say that he spent some time learning how to salute, it was vague enough to not give any real details on how this was accomplished. The reader was left with the impression that this was president who was deeply concerned about the sensibilities of military service members and wishing to do right by them.

Fair enough. I figured it was a one-time puff piece, but then I ran across this story in a Denver newspaper which links back to an original Washington Post article today that attempts to show a president who is seeking advice from all sources to help shape his decision making. What raised my curiosity, however, was a couple of passages that were directly targeted towards the military audience.

During one of his Afghan review meetings last year, President Barack Obama surprised senior advisers by jumping into a discussion between two military officials about a new study of post-traumatic stress disorder. No one in the room had briefed Obama on the data.

"It's not like we'd sent him the study, but he'd clearly seen it," one adviser said. "It was telling."

PTSD is a serious issue and one that while much is known about it, the treatment is just as varied as the circumstances which cause it and vary from person to person. It is what makes the condition so insidious, because there is no one-size-fits-all or magic pill to treat it. I just found it odd that an article purporting to show how Obama seeks advice starts with paragraph or two showing him apparently letting senior advisers know he was familiar with the issue. Why he thought it was something to bring up in a review of Afghanistan is beyond me; maybe it was a topic thrown out for discussion, but to me appears to be an attempt to portray him as a empathetic leader concerned with making victims out of the military.

My fears were not assuaged when later on in the article I come across this.

After a middle-of-the-night trip to Dover Air Force Base to receive the bodies of fallen soldiers, Obama was both moved and disturbed, said advisers who talked with him about it. The speech he delivered a short time later at West Point announcing a 30,000-troop increase in Afghanistan was also "very emotional," Jarrett said.

"He talked to us all about the trip to Dover and coming back at 4 in the morning, and just how hard that was," she said. "But he couldn't let that interfere with making a decision that he thought was best for the American people.

The Jarrett mentioned above is Valerie Jarrett, who has been taking to the airwaves recently as part of the White House spin machine trying to somehow put lipstick on this pig of an administration.

The trip to Dover was nothing more then a photo op and everybody knows it. What is sending shivers up my spine is that in both of these stories so far the liberal view of our service members as victims come through, but I also am sensing an attempt for this administration to push more of these military related stories in the hope that like oppressed people all around the globe, they can find safety and security in the umbrella provided by those who wear the uniform of this country.

I guess with the week they just experienced they just may feel that way.

UPDATE: Right on cue here comes a story, once again from Politico about the First Lady making an announcement for an $8.8 Billion increase in support programs for the military. Why was the First Lady chosen to make this announcement? Veterans will certainly welcome the increase, if it goes to what it is purported to go for. With this administration that is a big IF.

Stepping up her focus on military families, first lady Michelle Obama announced Tuesday an increase in federal spending for support programs, a 3 percent hike that raises federal investment to a record $8.8 billion for the 2011 budget.