Obama's newest famous quote is "I'm really good at killing people" — but what was the context?

The Daily Mail cherry-picked the quote out of the new book "Double Down: Game Change 2012." The book's not out for normal people until tomorrow. (Buy it here.) So I'm stuck wondering. DM says:

A Washington Post report makes passing reference to the anecdote, saying that while speaking with his aides about the drone program Obama bragged that he was 'really good at killing people.' The Obama Administration has not responded specifically to reports of the alleged boast from the President.

The Daily Mail is punctilious enough to say "alleged" but can't resist characterizing the words as a "boast." We're told he "bragged." The headline says "President Obama joked...." Let's assume for the purposes of discussion that Obama really did say those words in that order. But let's try to imagine why he might have said that.

Perhaps you're imagining a childish man, exclaiming "I'm really good at killing people" like a numbskull teenager playing a first-person-shooter video game. Or maybe you're picturing someone more like a movie super-villain in his vast underground lair, cackling to his fawning minions as he creepily caresses his "kill" button.

But it's possible to think of a context in which Obama would be sympathetic. I could imagine a serious discussion of the lack of genuine accomplishment in his administration.

O: What will history say we have done? Nothing! I was the embodiment of hope, and everything I have touched has turned to ashes.

AIDE: But, sir....

O: What are the accomplishments? Name the accomplish of the Obama administration! What will people say?!

AIDE: He killed bin Laden.

O: A pathetic, isolated idiot sitting in his hovel, watching bad porn. The SEALs blew him away. That was really amazing of me.

AIDE: [Names several significant terrorists who have been killed through the drone program.]

O [sadly, sarcastically]: I'm really good at killing people.

Intent on writing this little dialogue, I searched for a list of 4 or 5 good names for the aide to tick off in an effort to bolster the President's spirits. See if you can do that. I couldn't do it. I kept running into "A List Of Children Killed By Drone Strikes In Pakistan and Yemen." Go there. Scroll through those names (and ages) and think about that context and why Obama might have said I'm really good at killing people.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons wins the Nobel Peace Prize, I say, and Meade says: "That's a slam on Obama."

"Why?" I ask, and he says, "Obama was going to go to war over chemical weapons. They're trying to say: Maybe we shouldn't have given you the Peace Prize." Hmm. I read the NYT article:

Urging the destruction of “an entire category” of unconventional weapons, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded its 2013 Peace Prize on Friday to a relatively modest and little-known United Nations-backed body that has drawn sudden attention with a mission to destroy Syria’s stocks of chemical arms under a deal brokered by Russia and the United States.

"Don't we need to look at their explanation of why they gave the prize." I mean, it could be more of a statement about how bad chemical weapons are — which would align with what Obama's been saying. But it could be about how there are peaceful ways to go about eliminating chemical weapons, which might be phrased in a manner that disapproves of Obama.

But look what we are doing! It's what everybody's been doing for the last 5 years: Making everything about Obama. The sun rises in the morning, and what does it mean for Obama? A bird twitters in a treetop, and what is he saying about Obama?

The chemical attack outside Damascus initially drew an American threat of military reprisal before Moscow and Washington reached a compromise arrangement to seek the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons stocks under international supervision.

Thorbjorn Jagland, the former Norwegian prime minister who is chairman of the panel, said chemical weapons had been used by Hitler’s armies in their campaign of mass extermination and on many other occasions by states and terrorists. He denied that the award to a body based in The Hague represented a Eurocentric shift after last year’s award to the European Union. “It’s global,” he said.

Nothing like denial to point the way to the truth?

What does this year's Peace Prize say about Obama?
	It's a slam.
	It's a mild rebuke.
	It's not about Obama, who can't be the recipient. It's about chemical weapons.
	It's vaguely supportive of Obama, who made chemical weapons his issue this year.
	It's solidly supportive of Obama, calling attention to his prime issue.
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"[T]he simultaneous attacks are bound to fuel accusations that the administration was eager for a showy victory."

Says the NYT, reporting on the U.S. military operations in Libya and Somalia today.

Officials said the timing of the two raids was coincidental...

But at a moment when President Obama’s popularity is flagging under the weight of his standoff with Congressional Republicans and his leadership criticized for his reversal in Syria, the simultaneous attacks are bound to fuel accusations that the administration was eager for a showy victory.

"President Obama’s toughest Syria hurdle: The calendar."

Oh no! Our leader, assailed by the calendar!

Obama will sit Monday for interviews for six TV news programs, which will air within an hour of what had promised to be the week’s most highly anticipated Washington event: the NFL Redskins’ season opener against Philadelphia....

If Monday Night Football pushed Obama’s address to the nation on Syria to Tuesday, odds are low for the president to have the nation’s attention to himself the rest of the week either.

The Sept. 11 anniversary comes Wednesday, the same day the Senate could vote for cloture. Yom Kippur begins Friday night.

Oh! That pesky September 11th anniversary, randomly popping up as a "tough hurdle" on Obama's — what's the metaphor? — race toward war! And this year, it's not just the usual anniversary of the day the terrorists declared war on the United States, it's now the first anniversary of the attack in Benghazi. Oh, my lord! The double 9/11 and football.

Obama won’t even have Tuesday to himself. Hillary Clinton is due to deliver a speech that afternoon in Philadelphia. Voters in New York City will head to the polls for that city’s primary elections. And the new iPhone event scheduled for that day has become an annual media spectacle.

Fate has no mercy on this man, this once-golden savior of the world! The double 9/11, football, and Hillary gives a speech in Philadelphia. A speech! In Philadelphia! (I wonder if she'll talk about Benghazi? What difference at this point does it make?) The double 9/11, football, and Hillary gives a speech... and New York has a primary... and Apple has the audacity to do another one of its PR events.

Here's Bill Clinton's old press secretary Mike McCurry:

“How do you hold the attention of the American people when it is increasingly hard to do so with the distractions of the NFL season and religious holidays and back-to-school nights?” 

Increasingly? Is football new? Is going back to school new? Is Yom Kippur new?! (Note: Only 1.7% of Americans are Jewish.)

“This is the challenge of the presidency, the ability to gather the nation around a common campfire is just not there anymore. You have to go for the sporadic bursts of attention and deal with the perpetual A.D.D. that people have.”

And now we are to be blamed for A.D.D.! People are tired of 12 years of war. It's not A.D.D. to react with an instinctive "no" to another war, a war that should have been explained already.

Why would a normal person — with a normal attention span — believe that Obama will tell us something new on Tuesday? Why didn't he look us in the eye and explain everything clearly when he first proposed it or when he said he was submitting the question to Congress? It's not A.D.D., it's common sense to reflexively turn away.

Timing has worked against the White House from the very start. The Aug. 21 attack that prompted the administration to gear up for a Syria strike left Obama violating his predecessor’s key rule on selling the public on a war: Don’t do it in August.

Politico writes as if war is funny and the real issue is the little things that bug Obama.

Obama submits to 6 interrogations on Syria — by Diane Sawyer (ABC), Scott Pelley (CBS), Wolf Blitzer (CNN), Chris Wallace (Fox), Brian Williams (NBC), and Gwen Ifill (PBS).

Why is he doing this?

1. It gives each network something unique of its own to show on the night before Obama does his live address, so maybe this was part of a deal to insure that they'd all preempt regular programming for the live address.

2. It acknowledges our skepticism not only about Syria but about the journalists who have coddled and promoted him to us for so many years. Putting them in competition with each other creates an incentive for somebody not to be a lackey. 

3. It makes him look strong, alert, and vital in the midst of many observations that Obama looks tired and weak.

4. If he's so vigorous and ready to go to war, maybe Americans who say we're tired of war will rouse ourselves.

5. We're not just tired of war, we're tired of those damned journalists, but isn't there one person on that list of 6 that you're not tired of?

6. At least you can't accuse him of dodging the tough questioner on some other network. He's submitting to Fox too. (But Chris Wallace is kind of a sweetheart. Look at him here.)

ADDED: It's also possible that Obama, knowing the vote on Syria is already lost, is using the occasion to set up the congressional vote so that it will work to the best advantage of Democrats in the 2014 elections.

"It is a very strange moment for Mr. Obama..."

The NYT editorial on Obama's Syrian difficulties. It's against a military strike, I think, but in the most invisible possible way.

Let me paraphrase the 10 paragraphs:

¶1 — Obama is having trouble selling his plan to attack Syria. 

¶2 — We're right to worry that the supposedly narrow attack will turn into another big war.

¶3 — The Pentagon is planning for broader war.

¶4 — The administration has asked the Pentagon to come up with more targets — more than the 50+ targets we already have.

¶5 — Obama has been vague about what these additional targets are (but they can't be the actual chemical stockpiles, because bombing them would unloose the poison).

¶6 — Talk of launching missiles from offshore has given way to reports of sending in bombers.

¶7 — Some members of Congress want to hem Obama in but McCain openly advocates taking the side of the rebels and ousting Assad.

¶8 — Obama is supposed to be the guy that gets us out of wars, and he owes us more assurance that what is planning really is narrow.

¶9 — Putin is staring Obama down.

¶10 — The whole group of foreign leaders gave Obama the cold shoulder.

¶8 is the key paragraph. It's the one with the quote I put in the post title. It's the one where the editors get as close as they are willing to answering the question posed in the headline: "Can Mr. Obama Avoid Mission Creep?" I think their secret answer is "no," but they don't want to say that. Instead, they lay out their worries and challenge him to explain how he's going to avoid a larger war. They say "the public deserves to understand more fully what 'limited' military action actually means" as if maybe it's our comprehension problem or his failure to sufficiently elaborate.

The first paragraph references Obama's planned speech on Tuesday, so maybe the editors thought, let's give him a chance to be specific about these things. Maybe the great speech-maker can explain it all next week. What's strange — if they want to talk about strange — is that Obama hasn't delivered the big explanatory speech yet. The simplest explanation is that he can't explain, and the answer to the question "Can Mr. Obama Avoid Mission Creep?" is just: no.

***

"Mission creep" sounds — to me, anyway — like a term from the Nixon era. (There was CREEP.) But in fact, at least according to Wikipedia's "mission creep" article, the term goes back to Somalia:

The first two articles to use the term in the Washington Post were both by columnist Jim Hoagland ("Prepared for Non-Combat", April 15, 1993 and Beware 'mission creep' In Somalia, July 20, 1993). The New York Times used the term for the first time in an article by correspondent John H. Cushman, Jr. written after the October 4, 1993 firefight in the capital of Somalia, Mogadishu, in which 18 American military personnel were killed.

The U.S. and later UN Mission in Somalia (Restore Hope) would seem to be the classic example of mission creep....

Restore Hope.

***

Whatever makes you happy... whatever you want....

"Obama's strategic languidness has put lawmakers in a position such that many of them will be unable to vote either 'yes' or 'no' in good conscience."

"And with his failure to develop even a political strategy for approaching Congress on this matter, he has managed the dubious achievement of leading the U.S. into a foreign-policy quagmire without firing a shot."

ADDED: When we look back at Barack Obama, what will we say? I think it will have to do with the way we wanted to believe that the old parental "use words" admonition was the best advice and we conned ourselves into seeing him as the embodiment of that fantasy, and he tried to be our dream.

But the world isn't that pretty, and the dream doesn't make much sense unless enough people to play along. Giving him the Nobel Peace Prize in advance was part of the shared dream: Come on, everyone into the delusion.

But the "use words" approach gave way to using bombs, which were supposed to be enough like words that we wouldn't wake from the dream. Bombs express our disapproval of the worse things done on the ground, the ground which our "boots" never touch.

Did Kerry say we won't put "boots on the ground" in Syria?

It's complicated.

I think he just wanted to stop Congress from putting a limitation in the authorization, because the President never wants to be limited, but the President limited himself by going to Congress and asking for authorization, which he seems also to maintain that he doesn't need:

Later, Kerry returned to the question, saying “I don’t want anyone misinterpreting this from me earlier” and specifying that in the authorization of force proposed by the administration “there’s zero capacity” for ground troops. Kerry reiterated that he was “hypothesizing” about potential future scenarios, “but not in this authorization.”

Why is he using the word "authorization"? Shouldn't the secret argument be that if they suddenly need to react to a fluid situation by putting boots on the ground, the President has the power to do that, just as the President believes he can launch the air attack on his own, but is simply choosing to ask Congress to approve? What he doesn't want — I would think — is for this approval to contain any disapproval.

The President is strongest when he acts in accordance with Congress's expressed approval. The middle level of power is acting alone, where Congress is silent. He's got the least power when he's acting against the position taken by Congress. He doesn't want his effort to get into category 1 with respect to the air attack to deprive him of the category 2 level of power with respect to other actions he might want to take in the future. He doesn't want to get stuck in category 3.

"How the U.S. Left is Failing Over Syria."

Interested in how consistent the anti-war left has been about Obama's military adventures, I ran across this Counterpunch piece by Shamus Cooke:

It’s now painfully clear that Obama’s war on Syria is a replay of Bush’s march to war in Iraq, both built on lies. Zero evidence has been put forth that proves the Syrian government used chemical weapons. On the contrary, evidence has been collected that suggests the U.S.-backed Syrian rebels are responsible for the attack.

If Obama wages an aggressive attack on Syria — especially without UN authorization — he’ll be committing a major international crime that will, by any standard, make him a war criminal, just like Bush before him.

And because Obama’s attack on Syria followed Bush’s logic, you’d assume that liberal, progressive, and other Left groups would do what they did when Bush went to war: denounce it unconditionally and organize against it.

Of course, this isn't happening.

ADDED: Cooke says: "Every head of state that is targeted by the U.S. government must be portrayed as an inspiring 'Hitler,' since attacking a nation led by 'Hitler' is, of course, a 'good' thing to do."

And sure enough, here's John Kerry today, doubling down on Assad is Hitler: "Secretary of State John Kerry told House Democrats that the United States faced a 'Munich moment' in deciding whether to respond to the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government."

In search of war protest.

Today at the Wisconsin Capitol Square. The protest singers are there, doing their version of "O Mary, don't you weep, don't you mourn/O Mary, don't you weep, don't you mourn/Pharaoh's army got drowned/O Mary, don't you weep...."

Are we Americans supposed to be having a national conversation about Syria?

Could we go back to the national conversation about race? Because there we're at least talking about something we've been observing, sometimes even first hand, for decades. Yes, we say a lot of foolish things, and we can annoy each other, but that's within the realm of recognizable human conversation.

How are we supposed to talk about Syria? Here, read this WaPo piece: "9 questions about Syria you were too embarrassed to ask." That's the most basic primer, but it's loaded with complexities and will not — I predict — make you feel that you can participate in a debate about what we ought to do. It will only make you feel hopeless, not only about what the U.S. could do to help, but even about what you could contribute to the thinking on the subject.

This is what causes Americans to decide to trust the President, and in this case the man we're pressured to trust has asked for a consultation from Congress. (He hasn't asked for authorization. That I can see.) As this process of congressional decision-checking gets under way in the next week or so, what are you going to do?

What are you going to do about Syria?
	I will care, but nothing more, and I will trust our leaders to do the best they can.
	I will despair, trust no one in government, and direct my attention to matters closer to home.
	I will actively educate myself, observe events, and attempt to participate intelligently.
	I will rely on ideology and party affiliation to determine what to say, and I'll speak out.
	Althouse should tell me what to do, and I'll do that.
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"I know you're trying to subtly rope me in to the issues of the day. I refuse to be roped in."

Said George W. Bush, handling questions about Syria in precisely the style that befits a former President, speaking publicly.

But what if President Obama were to privately consult with George Bush? This is something I've fantasized about. I imagine Obama talking about how much he understands now what Bush went through and how Bush is the one person in the world who understands what he's going through. I picture Bush supporting the younger man in a completely empathetic and patriotic way.

Nicely played, Mr. Obama.

Besieged on all sides, he made the right move. He's asking Congress, obviously because he wants to be told "no," but this way he'll be able to blame Congress for any bad consequences or accusations of such.

In a hastily organized appearance in the Rose Garden, Mr. Obama said he had decided that the United States should use force but would wait for a vote from lawmakers, who are not due to return to town for more than a week. Mr. Obama said he believed he has authority to act on his own but did not say whether he would if Congress rejects his plan.

Hastily organized... Congress out of town... Cameron just got out of having to participate by getting his "no" from the legislature... sending Kerry out yesterday to test the reaction was a total bomb. It's kind of a little obvious, and he didn't really have another good move, but I'm going to celebrate the occasion with a Nicely played, Mr. Obama.

ADDED: I would have put this post up a lot sooner, but Meade and I went downtown to see what kind of anti-war protests there might be here in Madison. I'll have some amusing video soon.

“How do you ask a man to be the [first] man to die for a mistake?”

Meade IM's a rewrite of John Kerry's famous Vietnam question: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"



The rewrite is on the occasion of John Kerry's new role as Secretary of Defense State:

Kerry Becomes Chief Advocate for U.S. Attack

Jabbing his finger at the lectern, his voice forceful, his words brimming with indignation, John Kerry laid out the case like the prosecutor he once was, making a closing argument to a skeptical jury.

Again and again, some 24 times in all, he used the phrase “we know” as he described the intelligence that Syria’s government massacred more than 1,400 people with chemical weapons. And then, while saying no decision had been made, he left no doubt that the United States would respond with military power.

Here's Bruce Springsteen in 2007 — back when Bush was Prez and everything sounded different —  yelling and guitarizing the morality of "Last to Die":

Who'll be the last to die for a mistake
The last to die for a mistake
Darlin' will tyrants and kings fall to the same fate
Strung up at your city gates
And you're the last to die for a mistake

I don't know, darlin', but darlin' Barack is President now. Let's check the Springsteen set lists. "Last to Die" is #108 on his most-played list and — by coincidence — it's been played 108 times. (For comparison: "Born to Run" is #1 and has been played 1347 times.) Springsteen has only played "Last to Die" 4 times during the Obama administration, 3 times in October 2009 and 1 last March. (The other 104 times were from September 2007, when it was first played, to August 30, 2008.)

Bruce's current tour is called the "Wrecking Ball Tour" so maybe his more into destruction these days, but I suspect the tour name is just a 64-year-old man's effort to maintain the ethos of rock and roll. Maybe he supports Barack Obama's military adventures, because, you know, it's Barack Obama, man.

I mean, I am just generally wondering, where are all the war protests? I was thinking about going down to the Capital Square this morning. It's a summer Saturday here in Madison, Wisconsin, and the crowds are there, at least for the Farmers Market. There should be some protesters, don't you think? Anti-war protesters, not just anti-governor-trying-to-balance-the-budget protesters.

But I'd like to see Bruce Springsteen whip out "Last to Die" and tweak it to "First to Die." 

Obama has "not made any decisions" on Syria.

But he's "not considering any open-ended commitment." And "In no event are we considering any kind of military action that would involve boots on the ground, that would involve a long-term campaign."

What should you be paying attention to right now?

"Errol Morris' documentary 'The Unknown Known,' a look at former Secretary of Defense and Iraq war architect Donald Rumsfeld will also hit the festival trifecta."

The director famously profiled another polarizing defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in his 2003 film 'The Fog of War'; that movie brought Morris and Michael Williams the Oscar for best documentary. The Rumsfeld film's U.S. release date has not been finalized.

I love Morris, and "Fog of War" was great. I look forward to seeing how Rumsfeld handles the intense Interrotron interrogation. By the way, I see that Rumsfeld is criticizing Obama's approach to war in Syria.

And here's McCain urging Obama along (via Real Clear Politics).

But don't get distracted. Pay attention to something that's truly alarming: Sandra Bullock in SPACE!

The speech by the speechmaker about The Speech by The Speechmaker.

The 50-year anniversary of Martin Luther King's "Dream" speech isn't about Obama except to the extent it is.

We'll see what happens in the speeches today, speeches about a speech, but MLK was much more than that speech, though over the years MLK has been reframed as That Speech, which works to align Obama with MLK, since Obama is, above all, the speechmaker, even though he too is so much more. He's the President of the United States, and we need him to do so much more than give another speech — my God, we are going to war, war over weapons of mass destruction, war without the United Nations, without the coalition of the willing, without the authorization of Congress — but today he'll be giving another speech, a speech about The Speech, the speech by the speechmaker about The Speech by The Speechmaker.

"Now that President Obama's administration says it's prepared to arm Syria's rebels, this raises a question relatively few people can answer:..."

"Who exactly are these guys?"

Are The Rebels United?

No.... U.S. policy shows the sharp distinction the Obama administration is making between the various factions. Weapons will be going to more secular groups, while the administration has declared the leading Islamist faction, Jabhat al-Nusra, a terrorist organization.

Trust the Obama administration to make sharp distinctions, count on the Syrian rebel groups to maintain sharp distinctions, and expect the distinctions to continue into the future if the rebellion succeeds.

"It is irresponsible for critics like Mr. McCain and Mr. Clinton to fault Mr. Obama..."

"... without explaining how the United States can change the course of that brutal civil war without being dragged too far into it."

Michelle Obama — unlike Barack — will not be interrupted.

Everyone's paying attention to the way Michelle Obama insisted that everyone pay attention to her or she's leaving. When some lady yelled about gay rights during a fundraising speech, the First Lady said "One of the things I don’t do well is this" and that the heckler could "listen to me or you can take the mic, but I’m leaving" and "You all decide. You have one choice."

The "you" is the heckler when she says "you can take the mic." But the "you" in "You all decide" and "You have one choice" is probably the whole audience. "You all" is a way to indicate the larger group, and she says that after the crowd, we're told, applauds loudly. She doesn't order the throng to throttle the heckler, but she's essentially saying you need to shut this woman up, because obviously, no one there wants Michelle Obama to walk out.

10 days earlier, Barack Obama was famously interrupted, also by a female heckler. He was talking about his military policies, and she was anti-war. Obama — amazing many people — went off script, engaged with her criticism, and even said she — or at least her "voice" — was "worth paying attention to"

Obama departed from his prepared script by responding: "Look at the current situation, where we are force-feeding detainees who are being held on a hunger strike. I'm willing to cut the young lady who interrupted me some slack because it's worth being passionate about. Is this who we are? Is that something our founders foresaw? Is that the America we want to leave our children? Our sense of justice is stronger than that."...

After she was led out of the auditorium, Obama was applauded when he said: "The voice of that woman is worth paying attention to.... Obviously, I do not agree with much of what she said, and obviously she wasn't listening to me in much of what I said. But these are tough issues, and the suggestion that we can gloss over them is wrong."

Obama had his reasons for engaging with his protester. In fact, it could have been planned political theater. It might have made him look good, though it's also easy to mock him for it (or, more aptly, to mock the entire speech for going this way and that, evasively). There's no way the heckler made Michelle Obama look good, especially in contrast to her husband's recent performance. It's all too easy to portray her as arrogant and unconcerned about the interests of everyone who came to the event.

But let's be a little sympathetic. She began with self-deprecation: "One of the things I don’t do well is this." And I hear in that a reference to Barack: He does do these things well. You just saw him make vivid political theater out of engaging with a woman who yelled at him. I can't do that. I can't risk that. 

Even the statements she did make are getting critiqued! She attends these events, gives a dramatic reading of the lines in a competent, actorly fashion, and that's her public role. She can't ad lib policy on the topic of some random person's choice. (In this case, it was some executive order about federal contractors discriminating against gay people.) She only wanted to say: The planners of this event are responsible for keeping perfect decorum, and my appearance is conditional on their meeting this responsibility. They've already failed me, and they need to step up and get it right immediately.

On the spot, she found a way to say that in simple language that did not involve smacking down the heckler or ordering any minions around. She used the language of choice when addressing others and spoke of her own choice as if she were a simple and powerless person who could either continue to speak or stop.

Considering the alternatives, she did pretty well.