Michele Flournoy. © Provided by Washington Examiner
Spencer Ackerman, Daily Beast: She Helped Escalate an Endless War. Will She End It?
Michele Flournoy is a revered member of the defense establishment and practically a lock to run a Biden Pentagon. Her path there ran through ramping up the Afghanistan war.
There are uncertainties around many of Joe Biden’s Cabinet selections, but not around one. Barring a shocking change in the coming weeks, Michele Flournoy, a senior Pentagon official during Bill Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s presidencies, will be the next secretary of defense and the first woman to run the Pentagon in its 73-year history.
Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth is also under consideration, per a source familiar. So is Jeh Johnson, the former Department of Homeland Security secretary. But Flournoy is the clear frontrunner for the job.
A centrist, and perhaps the Democratic Party’s foremost defense expert, she has a well of bipartisan respect from the defense world. Part of how she earned her current prestige, however, was in helping craft Obama’s Afghanistan war strategy, which paved the way for a futile escalation. The surge of troops up to a 2010 high of 100,000, which was opposed by then-Vice President Joe Biden, yielded little durable achievement in return for the lives of hundreds of troops, and of even more Afghans.
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WNU Editor: She is far away the probable choice for US Secretary of Defense. The other two are not. One is a retired military officer, and the other is 82 years old .... Michele Flournoy, in line to be first female defense secretary, may be forced by Biden to shrink DOD (Washington Examiner). And as for her record. The above author focuses on her role in escalating the Afghan war, but she also helped craft US policy on Libya that eventually ended with that country broken and facing continuing strife. But if the recent "puff pieces" in the media are any indication, the US military establishment clearly wants her, and that is a constituency that Joe Biden does want to satisfy.
7 comments:
US military establishment clearly wants her, and that is a constituency that Joe Biden does want to satisfy.
There are what? Around between 1 to 2 million in the Military or civilians working for the military? Most of those are rank and file and have not considered a policy of any sort.
So we are talking about maybe a 100,000 people at or near the top, who want something. 1000,000 out of a population of 328 million and that is the constituency we must satisfy?
Maybe they could afford their homes in the tide water without a war, if they would not import 2 to 4 million cogs a year. More demand drives up the prices.
What is it with First World Countries and their fascination with female defense secretaries?
"The above author focuses on her role in escalating the Afghan war, ..."
What a loaded word, escalating.
You fight a war until you won, lose, have a treaty, or just go home.
You could say the FDR escalated WW2 by ordering more aircraft carriers and authorizing the raising of more infantry divisions in Ww2.
es·ca·late (ĕs′kə-lāt′)
v. es·ca·lat·ed, es·ca·lat·ing, es·ca·lates
v.intr.
To increase in intensity, extent, or amount: tensions that escalated into violence.
v.tr.
1. To increase, enlarge, or intensify: escalated the hostilities in the Persian Gulf.
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/escalating
I don't by the whole, I am learning the English language bit. I'm a native speaker and I sue the dictionary every other day if not every day. I have a foreign born spouse. They use the dictionary to learn their mother tongue. They probably only know 1/2 the hieroglyphics. Were talking thousands of hieroglyphics. So granted while WNU is still earning like we all are, WNU knew the word he was searching for. He knew it s definition and more importantly its connotation. He also knows how journalists and others use the word.
Back to the WW2 analogy. FDR escalated WW2 after Operation torch by invading Italy and France. He created 2 fronts where before the Americans had only been on one!
Big deal, the war in Afghanistan intensified or escalated. The alternative is to lose or grind on without result other than casualties for awhile and then lose.
The article was a puff piece? Yes and I am glad that WNU pointed that out. People are not paying attention right now (They are too busy cataloging Trump supporters for blacklists and worse to notice WNU.), but calling articles like that puff piece is and will be more and more an act of courage.
The presumed Sec Def deserves opprobrium for her push to get into Libya. The US had an understanding or treat with Qaddaffi and the US broke it. Qaddaffi certainly was a tyrant and deserved to be topple, but perhaps not by the US. Also the US certainly broke Colin Powell;'s sacred Pottery Barn Rule and Saint Powell, the consistent, uttered nary a peep.
Also why go after Gadaffi and not go after Kony? Obama mumbled something to the effect that Africa has to solve its own problems. Well, last time I looked Libya was still in Africa.
R2P came about because of the slaughter in Rwanda. Samantha Power and Michele Flournoy kind of, sort of applied it to Libya.
The Libyan Civil War cost 9,400 to 20,000 dead.
Kony killed 100,000
So why again did Asshat Power and Michele Flournoy go after Gaddaffi and not Kony for R2P or something?
Because Libyans are white and Kony's victims are black?
It is more important to talk about the Sec Def being female and breaking the glass ceiling than to talk about her track record in Libya and all the deaths there.
You have to have principles!
You have to have priorities!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7Nnm4NqvSE
now this is first rate!
Clerky it's old tired and false, gosh just like you.
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