Lack of Will, Having Another Beer

The Iraqis’ “lack of will”. . .and Obama’s | Power Line:

Last week, our Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, said that the Iraqi army "lacked the will to defend Ramadi".

That is hardly surprising really. Iraq was a country drawn on a map by Winston Churchill (and others). It is made up of Sunni and Shia Muslims as well as Kurds. It never had any great historical common ground -- "We hold these truths to be self-evident" kind of stuff. It might as well be split into parts of Iraq, Turkey and who knows what. A lot of the countries over in the sandpile are just lines on maps, and often not even lines along any natural boundary. The IA - MN border is a bit hard to pick out when driving. Most of WI - MN is pretty easy. It makes a difference.

The obvious irony of our SECDEF saying the Iraqis "lack the will", when it is abundantly clear that our current administration for sure lacks the will big time is uncomfortable and sad.

Does America lack the will, or just BO? The evidence is strong that we as a nation now do -- there is no real outcry against BO's feckless foreign policy. On momentum we still have troops in South Korea and Germany along with many other places as remnants of WWII and the age when we were the "exceptional dominant superpower", but those seem anachronistic.

Historically, the superpower list is a short one ... Egypt, Greece, Persia, Rome, "The Barbarians" -- Genghis Khan, Visigoths, etc, then the British Empire, then the US -- contested with the USSR for 45 years, but then the sole remaining.

"Everyone has to believe in something -- I believe I'll have another beer" might best summarize the current American outlook. We are certainly not superman "Truth, Freedom and the American Way"! We are definitely not "God and Country" ... it would likely be a federal crime to try to make that a slogan! We are certainly not "The New Frontier" -- we have given up on frontiers, space is left to Russia and the Chinese.

America today is a lot like a large family where a once prosperous last grandparent has passed on, trying to split up the remaining assets without out too much rancor. Can the blacks, whites, browns, old, young, more prosperous and less prosperous find some mostly equitable way to hack up the old family business / farm / legacy, because it is clear nobody wants to dirty their hands running it, and they sure as hell are NOT going to be trying to expand it!

Why would they do that? It was "imperialistic", "created on the backs of the poor, the black, etc" ... besides, BUILDING something is HARD WORK! Even worse, while the vision of building perfection and certainly the criticism of what was built before seems clear, doing yourself is fraught with issues of imperfection, "unfairness" ... "inequality"  ... Pass the beer!

Lacking will when what you were bequeathed is a pile of sand with a bunch of unrelated tribes on it is understandable. Lacking will when you were bequeathed the greatest nation on earth, shining city on a hill, one nation under God, liberty and justice for all, sea to shining sea, amber waves of grain and all that is a WHOLE lot sadder.

Where does "will" come from in the liberal mind? "I gotta get me what that other guy has!"?

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