Search This Blog

Thursday, December 14, 2006

The First Horseman of the Apocalypse: Adelman

This marks the start of a new series of explorations into the elite minds of the USA. We have quite a number to deal with. We decided to begin with Mr. Ken Adelman since he has bobbed back into view ( a la une 'bad habit' ) and we sympathize with his obvious struggle to be Prospero, while his soul screams "Caliban!".
I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest

Some talk show funded by the Duke of Hades had a group of experts discussing the Baker-Hamilton report. One of the members of the group was Ken Adelman. In case you have forgotten, Mr. Adelman was the expert who predicted that the War in Iraq would be a “ cakewalk”. Recently he has been trying to rehabilitate himself. I did not pay attention to the details of this effort, but it must be something along the lines that he actually meant that the classical military operations would be a cakewalk, but he also added – although no one seemed to have recalled it – that the aftermath would be a hellish disaster. Maybe he did. I doubt it. Hook me up to some background, you ask?  

“There's always the chicken littles, running around and saying 'oh my God, it's terrible,'” he said on Hardball, six days before the war began, when asked about the possibility that things might not go as smoothly as he and his fellow-hawks had predicted. The following month, he was gloating to the New York Times that his “cakewalk” prediction had been remarkably prescient. Adelman, according to the story, “scorned recent complaints by retired generals and military analysts that the Pentagon had deployed too few troops” to Iraq. “I always thought that was ridiculous,” Adelman told the newspaper. “It turned out they were factually wrong. I never understood what having three times as many troops would have done.”
 http://www.harpers.org/sb-ken-adelman-1164050030.html

Back before the Mess in Iraq, Adelman was professorial and erudite, a true philosopher of death. Now that his thesis on war has been a bust, the call goes out for Mr. Fix-it and there is Ken Adelman, Plumber of Death, come to fix the leaky faucet. Truly a great idea from the people who had hoped to bring you O.J. Simpson. I would think that by now, Mr. Adelman would own up to his horrible responsibility for the war. I would think a little something along the line of “You know, I was wrong. That Jehovah guy had it right when He said, ‘Thou better not kill.’ “. This would be great, even overlooking the fact that he is apparently getting Santa Claus mixed up with the Lord ( “thou shalt not kill” versus “you better not cry” ). We will not see any of the Apocalypse’s Horsemen own up to their evil. What we will see is Mr. Adelman shut up his vile past in a tower of oblivion, as if it were Bertha Mason, and he were Rochester dallying with the new Miss Eyre. Escape from him, Jane, before he destroys you, too!
--

No comments: