Video of the exchange
here.
Last week, in the midst of various news stories on what the American military was bombing in the Middle East and why, we learned that Rep. Doug Lamborn has been among a group of Republican congressmen "talking to the generals behind the scenes" to encourage them to resign their posts in a
"blaze of glory" rather than follow orders from President Obama that they might "disagree" with. You can watch the very strange exchange
here.
This caused a small bit of ruckus, since encouraging mass resignations of American generals specifically to foul American military policies during a time of war seems a sketchy behavior at best. Would he be taken to task for his remarks? Would he care to explain just who, in addition to himself, has been encouraging American generals to resign rather than follow orders? Would anyone from his caucus pipe up to say that oh yes, tsk, talking to military officials "behind the scenes" in order to undermine White House policies is run-of-the-mill politics?
Doug Lamborn's office has responded, and—good news!—they say there's no problem here:
The campaign spokesman for U.S. Rep Doug Lamborn said Saturday that the congressman has felt “no pressure” regarding his comments calling for generals to resign if they disagreed with White House policy. [...]
“No one from leadership has contacted the congressman because there is nothing to contact him about,” said Jarred Rego, Lamborn’s campaign spokesman.
Oh, for sure. Rego also explained that the policies Lamborn were referring to were
old policies, an apparent attempt to yada-yada Lamborn's statements by dismissing them as something that had happened a while ago. Old news!
He reiterated that Lamborn was referring to old policies, including "draconian defense budget cuts" due to sequestration and changes to "don't ask, don't tell."
So it wasn't about undermining American foreign policy decisions, you see, it was about The Gay People and preventing The Gay People from openly serving in the military. And budget sequestration, that glorious compromise between Republicans and Democrats premised on the notion that it was so very important to cut the budget right-the-hell-now that they would commit themselves to a budget-cutting scheme specifically designed to be so
very asinine that not even Doug Lamborn's own dumb-as-a-bag-of-hammers House of Representatives would dare follow through with it.
Those were the issues that had Lamborn and other congressmen actively soliciting the resignation of U.S. generals.
Hmm. Somehow that doesn't really make Lamborn's claims any less eyebrow raising. It's also a bit suspect as an explanation: Lamborn said he and others are talking to generals behind the scenes, present tense, not that they once did.
So what are we to make of this? I've still got a hankering to know just how many members of the House "are" working "behind the scenes" to encourage military leaders to publicly rebel "in a blaze of glory" against the orders of their commander in chief. The claim that he sought resignations over Republican-forced sequestration, that's an odd and not-very-believable twist, though one seems best explained by commenters in Lamborn's district who vouch for the representative's own blazing stupidity. There's also the distinct possibility that Lamborn is in fact simply lying about the whole thing, and that it never happened—but his spokesman's statements seem to indicate that in fact has, and at least over several specific policies.
So pipe up, Rep. Lamborn. We are all very curious about how things work between Republican House members and American generals "behind the scenes." Just how many of these conversations do you have?
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