Dec 28 2009

Powerpuff Policy

Category: national security,politicsharmonicminer @ 9:28 am

Picture 16

I just watched an episode of the Powerpuff Girls in which the Gangreen Gang, so named because they all seem to have green skin, is placed in the Powerpuff Girls’ kindergarten by Jack Wednesday, Truant Officer, who seems unable to distinguish adolescent troublemakers and arch-criminals from kindergarten-age kids.  I suppose he can’t be blamed, since the teacher seems to accept these obviously too-large and too-mean “kids” into her class with open arms.

As the day proceeds, the Gangreen Gang lives up to its billing by stealing cookies, pouring milk on students, throwing paste in the other kids’ faces, etc.  Each time, the teacher somehow seems not to notice who the real miscreants are, and when the Powerpuff girls try to stop the depredations of the Gangreen Gang, the teacher admonishes them that “there’s no fighting in school” and “you just need to learn to trust strangers.”   The Powerpuff Girls protest that the Gangreen Gang aren’t strangers, they are nearly-super-villains, to no avail.  The teacher says that *she* hasn’t seen the Gangreen Gang do anything especially bad.  Of course, she hasn’t really been paying attention, a fact obvious to any viewer.

This back and forth becomes so extreme that at recess, it’s the Powerpuff Girls who are given a “timeout,” while the Gangreen Gang essentially commit assault in a game of “dodgeball” with overmatched 5 yr olds.  And even then, when the Powerpuff Girls try to tell the teacher what’s happening just outside the schoolroom window, the teacher shushes them and returns to reading her book, right up until one of the balls breaks throught the schoolroom window and nearly decapitates the teacher, who finally notices the near-carnage on the playground.

In the denouement, when the Powerpuff Girls beg to be allowed to set things right, the teacher insists there is “no fighting at school,” but with a very broad hint to the Girls, she sends them out to play (and finish) a particularly violent game of dodgeball, that leaves the Gangreen Gang on the ropes, and ready to be picked up again by Jack Wednesday, Truant Officer.  We’re supposed to think the teacher is cool because she authorized the Powerpuff Girls to “fight” without really “fighting,” though only after intolerable provocation and injury to the rest of her class.

It is, of course, only a cartoon.  Nothing like this would happen in the real world, right?  But President Obama’s foreign policy seems at least this cartoonish.

He seems not to have read or been briefed on any of the history (old or more recent) of the players, from Iran to Venezuela’s Chavez to North Korea to Russia to China to Islamofascism in all its forms.  He acts like every day is a new day, and maybe today they’ll all play nice with him.  He seems bent on following some misplaced notion of “international law” and honoring the U.N. and its ridiculous “community of nations,” including a “human rights commission” staffed by some of the most abusive governments on the planet.  In this, the U.N. is more cartoonish than the Powerpuff Girls.  It’s as if the script writers had put the Gangreen Gang in charge of the entire school district, with the more lowly gang members in charge of the welcome wagon for new students.

Obama’s inexplicable support for illegal, unconstitutional actions by former President Zelaya of Honduras, his feckless approach to a nuclear-arming Iran, his tried-and-worthless approach to the Israel/Palestinian conflict, all of these make the actions of the Powerpuff Girls’ kindergarten teacher seem positively wise and far-sighted.

At least she knows when it’s time to bend the rules.

In the meantime, Obama gives obeisance to everyone who intends ill towards the USA, including the UN, the IPCC, and every third world dictator he chances to meet.

Hope and change.  Only now, there isn’t much left of the former, and only bad omens for the latter.

3 Responses to “Powerpuff Policy”

  1. Bill says:

    One of the interesting trends is many “wars” today are not between nations, but between idealogies. We keep looking to fight a “country”, but that isn’t our enemy. There is such division within groups, we are actually fighting factions within an idealogy. Finding the enemy and being able to do battle will become much more difficult. You won’t find them behind borders, or within given locations – they are hidden in plain sight within allied or neutral sects.

  2. harmonicminer says:

    True in some cases. Not true in the cases of Iran or North Korea, which are nation states causing us lots of trouble.

    Re: terrorists in hiding, it isn’t that nation states are helpless… it’s that WE are helpless to do anything about terrorist presence in other nation states (and use of them as staging grounds) without putting direct pressure on those nation states.

    Basically, nation states still control the world… and are certainly willing to use the “we can’t help it” argument to fail to take necessary steps to control what happens within their borders.

    Consider if a US “militia” group decided to “take the law into its own hands” and began sniping on coyotes bringing across illegals, crossing the Mexican border in raids (as opposed to pitched battles with battle-lines) on staging areas for illegals, maybe on known hangouts of “drug lords” that seem untouchable by Mexican police, etc. Your imagination is as good as mine.

    Not one nation, anywhere, would believe that the USA was doing all it could to control such groups, even if they did “melt back into society” when they came back.

    The best yardstick I have for the credibiliy of such “we can’t help it” arguments is to consider the world’s response if the USA tried to use them.

  3. harmonicminer says:

    None of that has a bearing on Obama’s attitudes towards Cuba, Honduras, Iran, North Korea, etc., of course.

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