Bob Gates, Secretary of Ingratitude

In his new “memoir” Robert Gates bites the hand of President Obama, who foolishly let him stay on as Secretary of Defense from the incompetent administration of George W. Bush. In Gates’s book, which lavishes praise on the steadfastness and intelligence of Bush in pushing war, Gates faults his new boss Barack Obama for lacking those same admirable traits of smugness and stupidity.

Something just doesn’t align with reality here. I guess Obama never read “The Pet Goat” with the same feeling and eloquence that his predecessor brought to it on the morning of 9/11/2001.

Of course, Obama, with his usual milksopness refuses to fight back, but secretly bandages a bleeding hand, hoping the story won’t have legs. Nevertheless, Gates’s ingratitude does raise questions about Obama’s motive as well as his wisdom in letting this little jerk stay on in a job in which he had backed two disastrous military adventures for a dimwitted president, wars that will end up costing us trillions of dollars as well as the lives of nearly 7000 US troops. And for what, exactly? A Middle East that is now disintegrating and a world economy that teeters on the brink?

Obama was elected on a platform of “Hope and Change,” yet from the day “No Drama Obama” took office, he appointed to his cabinet a cabal of the same Bush/Clinton operatives who made the decisions that brought us Iraq and Afghanistan and the collapse of our economy.

Many of these same potential hand-biters still surround Obama. Either he has very thick skin or a very thick head. Or maybe he just wears thick leather gloves to his cabinet meetings. One thing’s for sure: there will be more hand-biting (and perhaps some mauling) to come.

My fellow Americans, next time around let’s not vote for a guy we’d like to have a beer with. And if the word “hope” or “change” leaves a politician’s mouth, run the other way. Ask hard questions about policies. And at the hint of any lying, vote for a third party. It couldn’t get any worse.