White House continues to play politics with the military

One of my favorite moments of schadenfreude occurs when liberals lament some certain group or people for “voting against their best interest.” Thomas Frank sputtered his confusion on the subject in his tome “What’s the Matter With Kansas,” which railed the people in the state for voting conservative. This doesn’t keep Frank from giving advice to conservatives whenever he can (you know the familiar advice – become more liberal). Liberals can’t imagine the fact that some people just want to be left to their own devices, which is precisely why liberals target them in the first place

The military gets the same treatment of I-know-better-ism from the left, screeching about why the men and women in uniform don’t vote their way,  all the while calling the commander-in-chief a moron – the same moron who flew century series fighter aircraft over open water – and don’t see why some people might view this as disingenuous.

Reconcile this with the Obama administration, which is refusing photo-ops in front of F-22 fighter aircraft. Obama killed the production of the plane, and now wants to avoid his picture with it at all costs. From Foreign Policy via Hot Air:

When President Obama spoke to troops at Alaska’s Elmendorf Air Force Base last month, the unit there parked a shiny new F-22 fighter plane in the hanger[sic]. But according to multiple sources, White House aides demanded the plane be changed to an older F-15 fighter because they didn’t want Obama speaking in front of the F-22, a controversial program he fought hard to end.

“White House aides actually made them remove the F-22-said they would not allow POTUS to be pictured with the F-22 in any way, shape, or form,” one source close to the unit relayed.

Stephen Lee, a public affairs officer at Elmendorf, confirmed to The Cable that the F-22 was parked in the hanger[sic] and then was replaced by an F-15 at the White House’s behest.

The airmen there took offense to the Obama aides’ demand, sources told The Cable, seeing it as a slight to the folks who are operating the F-22 proudly every day. They also expressed bewilderment that the White House staff would even care so much as to make an issue out of the fact that the F-22 was placed in the hanger [sic] with the president.

I can imagine the cable nets if Bush had practiced such duck-and-cover photography. Maybe he has and I don’t know. But this seems rather petty for a White House that was supposed to supplant all these negative feelings with hope-and-change. If this  was the administration’s first efforts on selling its surge for Afghanistan with the troops, I think we can call it a fail.

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