The Glade 4.0

Wow that sucks. The president writes a personal letter for Heavy D's funeral and 17 Navy SEALs who died in combat get form letters with not even a real signature? Am I missing something here?

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/083012-624186-navy-seal-families-get-form-letter.htm?p=full

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

From the comments section:

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

There have been roughly two thousand American military personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since Obama took office. Given the sheer number of casualties, Presidents don't send individually-written / hand-signed* letters unless there are extraordinary circumstances.

This is just a baseless hit piece, LK. Look at the first two paragraphs:

In the first paragraph, the article refers to 17 dead Navy SEALS. In the second paragraph, it takes a completely unrelated quote from Obama about a political group comprised of (obviously different) former Navy SEALS to make it seem to the casual reader like Obama is saying he doesn't take Navy SEALS in general (or worse, the particular Navy SEALS killed in action) seriously. It's a pretty offensive bit of partisan hackery, actually, since it's dishonestly using the death of those SEALS for a political attack.

*Edit: Corrected in light of Arathain's post.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that american soldiers dying is commonplace compared to the death of an influential musician, and Obama didn't have any "dead rapper" letters available.

Some related info for consideration:







http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/02/families-deceased-seals-claim-presidential-condolence-letters-signed-with-auto/

Thanks, RD. I realize he can't send out personal letters to every fallen soldier's family, but when they put it this way, it seems pretty crappy that Heavy D got a personal letter worthy of being read aloud at his funeral and these guys got form letters that were auto-signed:

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

I think he could sign 83 letters a month. This isn't WWII and we aren't talking D-Day or the Pacific Theater in terms of casualties.

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Yeah, this I don't believe at all. I think it's common knowledge they use the electric pen for that kind of thing a good portion of the time.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

Think about it this way. These Navy SEALS were people Obama has never met, he didn't know anything about them, and they didn't have any personal effect on his life in any way.

Heavy D did have some sort of personal affect on Obama's life (I'm assuming), so he writes him a personal letter. Is that so bad? This article would like you to think that Obama chose to write a personal letter to a dead rapper instead of writing a personal letter to some dead soldiers. But Obama is a very busy man, and there's no reason to think the two letters are at all related. It could just have easily been something else.

Maybe he was going to take some time to relax one Sunday and watch some football games, but instead decided to write this letter to Heavy D then. Hey, now it's a positive piece on Obama! "President Obama foregoes usual routine of watching football in order to reach out to family of influential music icon when they need him most."

The reality is, the president is an extremely busy person, and an extremely powerful person. Any "personal" time he takes will necessarily take the place of something important. Instead of spending time with his family or writing letters about dead people, he could be spending all his free time pouring over the thousands of requests he gets for pardons and freeing people who are wrongfully imprisoned (or serving extremely disproportionate sentences). But I'd find it hard to blame him for that. He's only one man.

I'm offended at the implied racial stereotype that our black president only cares about rappers.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

This, absolutely. The comparison between the rapper and the seals is BS.

However, writing (or at least signing, get a staffer to write it) letters to deceased soldiers should be very high on the agenda for the work day. "Good morning, here's your breakfast, your intelligence briefings, and your letters to sign."

I get that there are a lot of things he can't get to. This isn't it. They are there because of his orders. Sure, if he wants to do extra things for other people, have at it. Unrelated, IMO.

I'm certainly skeptical, although, with as big a stink as folks made out of Rumsfeld doing this, he may realize this is a no-no.

The auto-pen discussion does go beyond this administration. It's just more of the same we can believe in.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

There are three different issues here.

One is whether the letters are form letters. There's nothing wrong with form letters. The President would be hard-put to write something unique and meaningful for each and every dead servicemember; he probably doesn't personally know any of them. A company commander or equivalent would be the proper level to expect a personal letter from.

The second is whether they are hand-signed. This issue has valid points either way. On the one hand, there are going to be times when waiting for the President to sign letters might unreasonably delay them. On the other hand, deaths in combat in these wars are not at some WWII-like rate, or even Viet Nam-like. While some days might involve numerous signings, others would have none and the average would probably be around 3-4 per day over the last 11 years. It's not unreasonable to say the President ought to hand-sign them as often as possible.

The third is the rapper-versus-SEALs issue. On the one hand, maybe Obama felt that this particular rapper was, for whatever reason, particulalry deserving of a personal condolance letter. As stated by someone else, it's certainly likely he could have found something more personal to say in that regard.

The reason the SEAL comparison is valid, however, is that Navy SEALs are a very, very rare brand of soldier who have repeatedly volunteered - not just for the military in the first place, but also for the SEALs, and have successfully completed training that most people simply could not hope to accomplish. Special operations training has a very high failure rate, and the people that volunteer for it are highly motivated and physically capable people to begin with. SEALs also conduct very, very difficult missions that are of national importance, often doing so in circumstances where there is very little margin for error.

Therefore, it does look a little bit bad that the President was aware enough of a rapper to send a personal letter, but not aware enough of the missions these SEALs were involved in (which tend to be the types of missions that get actual presidential attention) to, at a minimum, hand-sign the letters and at least have a different form letter that acknowledges the extra effort and sacrifice that goes into being a member of that type of force.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yeah, what he said.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Seriously, does everyone have me on ignore nowadays?

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There's also a fourth issue - what standard policy was when Obama took office. If it was already standard policy to send the same form letter to Seals as other service people, then Obama simply continuing that policy isn't noteworthy. If the policy was to send special letters to SEALS and he changed the policy, that's obviously noteworthy, but the rapper comparison would still be specious, because the two simply aren't related. As Amanar said, you might as well bring up any of the thousand other activities the President engages in. Anyway, that hypo is kind of moot, since my understanding is that SOP when Obama took office was for everyone to get a form letter, and he just continued that existing policy.

As for what the President (any President) should do, my view is he should hand-sign every letter if at all possible and make a point of contacting soldiers and families directly for particularly high profile and/or heroic actions. I'm not sure there should be a blanket policy of favoring Special Forces though. Yes, they volunteer for unusually dangerous duty, but still, I'd worry that regular servicepeople and their families (especially those who are grieving) would take it as a slight if they get only a form letter while other servicepeople get personal notes as a matter of course. After all, it's not like regular infantry guys in Afghanistan have particularly safe jobs, and KIA is KIA no matter what.

Since they both involve sending letters to the relatives of dead people, the comparison would never be specious. As for continuing policies.. I suppose it's not noteworthy that Gitmo is still open either? To me it's certainly not, but other people seem to think it's a major issue. This is a far more minor issue, but it is something that should be addressed. If this is going to turn into "but no one ***** when Bush did it!" that's because it didn't come up at the time.



I'm well aware of that. I also normally object to the sort of elitism that special operations troops normally show towards other soldiers. If you've ever read Blackhawk Down, it shows this in full color with the Delta operators looking down on the Rangers who in turn look down on the regular 10th Mountain Division soldiers, and on the barest of excuses. If you've seen the movie, you see this attitude in full force with the Delta operator who objected when the Ranger company commander corrected him for having a weapon not on safe in the chow hall. Despite the movie's portrayal of the scene as an uptight officer giving a Delta operator a hard time, the fact is that the Captain was totally in the right and the Delta operator 100% in the wrong, and probably should have been kicked out of the chow hall for a week or so. The book makes this even more clear, with some of the Delta operators spending more criticizing everyone from the Rangers to the helicopter pilots than they do fighting the Somalis. Essentially the Delta operators, who are highly unique people, are criticizing the rest of the Army for not working the way they do, even though the Army could never function that way. There's a reason Delta Force is such a small organization.

But I digress. Yes, dead is dead. However, if you've gone out of your way to volunteer for exceptionally dangerous duty, some recognition of that is in order. That's why we don't give every dead person the same posthumous medal. If you got killed pulling an injured soldier to safety, that's rather a different matter than if you just had bad luck and got hit by a mortar round ont he way to the chow hall. No one seems to object to that.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Nah man.

Who are you talking to, Lenas?

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko