I guess it should come as no surprise that the United States Army has been accused of using psychological operations personnel to attempt to influence U.S. Senators who visited the war operations in Afghanistan to win increased funding for the war effort. After all, if the Taliban and the Pakistani and Afghan war lords can fall prey to psychological warfare, why would anyone think political combatants like U.S. Congressmen would be any different?
The Army just got caught with their hand in the cookie jar!
I'd like to be outraged, but I'm not. I'd also like to think our Senators would be beyond being so duped, but then I recall the whole Iraq war fiasco and how this country, including its Senators, were duped into going to war in the first place, so that doesn't surprise me either.
What does surprise me is how much we've risen in the influence-peddling, arm-twisting game. In the old days, luring a Senator into a compromising sexual tryst or a drunken binge were the easiest ways to insure a particular Congressman's cooperation on an army war request, but nowadays, I guess those tactics won't work. After looking at the list of targeted Senators, I initially thought that maybe, given their advanced ages, sex and booze were no longer a temptation, but then I realized that in today's Congress, neither would necessarily end a Congressman's career if his or her seat was a safe seat, so sex and alcohol were no longer useful for political blackmail. Mind games were probably the Army's only alternatives.
The Army really shouldn't fret over this incident. The American people have a proclivity for being duped in the political arena, so by next week, this scandal will have run its course and we'll have moved onto some other hot-button issue with no real meaning in the general scheme of things. I'd like to blame that fact on the Army too, but something tells me they're too smart to acknowledge any role in it.
No comments:
Post a Comment