Applying Alinsky to Afghanistan

From Andrew C. McCarthy, writing for National Review Online:

...the president is a power politician who shrewdly reads the vulnerabilities of both his opponents and his backers. He knows conservatives want to support both our troops and presidential initiatives that at least seem supportive of our vital interests. That makes conservatives a cheap date for Obama. He feels free to run down Bush and to tar our history: “We are not as young — and perhaps not as innocent,” he told the cadets at West Point, “as we were when [Franklin] Roosevelt was president.” He also frames national security as a distraction from his more important work socializing our economy. He knows that as long as he is tepidly supportive of a military mission — even one that neither aims to achieve nor can possibly achieve victory over America’s enemies — conservatives will not only overlook the slights; they will anxiously commend him and help the New York Times take the lash to those who won’t.

The president also knows the Left has no place else to go. They’ll grumble about “escalation.” We’ll get the occasional Michael Moore outburst. But as Horowitz observes, this is the same theater that has gone on for decades. Alinsky’s principles hold that open radicals unwittingly betray the cause by honestly urging their radicalism on a society that doesn’t want it. The trick, which Obama has internalized, is to masquerade as a concerned but benign member of that society and speak in high-minded abstractions – “our values,” “social justice,” “equality,” “dignity,” and the like. That way, you sell yourself as a well-intentioned leader but, upon acquiring power, determinedly shift Leviathan toward your own radical conception of values, justice, equality, and dignity.