Corpseman- It's No Mere Gaffe

Gaffes are one thing, ignorance and dereliction of responsibility are another thing altogether. Everyone is missing the point about the President’s latest gaffe. It is more telling than Dan Quayle misspelling a food item and it is much more chilling than any of the famous malapropisms of former president Bush.

Here is why. President Obama is not just our political leader, he is the Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces. He is the one we have given the ultimate responsibility to keep us safe. He has the power to send our young people into harm’s way. He can, likewise, withhold military action when Americans are in peril. Protecting and defending us is supposed to be the first priority of the President. Compelling the healthcare system to wipe more noses even if it is with rougher tissue paper, changing our national culture by weaning us away from our “bitter” clinging to God and guns and keeping industry from creating jobs by producing more than a certain quota of fossil fuel smoke are supposed to be somewhere down the list.

There is a common legend that Eskimos have a variety of words to describe snow. It makes sense for people to whom snow is important and whose lives often depend on a clear understanding of snow’s condition and appearance would have evolved sophisticated was of classifying and communicating about it. If Barack Obama were an Eskimo, he and all he leads would die in the ice.

We know that he has never served in the armed forces himself but, for God’s sake, Mr Obama walks past the Marines who guard his life every day. He flies in the helicopter Marine One to Camp David and other places constantly. The unofficial name for The Marine Band is “The Presidents Own”. He daily makes decisions in which he calls upon members of the various Corps of the armed forces to risk their own lives and take the lives of others. Do you think he might at some point have taken the time to listen to the military men and women talk about themselves?

Does he call “his own” band the Marine Corpse Band?

Is he really THAT disinterested in one of the most powerful instruments of policy available to him? Has he such a small appreciation for one of the key guarantors of his own personal safety? If so, what does that say about the priority he gives to the protection and preservation of the rest of us- our lives and livelihoods?

Calling a service member a corpseman is no mere gaffe it is one more proof that Mr. Obama does not understand his job, overestimates his own importance and has no idea what is truly important.

If you owned a cabinet making business would you hire a guy who, in the course of a job interview, called the big planer that you use to mill wood down to a smooth and even thickness a planner- confusing it with a calendar book day-timer?

Would you let a surgeon who says car-toid instead of carotid for the artery that carries all of the blood to your brain operate on your neck?

If not, then why would you want this guy to be your Commander-in-Chief?

UPDATES:

1. This was not the first time Obama has made this mistake one of my commenters on Free Republic has sent me this:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxORB49KtsE

2. My friend Professor Barry Rubin writes of the Eskimo analogy:

Actually, they would develop a stiumulus package that bought trillions of dollars of refrigerators. Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloria-center.org The Rubin Report blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/ Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org Editor Turkish Studies, http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t713636933%22