Tails a-Wagging

“Wagging the Dog” is an expression, made popular during the Clinton administration. Generally it is “the act of creating a diversion from a damaging issue.”  In politics it means “to distract attention away from a political scandal, often through military action.”

A 1997 movie “Wag the Dog” involved a fictional political spin doctor (Robert De Niro) who distracted the electorate from a fictional presidential sex scandal by hiring a Hollywood producer (Dustin Hoffman) to create a fake war.  Less than a month after the movie was released, the Clinton-Lewinsky affair became headline news. Clinton, seeming to follow the movie script, then engaged the country in three military actions:  Operation Desert Fox, a three-day bombing campaign in Iraq, which took place at the time when the House of Representatives debated articles of impeachment against Clinton; Operation Infinite Reach, a pair of missile strikes against suspected terrorist targets in Sudan and Afghanistan, just three days after Clinton admitted in a nationally televised address that he had indeed had an inappropriate relationship with Lewinsky; Operation Allied Force, a months-long NATO bombing campaign against Serbia that began just weeks after Clinton was acquitted in his Senate impeachment trial.  These events distracted somewhat from the ongoing and politically damaging Clinton sex scandal.

Fast forward to 2022 and the multi-front incompetency of President Biden. That incompetence itself is a scandal, but from it evolve more problems and scandals in nearly every area.  

So, what do you do when you find the economy in tatters, supply chain disasters, border issues and illegal immigrations at record levels, the Afghanistan debacle still destroying lives, crime at all time highs and murders of police rising, Covid never-ending, record high inflation effectively reducing income and significantly harming low and middle class families, race relations and general animosity getting worse by the day, lack of energy independence, poll numbers plummeting to all-time lows, international presence and respect questionable at best, your party losing important voting groups including Black and Hispanic voters, a general malaise of dissatisfaction throughout the country?  You wag the dog.

When you have ruined everything you can touch and people are beginning to realize that you really are destroying America, what do you do?  Wag the Dog.  Wag and wag and wag and hopefully the people will all be sufficiently distracted to forget about what you are really doing and have done.  Wag, and wag, and wag, and wag.  The good thing is that the mainstream media will follow the lead and divert attention from the damaging stories to the new diversions.

So, wag number 1:  Leak the story that Justice Breyer is retiring, forcing him to announce now rather than at the end of the current term.  Announce that you will have a nomination by the end of February and that all males and all women who are not Black need not apply, for the President will appoint a Black Female.  This should (you think) please the Black voters (perhaps brings them back into the fold),  and the news should focus on the nomination and confirmation process instead of America’s problems.

That backfires.  Most of the country notices that this limitation of consideration to Black Females is racist and sexist and goes against everything this country stands for.  Too many questions.  You need another distraction.

Wag number 2:  Russia and the Ukraine.  Russia is rattling its swords on the Ukrainian border.  Let’s just get all hysterical about that (even though the president of Ukraine suggests that war is not imminent, and that the U.S. hysteria is most likely to cause a war rather than prevent one).  Nonetheless, continue the hysterics, leak negotiations and letters sent to Vladimir Putin in an attempt to show how tough you are, and send troops to the area.

It becomes more and more credible and evident that you want a war – that would certainly fill the news, distracting from failure after failure  Meanwhile you make it clear that Americans cannot count on their country to assist them should conflict develop (shades of Afghanistan!). 

This isn’t working.  Putin is perhaps more patient than you thought and has not invaded.  Send more troops.  Beat your chest a little more and try to raise hysteria about this conflict.  Not working.

Wag number 3:  Kill a Syrian terrorist.  This in itself is not bad, but what hurts is that along with the terrorist you kill at least 13 civilians, many of whom are children.  The description of the event does not show our execution of such assassinations at their skillful best and the death of innocents recalls the botched drone strike during the last days of Afghanistan that resulted in the deaths of America-friendly civilians and children. 

News of this morning’s strike  in Syria is still coming out, and as usual Biden makes a statement but refuses to answer questions.  But some early reports from the area include the following:

• “Omar Saleh, a resident of a nearby house, told the Associated Press he was asleep when his doors and windows started to rattle to the sound of low-flying aircraft at 1:10 a.m. local time. He ran to open the windows with the lights off and saw three helicopters. He then heard a man, speaking Arabic with an Iraqi or Saudi accent through a loudspeaker, urging women to surrender or leave the area. This went on for 45 minutes. There was no response. Then the machine gun fire erupted.”
•  “Residents and activists told the AP that there were multiple deaths near the home that was raided, which included civilians. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said nine people were killed, including two children. The White Helmets, a civil defense group in the country, tweeted that 13 people, including six children and four women, were killed. Our teams rushed an injured child to the hospital. The child's entire family was killed in the operation. The teams also rushed another person to the hospital who was injured in the clashes when he approached the scene to witness what was happening."
• “The suicide vest detonation caused some civilian casualties, but the number of civilian deaths reported on the ground do "not correspond with what U.S. officials say occurred on the ground last night," two U.S. officials stated.

This should be a distraction for awhile at least, but probably not long enough.  So, just in case, we have potential Wag number 4:  the cancer cure.  Wednesday Biden announced his renewed launch of the “Cancer Moonshot” which he promises will end cancer (unlike his promises to end Covid and perhaps a distraction from that failed promise).  His plans include “mobilizing the entire government” against cancer and forming a “Cancer Cabinet.”

Just more show to distract us from the real news, the news that, if heard, will make it undeniable that this President is a total failure who is driving this country full speed ahead toward its destruction. 

This can get dangerous.  Let’s not forget that about a year ago Biden broke his foot while playing with his dog. 

If this were the movie sequel to Wag the Dog, we would be rolling in the aisles with laughter wondering how the author came up with such an incompetent president with so many damaging issues needing so many distractions.  We’d think it a great story.  But this is real, and it is not very funny.