The Hot Air Force: still grounded

Will the Hot Air Force fight again?

Long-time Spy readers have thrilled to the adventures of the 101.1st Hot Air Force, that stalwart band of Washington gasbags, talk-show hosts and bloviators who bravely fought from their K Street offices and country clubs to send other people's children to fight and die in Iraq, among other unpromising venues.

And no one fought longer or more fatuously for the Hot Air Force than its Generalissimo, Brandeis grad Tom Friedman.  Thus, it was with more than a tingle of anticipation that we saw this headline on today's communiqué from Generalissimo Friedman:

Obama, that Kenyan wimp, who is only running military operations in five countries?  Would this be the opportunity for Generalissimo Friedman to remind us of his principle that every so often we should throw a random Middle East dictator against a wall just to show who's boss?  Where would he direct your children: Yemen? Libya? Syria?  Or would he reprise his brilliant Iraq strategy and send them to a Muslim country that had nothing to do with anything, like Morocco or Bangladesh?   Would he claim that the next six months would tell the tale?  And for how many years would he maintain his six-month rule?

It was so exciting, the providers of aluminum caskets and artificial limbs were already calling in overtime shifts.

Sadly, the communiqué was a damp squib.  It contained no calls to the colors, no coalition of the willing or unwilling, no slashing attacks on comic-book Middle Eastern villains with a seven-iron.  Imagine our shock (but not awe) when we read: “Visiting here in northern Iraq, in Kurdistan, and talking to a lot of Iraqis leaves one thinking Obama is not entirely wrong.”  Hello, did he even go to the AIPAC Convention?

Well. what should the mighty United States do, according to the one of the leading brains of the Hot Air Force?  Um, it should send guns to Tunisia: “The West should be all over Tunisia with economic, technical and military assistance,” he said, citing a Tunisian who would like some swag.

What else?  How about sending a few more bucks to a place that isn't even a country: Kurdistan?   “More U.S. aid conditioned on Kurdistan’s getting back on the democracy track would go a long way.”  It could, although it might also go a long way toward alienating Turkey, Iraq, and Iran, if anybody cares.  Or it could just end up in the local chieftain's Swiss bank account.

Come on, Tom.  How about some airstrikes at least?  Special ops?  (The Hot Air Force loves to use that term.  It makes them sound bad-ass, or like a 14-year-old boy with a PlayStation.)

But no, that's pretty much it.  Looks like the Hot Air Force remains grounded, and America's fine young men and women in the military will be spared any more pointless wars, beyond the ones we're fighting right now.