We have met the enemy and he is us ...........

Tuesday evening was embarrassing. Even for me.

If a Commander-in Chief cannot generate enthusiasm from an audience at West Point, there is something wrong.

What’s wrong was everything.

On the stage was the teleprompter, actually two because we’ve learned how bad the presidential image can be when one fails. I swear that the man would be a twittering mass of incoherent protoplasm were they both to fail. On the other hand he would blame President Bush just as soon as he was resuscitated and Biden would blame Vice-President Cheney and on and on …

One of the basics of presentations is to understand the audience. This one was comprised of gung-ho Army cadets and it shouldn’t have been hard but Obama found it to be impossible to raise an ounce of even lackluster enthusiasm. Some of ‘em were reading books and some were asleep. And the rest were just glad to be out of class for a while.

With all that said, the most effective word a presenter can use is “You” and the ones to avoid like the plague are “I”, and “My”, but Obama managed both of the latter more than 60 times.

One of the things those cadets have been taught is obedience to a legitimate order from a superior officer. And they complied by showing up but that was as far as they were prepared to go.

Here are the facts as I know them to be. The original request from the general officers in that theater was for 80,000 more troops. Like most political appointees, McCrystal strove to do his sponsor’s bidding and opted for 40,000 instead. Then Obama, who sees himself as a modern-day Solomon, chose to split the baby in half and authorized just 30,000, - eventually.

Now some of the 30,000 were in that audience and knew only too well that some of them would not be coming home again in one piece, if at all..

So this “genius” of military strategy then chose to announce when he plans to withdraw from the battlefield which will be great news to the Taliban and he also spoke about America’s constrained resources. In other words, the Commander-in-Chief said to the enemy, except he never used that word, “Please give up before we run out of money.

Contrary to leftist propaganda, soldiers do not go into harm’s way just for the heck of it. They go because it’s their duty and it’s their job. But they are entitled to be led by commanders who believe in their mission and clearly Obama does not. And they should never be prevented from doing their job by fatuous “Rules of Engagement” such as these:-

No night or surprise searches.

Do not fire unless the enemy is preparing to fire.

Do not fire if there are civilians present.

It’s OK to apprehend a terrorist who is in the act of planting an IED but not OK if the terrorist is leaving the scene.

No wonder those cadets looked the way they did. And no wonder that little Chrissy Matthews of “Hardball” infamy described the setting as “The Enemy Camp”.

For the first time ever I agreed with little Chrissy but the Commander-in-Chief had brought it on himself as he tried to thread the needle for the benefit of his left-wing base and at the expense of his military which he clearly despises.