Jack Keane — the biggest, most arrogant jackass of a retired general money can buy

It was almost as if a retired U.S. general wanted to sharpen and buttress the point made in this space on 11 April 2017, the one that argued that President Trump ought to purge scores of serving U.S. generals if he intends to put America First and thereby abandon endless, unnecessary war. Today, 12 April 2017, retired U.S. Army General Jack Keane appeared twice on FOX News and did exactly that.

Keane has been a staple interviewee on FOX for as long as I can remember. He has been treated as great military god by every FOX host, and he has advocated unnecessary U.S. military interventionism as the solution to nearly every foreign-policy problem the republic encounters. And when the military interventionism that he and his fellow generals — retired and serving — have advocated becomes an obvious and murderous quagmire that kills our Marines and soldiers, deepens the nation’s bankruptcy, and returns thousands of maimed, mentally troubled, and suicide-prone veterans to the United States, the loud demand from Keane and his far-from-the-front general buddies is always the same; namely, increase the size of the failed military intervention and reinforce defeat. Some military god, eh?

In two appearances on FOX today, General Keane was at his smug, arrogant, and relentlessly interventionist best. On Fox&Friends this morning, Keane crowed with smarmy self-satisfaction:

  • He rejoiced that America was now a “player in the Syrian civil war”
  • He advocated the creation of safe zones, which, he let on, the Trump administration has disguised from Americans with the blander term “zones of stabilization.”
  • He drooled with a keen, near-orgasmic eagerness at the possibility of Asaad using gas-or-barrel bombs on civilians so that Trump could destroy the other five operational Syrian airfields.

Following this war-loving warm-up, General Keane swaggered over and parked his god-like butt on the set of Trish Regan’s Intelligence Report. There he said:

  • He never really knew where the Trump administration “would move in terms of America’s global leadership” and the republic’s “historic traditional role to help stabilize the world.” He feared, explained this military deity, that Trump might “pull back and be more isolationist.”
  • He then said “but that’s over” and during the last week the Trump administration showed that it is “reassuming the protection of U.S. interests and the interests of our allies.
  • He went on to express his regret over the time that had been wasted by “lot of debate” about that non-interventionism stuff. That debate, the almighty military god then declared, is ended, adding “that is a fact,” and that non-interventionism is “no longer a debatable subject.”

Well, guess again arrogant and aging god-boy. Your oracular arguments, divine assertions, and omnipotent declarations can be picked apart and killed just as Royal Marine Major John Pitcairn’s redcoats were by America’s citizen-soldiers — fortunately no West Pointers among them — as they retreated headlong from Lexington to Boston. But, for now, the important thing for you and your stinking band of general-officer brothers to know is that, unless you can use Obama’s law allowing national-government censorship of the internet, your non-interventionist enemies will make absolutely sure that the Founder’s argument against American interventionism is continued and continuously spread and strengthened.

And if — may the real God forbid — worse ever comes to worst, you will find that there are far more non-interventionists locked-and-loaded than you and your war-loving, but always losing band of brothers have ever imagined.

And, oh yes, did I mention that General Keane sits on the Board of Directors of a company called General Dynamics. Coincidentally, that company just happens to sell the technology needed to launch Tomahawks cruise missiles. (1)

Endnotes

  1. http://www.mediaite.com/online/guy-whos-been-appearing-on-fox-to-praise-missile-launch-secretly-works-in-missile-tech-industry/

Author: Michael F. Scheuer

Michael F. Scheuer worked at the CIA as an intelligence officer for 22 years. He was the first chief of its Osama bin Laden unit, and helped create its rendition program, which he ran for 40 months. He is an American blogger, historian, foreign policy critic, and political analyst.