Fast, Furious, and without a Hitch

Charles Lewis


It tickles me how loathe the public is to see patterns, and how reticent the Right is to point them out.  For instance, why do even some of the scandal's ostensively harshest critics seemingly absentmindedly refer to the Obama DOJ's ignominious Fast & Furious as a "failed project?"  


I'll review the facts as best one can piece them together through the fog of disinformation, stonewalling, and executive privilege, and you tell me whether the picture painted is one of a failed operation or rather one that went like clockwork, but for the fact that it was discovered:


1  We had an administration determined to undermine the Second Amendment, with the misnamed "assault weapon" category its first target area.


2  This administration arrived claiming that such weapons, bought in US gun shops, constituted the bulk of the artillery that was resulting in a huge body count in the drug wars south of the border.


3  The idea was to short circuit the availability here of such arms, and maybe shut down many, most, or all American gun dealers in the process, based on the above pretext.


4  Trouble was the vast majority of such weaponry had entered Mexico from points outside the US, and even what little did enter from here (if any) was not the result of purchases from gun dealers.


5  Thus confronted with an agenda without a "good crisis" to propel it, the administration decided to "fulfill the prophecy," by intentionally getting huge caches of such arms into the hands of the worst and most violent of the cartelista narcotraficantes down Mexico way, and hope that it produced a blood bath that would be traced to gun dealers stateside.

6  The result, predictably, was hundreds of corpses among the Mexican populace and at least a couple of our guys to boot.


7  Had the truth not leaked out, this would have set up exactly what the government had sought all along - the impetus to impose draconian strictures on the American self defense industry.


Somebody tell me where the "failure" is in any of this (up to this point in the account, at least)?  As an operation, it was flawless.


It's not the operation's fault if, after the project's rousing success, word got out that the Obama/Holder scenario wasn't the real one.  If I return a punt 90 yards for an apparent touchdown and, as I'm crossing the goal line, one of my teammates commits an illegal block in the back way out at the thirty yard line so that the play is called back, was my run itself "failed," or did something out of my control cause the failure?


Nope, Fast & Furious almost certainly produced pretty much exactly was it was designed to produce, and, for its part, at least, it put the regime in perfect position to capitalize in spades.  It was only the unforeseen revelation that forestalled total victory.


I say "forestalled" and not "thwarted" because when it's your instant replay camera, you get to salvage a lot of blown plays.  What's that coming down the field?  A UN small arms treaty ready for rubberstamping by just enough closet RINOs to push it past the 67 votes necessary for ratification?


Oh, and count on them (or whoever's turn it happens to be) to pile on with LOST, "rights of the person," "rights of the child," "affordable health care" (oops, that betrayal's already old news), and whatever else this runaway one-time republic is slated to endure.  So it's "all good," isn't it?


In a just world, somebody would be facing a Nuremberg-style tribunal for premeditated mass murder.


And in a sane one, not one of those Hispanic Caucus types that walked out of the House in protest of an attempt to "hold Holder" at least nominally accountable for an atrocity where about three hundred of their "raza" compadres were intentionally slaughtered (to facilitate a tyrannical agenda among the gringos) would be re-elected this November.


But, then again, this world is nothing if not unjust and insane...