Washington Loses.

No, no, nothing serious.*
Just the silly baseball game, not any of our wars on terror/Islam/making the world safe for our ally Israel...

Meanwhile, the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL: we haven't come to consensus even uniting around a name for this enemy...) fighters advance, despite the Western death from above daily deliveries; and our subcontracted "troops on the ground", the ones in Turkey, (surprise, surprise) are not up to American military objectives in getting dirtily done what we need them to do down there, while our guys keep clean up in the skies, safely away from the destruction and carnage their actions are taking...

You know, the cynic in me is starting to wonder who sold out James Foley and friend from their original captors to the ISIS terror cells.  Killing journalists (aka "truth tellers/ground-level recorders") and mission workers is a great way to ensure that Americans here at home never see the true story of what our money is buying over there, what our acts of glory look like on the ground...

Who would want to (non) embed and cover that?
(Easier to dish up what they give ya, and hope for a coffee bar and your kids singing at the Nationals game... Fame!)

I'm reminded of this by the photographer Rowland Scherman in comments he made in a PBS special I saw over the weekend:  what Americans saw of the napalm burnings and human destruction in VietNam -- the children running, screaming, the translation of physical pain and true terrors -- is happening in the Middle East now on our behalf, except we at home don't see it.

No one independent is there -- to record what we're doing, to capture the destruction and death.  Just to say:  Look, look what your tax dollars are financing...

We're soft, comfortable, and turning away.  We -- the western governments -- have teams on the ground to gather records documenting "war crimes", so assured are we of victory, and of writing the history of the "conflicts" by the victors.

But ISIS is advancing,
our best laid plans for having others fight for our alleged objectives are not playing out on the ground, and it looks like "if you want something done right, you do it yourself."  Proxy wars -- committing an 180-degree about face and going into Syria, even when the American people spoke out loudly last year to their Congressional representatives:  No More Wars of Choice Abroad (allegedly overridden by polls showing ISIS videos of journalists being beheaded scare us into doing ... something! ) -- is where we're at now.

God help us.
We really do deserve a good humbling.
A big fat heaping of humble pie for our arrogance in thinking we can kill our way to a win like this.... From Above.

Washington loses.  This time though, it was just the silly dumb game, of getting home safely while not hurting others...  Let's get realistic and open our eyes to the physical realities of what real war games do:  they age and destroy bodies, and nobody comes out clean, amongst the destruction and damage.  Rebuilding takes generations, and decades upon decades.
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Fundamental failures bar Nats’ path to elite

Thomas Boswell

COLUMN | Fundamentals, poise and experience carry far more weight in the postseason, and the Nats’ inability to advance illustrated just that.