A real difference between Bush and Obama
Dick Morris and Ellen McGann
write in the
New York Post:
Bush’s legacy shows one clear achievement: He kept us safe after 9/11. Now his successor’s policies are about to eradicate that singular achievement. The liberals will, of course, all cheer these appointments and the policies they’ll pursue once in office, but these appointments make it frighteningly more likely that we will, indeed, be hit again.
The piece, copied below, is not your typical Dick Morris spin job, but a substantive and disturbing discussion of the significance of Obama’s appointments to key intelligence, homeland security, and Justice Department positions.
GUTTING SECURITY
O’S dangerous anti-terror picks
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
PRESIDENT-elect Barack Obama’s appointments to Homeland Security, the Justice Department and now the CIA indicate a virtual abandonment of the War on Terror.
As Homeland Security chief, he’s named a governor whose only experience has been with the US-Mexican border. His attorney general pick, meanwhile, took the lead in pardoning FALN terrorists. Now he has rounded out his national-security and Justice Department teams by naming ultraliberals.
Leon Panetta, his choice for CIA chief, is as liberal as they come. Though originally a pro-Nixon congressman, he long ago embraced the left with the fervor of a convert and brings these values to the CIA.
As President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff (a tenure that coincided with my own work with Clinton), he was a dedicated liberal, opposing accommodation with the Republicans who ran Congress and battling hard against a balanced-budget deal. After winning re-election, Clinton jettisoned Panetta for the more moderate Erskine Bowles in order to reach a deal with the GOP.
Plus, Panetta was a prime mover in the 1995 appointment of John Deutch to head CIA, replacing hardliner Jim Woolsey. Deutch eventually needed a presidential pardon after being caught committing a massive security breach by taking home his laptop, laden with secret files.
Choosing Panetta to head the CIA culminates liberals’ 35-year crusade to take over the agency, humble its operatives and rein in its operations. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter named liberal JFK adviser Ted Sorenson to head CIA, only to have the nomination killed. In 1997, Clinton tried to name his ultraleftist National Security Adviser Tony Lake (who had quit Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s staff over Vietnam), only to have that nomination rejected as well.
Each time, the intelligence community acted to protect its own and curbed the liberal president’s inclinations. But now, under Obama, the Democrats will finally have their way and appoint a liberal zealot to head the agency.
Panetta will, presumably, curb such practices as waterboarding, rendition and warrantless wiretapping. So we won’t gather much intelligence—but our spies will dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s.
Over at Justice, Obama is naming four liberals to staff the agency, each determined to rein in effective intelligence-gathering.
Professor Dawn Johnsen of Indiana University Law School is to head the Office of Legal Counsel. She distinguished herself by writing a law-review article taking issue with President Bush’s efforts to keep us safe. It was titled, “What’s a President To Do: Interpreting the Constitution in the Wake of the Bush Administration Abuses.” Presumably, she’ll bring back the days of the wall between criminal and intelligence investigations, which led to our failure to examine the computer of “20th hijacker” Zacharias Moussaoui, which contained wire-fund-transfer information on the other hijackers.
No less an authority than Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, who taught Elena Kagan, the new solicitor general, predicted that she and Johnsen would “freshly re-examine some of the positions the previous administration has taken.”
Obama’s other Justice appointments, David Ogden as deputy attorney general and Thomas Perrelli as associate AG, bring back Clinton/Reno Justice Department retreads. Both participated eagerly in the constraints on intelligence-gathering that left us so vulnerable on 9/11.
Bush’s legacy shows one clear achievement: He kept us safe after 9/11. Now his successor’s policies are about to eradicate that singular achievement. The liberals will, of course, all cheer these appointments and the policies they’ll pursue once in office, but these appointments make it frighteningly more likely that we will, indeed, be hit again.
[end of article]
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Ken Hechtman writes:
This is funny.
The left feels so betrayed by Obama’s appointments (a Republican for Defense, a pro-torture Republican as his first pick for CIA, a pro-War near-Republican for State, leaving Joe Lieberman in charge of the Homeland Security Committee) they’re now calling him “Barack Obush”
This wasn’t the change we were led to believe in.
LA replies:
Hey, you’ve got your unhappiness, we have ours.
And who was his first choice for CIA?
Ken Hechtman replies:
Whenever I feel discouraged and defeated I know I can go to VFR and read all about how we’re winning.
He originally floated John Brennan’s name
Terry Morris writes:
Ken Hechtman wrote:
This wasn’t the change we were led to believe in.
Speaking of funny, isn’t Hechtman a Canadian? Is Hechtman able to vote in American elections? Who is the “we” he’s talking about? Additionally, what kind of “change” was it that Hechtman et al., was led to believe in once this grossly under-experienced first term Senator who we still don’t know very much about managed to win the presidential election?
What is it about leftists, they think that if you install the right president he’s magically going to be able to re-invent the government, the long-established appointment mechanisms and so on and so forth, with little to no resistance from the other side? The sweeping kind of change that Obama promised on the ruins of Bush’s second term is a virtual impossibility short of his having two-thirds majorities in both houses of Congress to push his and his cronies’ wish-list through. In fact, in order for Obama successfully to impliment the kind of wild-eyed “change” he promised his idiot constituency, or, that he led them to believe in, the entire U.S. government and a super majority of state and local governments, would have to be composed of firmly seated ultra-liberals prior to his ever taking office.
Like I’ve said many times during the course of Obama’s campaign, he’s fixing to learn, quick, fast, and in a hurry, how very deficient are his qualifications to serve as U.S. president.
LA replies:
When Ken H. says “we” he means the left. He’s told me that he can vote in the U.S. as well as Canada. Also, I don’t think we in the U.S. can grasp the difference between being an American looking at Canada and being a Canadian looking at the U.S. For us, Canadian politics is barely on our radar screen; for Canadians, U.S. politics is front and center.
January 10
Van Wijk writes:
Whenever Ken Hechtman says anything I’m reminded of a character from The Camp of the Saints. I’m speaking of the character who gets knocked into the river by the very aliens he’s dedicated his life to, and realizing at once that his idol is false and that he is a Judas, takes large gulps of water to hasten his end.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 09, 2009 02:06 PM | Send