While defensively staying steadfast to closing Guantanamo and outlandishly attacking former President Bush, who kept Americans safe for the past eight years, President Obama went out of his way to politicize national security to the degree one would think he was still running for office.
In a 40 minute speech before a pro Obama audience at the National Archives in Washington DC he bashed Bush with direct and indirect attacks more than 10 times and not once did he credit the former administration, with a legacy that will go down in history, for keeping Americans safe since 9/11.
Instead he accused Bush of creating “a misguided experiment” that caused more threats to America.
While justifying the release of memos dealing with enhanced interrogations, including waterboarding, which was used on three terrorists, while redacting what the interrogations revealed and prevented in the way of attacks on the US, he defended not releasing photos of these interrogations because it would inflame world opinion and put our military at risk.
These Obama moves are outright political strategies and do not represent national security, or, why would he release portions of top secret memos?
Meanwhile on the other side of town on the same day former Vice President Dick Cheney, who had been invited to speak by the American Enterprise Institute months before the Obama speech was scheduled, delayed his start in deference to the president. The contrast between the two speeches were startling, one smacking of defensive political campaign rhetoric while Cheney delivered a sobering serious speech saying the anti-terror policies of the Bush administration kept America safe and that President Obama’s apparent pride in seeking a middle ground is compromising America’s safety. Some believe White House strategists timed Obama’s speech to blunt the Cheney coverage, but all it did was to provide the striking contrast.
Cheney repeated his call for Obama to release memos that will show the effectiveness of the Bush-era interrogation methods.
“If Americans do get the chance to learn what our country was spared, it’ll do more than clarify the urgency and the rightness of enhanced interrogations in the years after 9/11,” he said. “It may help us to stay focused on dangers that have not gone away. Instead of idly debating which political opponents to prosecute and punish, our attention will return to where it belongs — on the continuing threat of terrorist violence, and on stopping men who are planning it.”
In announcing the latest approach to Gitmo, he outlined some five classifications of detainees, noting that some would be tried in the US under constitutional law and if found guilty would be housed in Super Federal Security prisons, where no one has yet to escape. However, Obama didn’t get much help on this point yesterday when FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress that bringing Guantanamo detainees to the US could pose a number of risks, even if they were kept in maximum-security prisons. Congress is withholding $80 million in funding that would go to shutting down the facility until Obama provided a plan. There were few concrete details in Obama’s speech of a plan.
While Obama opened his speech by saying that we were in an economic crisis and admitted to fighting two wars, he still wants to tone down the phrase ‘war on terror’ to “overseas contingent operations” — call it politically what you will, but the terrorists are still here.
I have previously referred to Obama’s so called “transparency” as “selective transparency,” but after listing to today’s speech I will modify it to “selective political transparency.”
3 users commented in " Obama Politicized National Security "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackI believe that FBI Director Mueller also said that “enhanced interrogation” techniques have not resulted in aborting any terrorist activities in this country. The terrorist initiatives have been thwarted through outstanding and sophisticated police work. The most recent being the FBI effort in stopping the bombing of synagogues in NY and the attack against military aircraft by the same individuals.
Actually, one of the most serious threats to our security was the leaking of the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plume’s name through Mr. Cheney’s involvement and which resulted in the conviction of Scooter Libby. The Bush administration used the separation of powers argument in refusing to provide any information. Transparency?? We’ll never know the extent to which CIA operatives were compromised.
Cheney’s recent appearances on TV talk shows and public speeches is puzzling. During a good part of his 8 years in office his whereabouts were unknown and now we’re being inundated by him. He was secretive to an extreme. It seems as if he still the president.
Remember 9/11 happened on Bush’s watch and after they ignored a CIA report of an impending attack by terrorists.
We will never know what attacks were thwarted by the CIA with enhanced interrogation techniques, Obama redacted that portion of the memos that he revealed that dealt with 3 cases of waterboarding. If he is going to be so transparent, why not give the people all of the truth when revealing top secret memos? Valerie Plame was outed long before Scooter Libby was charged, as a DC socialite, who was known to have had a desk job with the CIA. Why she was classified as an operative is anyone’s guess. Libby was convicted of perjury for comments that had nothing to do with the outing. It was a political scam. As for 9/11 — it occurred on Clinton’s watch during an administration of errors by omission. He failed to get bin Laden when he had the opportunity; he failed to respond appropriately to the bombings of the US Embassy in Nairobi and to the USS Cole — it has been well established that he had his mind on something other than National Security. These were but three incidents among many others that led up to 9/11 during the Clinton administration. Bush wasn’t in office long enough to nail this one on him. However, how about the 7 1/2 years of his administration when no attacks on the US occurred on his watch since 9/11?
I will do my best to not be too wordy.
You seem to deal with the Plame situation as a minor event. I don’t know how many insiders in Washington were aware of her CIA role but the leak from the White House, as planned by Cheney/ Rove, received immediate and worldwide attention. Her outing was in retaliation for her husband’s stating that there was no unenriched uranium from Niger to Saddam Hussein and thereby poking a major hole in the WMD falsehood. Scooter Libby was the fall guy and as we know the separation of powers argument eliminated the true facts from surfacing. I will just quote from only one of numerous counts of indictment that the Grand Jury presented in the US District Court For The District of Columbia. This is from Indictment Count One (Obstruction of Justice).
“The responsibilities of certain CIA employees required that their association with the CIA be kept secret; as a result the fact that these individuals were employed by the CIA was classified. Disclosure of the fact that such individuals were employed by the CIA had the potential to damage the national security in ways that ranged from preventing the future use of those individuals in a covert capacity, to compromising intelligence-gathering methods and operations, and endangering the safety of CIA employees and those who dealt with them”.
The bottom line was that Libby was guilty and convicted. The usual response by a politician or political appointee is that their conviction was politically motivated not that they weren’t guilty as charged. As a conservative I would expect you to be more in favor of upholding the rule of law and that our laws apply to all citizens equally not selectively.
You bring up President Clinton and more that could have been done during his administration to deal with bin Laden. In retrospect I agree. Why weren’t we more aggressive in dealing with terrorists prior to 9/11? We can go even further back when the Marine barracks were blown up in Lebanon resulting in the deaths of 241 of our military. This happened on October 23, 1983 during President Reagan’s tenure.
Reagan’s response to this slaughter was to pull our remaining troops out three months later. Not exactly aggressive pursuit.
Maybe it’s because we can easier understand the dangers our military cope with on foreign missions but when it comes to our civilian population and an attack on our homeland we react with greater outrage and fear. I really don’t know.
The Guantanamo thing and Obama. Even brilliant people can goof. This is goof number two. Bowing to the Saudi king was number one. Since our president is really only mortal we can be sure there will be a number three somewhere down the line.
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