Bush policies unassailable

We, the Americans firmly rooted in reality, as opposed to those other Americans who live in a fantasy world where bombers magically stop bombing when you build them a road or school, are slowly being vindicated by current events. The Wall Street Journal notices in “Bush’s Gitmo Vindication“;

Yet for all of his attacks on the Bush Administration, which he accused of making “decisions based upon fear rather than foresight,” Mr. Obama stuck with his predecessor’s support for military commissions, adding some procedural bells and whistles as political cover to justify his past opposition. For the record: Both the left and right, from the ACLU to Dick Cheney, now agree that the President has all but embraced the Bush policy.

Mr. Obama also pledged to release at least 50 detainees to other countries — about one-tenth the number released under President Bush — and added that the Administration was in “ongoing discussions” to transfer them. Good luck with that: The Europeans who were so robustly against Gitmo in the Bush years have suddenly discovered its detainees are dangerous. Meanwhile, the countries that might take them, such as Yemen, can’t be trusted to prevent them from returning to the battlefield, where they can kill Americans again.

In the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer writes “Obama In Bush Clothing” ;

The latest flip-flop is the restoration of military tribunals. During the 2008 campaign, Obama denounced them repeatedly, calling them an “enormous failure.” Obama suspended them upon his swearing-in. Now they’re back.

Of course, Obama will never admit in word what he’s doing in deed. As in his rhetorically brilliant national-security speech yesterday claiming to have undone Bush’s moral travesties, the military commissions flip-flop is accompanied by the usual Obama three-step: (a) excoriate the Bush policy, (b) ostentatiously unveil cosmetic changes, (c) adopt the Bush policy.

Krauthammer recounts some of the flip-flops of the Change Administration which changed into the Bush Administration on national security;

Observers of all political stripes are stunned by how much of the Bush national security agenda is being adopted by this new Democratic government. Victor Davis Hanson (National Review) offers a partial list: “The Patriot Act, wiretaps, e-mail intercepts, military tribunals, Predator drone attacks, Iraq (i.e., slowing the withdrawal), Afghanistan (i.e., the surge) — and now Guantanamo.”

Jack Goldsmith (The New Republic) adds: rendition — turning over terrorists seized abroad to foreign countries; state secrets — claiming them in court to quash legal proceedings on rendition and other erstwhile barbarisms; and the denial of habeas corpus — to detainees in Afghanistan’s Bagram prison, indistinguishable logically and morally from Guantanamo.

Harry Reid declared yesterday that there will be no detainees on American soil. Where then? Europe doesn’t want them, the countries in the Gulf region who are willing to take them are less than trustworthy in keeping terrorists from returning to their former lives and their former fights. Dick Cheney reminded the Obama Administration yesterday;

The administration seems to pride itself on searching for some kind of middle ground in policies addressing terrorism. They may take comfort in hearing disagreement from opposite ends of the spectrum. If liberals are unhappy about some decisions, and conservatives are unhappy about other decisions, then it may seem to them that the president is on the path of sensible compromise. But in the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed. You cannot keep just some nuclear-armed terrorists out of the United States, you must keep every nuclear-armed terrorist out of the United States.

Triangulation is a political strategy, not a national security strategy.

While Obama declared yesterday that the Bush Administration’s policies “created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained” and “has weakened American security” without examining the fact that there have been no successful attacks on American soil since the event that was the catalyst for those Bush policies. The Democrats are real good at campaigning, but they’re not real successful at actually accomplishing things. So their strategy has been to campaign as Democrats and fight for our national security like Republicans. We’ve recounted some of the reactions from the Left on the Obama policies here on this blog – but it’s not like the hateful rhetoric we heard against the Bush Administration for the same policies. That makes them kind of disingenuous, doesn’t it?

Category: Antiwar crowd, Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Liberals suck, Politics, Terror War