This weekend, Americans were treated to something new: Barack Obama defending his war policies by suggesting they merely continue his predecessor’s practices. The defense is illuminating, not least for its implicit recognition that George W. Bush has more credibility on fighting terrorists than does the sitting president.
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Leave aside, for just a moment, the substance. Far more arresting is that Mr. Obama now defends himself by invoking a man he has spent the past year blaming for al Qaeda’s growth. You know—all those Niebuhrian speeches about how America had gone “off course,†“shown arrogance and been dismissive,†and “made decisions based on fear rather than foresight,†thus handing al Qaeda a valuable recruiting tool.
Others have happily piled on. John Brennan, a career CIA holdover...
One of the poster children for why the CIA should be dismantled and rebuilt (after Obama is thrown out of office).
...used his first public appearance last August as Mr. Obama’s counterterrorism chief to declare a new dawn. No longer would America’s policies serve as “a recruitment bonanza for terrorists.†No longer would we be “defining and indeed distorting our entire national security apparatus†because of terrorism. Henceforth, Mr. Obama would abandon the “global war†mindset, and take care not to “validate al Qaeda’s twisted worldview.â€
Like Mr. Obama, Mr. Brennan was singing a different tune this weekend. On NBC’s “Meet the Press,†a testy Mr. Brennan defended the decision that allowed Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to lawyer up by invoking—you guessed it—the Bush administration. Mr. Brennan claimed the process for reading Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights was “the same process that we have used for every other terrorist who has been captured on our soil.†The FBI, he asserted, was simply following guidelines put in place by Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey.
Mr. Mukasey begs to differ. “First, the guidelines Mr. Brennan refers to involve intelligence gathering,†he told me. “They do not deal with whether someone in custody is to be treated as a criminal defendant or as an intelligence asset.â€
“Second, as for gathering intelligence, it begs the whole question about whether he [Abdulmutallab] should have been designated a criminal suspect. And there is nothing—zero, zilch, nada—in those guidelines that makes that choice. It is a decision that ought to be made at the highest level, and the heads of our security agencies have testified that it was made without consulting them.â€
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703630404575053363478066720.htmlEssentially, this is just a varient on the theme.
Whenever they dramatically drive the nation off course they howl, "Don't blame us, we're compensating for Bush's magnitude of failure."
Yet in this instance it is, "Don't blame us, we're just following Bush's lead."
This regime is slathered in weak sauce.
