It has been almost one full year since the President took the oath of office and began his term. In that time, he’s reversed dozens of Bush Administration policy positions, rolled back administrative rules, passed significant legislation and appointed dozens of people to top policy positions within the government. Yet, despite this fact, he’s attempting to blame the “systemic failures” he cited at the CIA and Department of Homeland Security on the previous administration.
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What else is new? This has been his fallback position on everything. Unemployment is high? Blame Bush. Economy sluggish? Blame Bush. Deficits out of control? Blame Bush. AIG gets bonuses? Blame Bush. Afghanistan unstable? Blame Bush. Now, following the significant failures of both CIA and DHS that allowed a terrorist to board an America-bound airliner with a bomb strapped to his junk, he’s blaming Bush again, and complaining that the media is being unfair for harassing him off the golf course during his Christmas vacation when they didn’t treat Bush that way.
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Regardless of how the White House tries to spin this, the buck will stop with the President. He’s had plenty of time to fix whatever issues he believed existed in the intelligence and homeland security arenas. His top priorities there seem to be closing Gitmo (which won’t be closing next month despite his promises to the contrary) and trying Gitmo detainees in the United States rather than in military tribunals. When was the last time (before the Christmas bomber) you heard either the President or the Vice President talk about capturing bin Laden? (Here’s the most recent I could find.) Or preventing terrorism? (Not since the inaugural has he made a major speech that included it, as far as I can tell.) Since taking office, the President has not made the war on terror a priority. It was so low a priority, the phrase “war on terror” was banned at the White House itself. This shouldn’t be surprising, given that the Democratic party and the President himself have made it abundantly clear that they believe the war on terror to be simply yet another cheap gimmick trumped up by Republicans to scare people into reelecting them.
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The evidence of the President’s opinion is made clear by just looking at who he for the top domestic security and intelligence gathering jobs. The President clearly felt that the biggest threat to homeland security was illegal immigration, not terrorism, otherwise its hard to justify nominating the two term governor of a border state with little experience with international terrorism to that job. Janet Napolitano’s closest brush with anything terrorism related (her puffed up DHS bio notwithstanding) was while she was a US Attorney and played a roll in investigating one of Timothy McVeigh’s co-conspirators. She didn’t stick around to finish the case, either. She was already running for Arizona Attorney General before that case was resolved. As for the CIA, instead of choosing someone with prior CIA or intelligence community experience, he chose Leon Panetta, a former Congressman (who never served on the Intelligence Committee), OMB Chief and White House Chief of Staff under Clinton. He had no intelligence experience at all. Instead of choosing someone who knew these jobs, the President seems to have selected someone politically suitable and loyal. Neither of these picks were made because they were the best people for the job, and now that we need competent leadership at DHS and at CIA we have political appointees with no real experience at the helm. You can almost hear the President telling Napolitano and Panetta they’re doing a heckuva job. He could say the same thing about the head of TSA, except it has taken him 8 months to nominate someone for the job and he still hasn’t been confirmed by the Senate yet, thanks to Senator Jim DeMint. DeMint won’t approve of someone for that job without at least some kind of floor debate. Given the President’s track record on nominees for these kinds of positions, it’s hard to blame Senator DeMint for being wary.
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The Democratic leadership and this administration are chock full of elected officials and political appointees who railed against warrantless wiretapping (although Obama did vote in support, to his credit), the PATRIOT Act, Gitmo, and nearly every other aspect of the Bush Administration’s terrorism prevention policy. Yet now, the same people who turned every reasonable Bush Administration policy into a harbinger of tyranny are now devising and enforcing policies like forbidding airline passengers blankets and banning bathroom breaks for an hour before landing. the irony is almost laughable.
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By 2008, the country was going through battle fatigue, as Michael Chertoff said in an op-ed today. That’s true. After six years of the war on terror, people were getting tired of hearing about it. Say what you want about President Bush, but at his core, the man was tenacious and was a stubborn as a bulldog when it came to the war on terror. He wasn’t going to let battle fatigue or politicians trying to score a cheap victory deter him from doing what needed to be done. President Obama needs to emulate that kind of resolve. He doesn’t really have a choice.
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No matter what the President wants or wanted when he ran for this job, he is going to have to deal with international terrorism and the threat it poses to the United States. In between golf outings and pep talks with Democrats on health insurance reform, he is going to have to deal with the fact that there are terrorists out there who are actively plotting attacks inside the United States and doing their best to carry them out. No matter how many times he goes to Cairo, no matter how many times he tries to expunge the “war on terror” from the White House lexicon, no matter how many times he sticks his head in the sand, the terrorists are going to be out there plotting. It’s time for this administration to wake up and do something effective about it. The Bush Administration spent six years entirely focused on these issues and there is still much that needs to be done.
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It’s time to stop pointing fingers and start fixing problems.
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Dec 30th by Brian S
Good post! I still blame Bush for an awful lot of our present ills, however. If he wasn’t such a poor President we probably wouldn’t be stuck with Obama-mania now. Bush and his feckless administration cost us Congress in a big way, and the Presidency. An atrocious political legacy.
But don’t think I am excusing Obama. Napolitano and Panetta were ridiculously poor picks for those slots.
One thing you can count on Barry from DC to do is cry like a little bitch every time he takes some heat. I swear, I’ve never seen an American President whine as much as this pampered little douche does about stuff he “inherited.”
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This guy is a cunt. He has no sack. The rest of the world, including Al Qaeda sees this. There will be more to follow. Some of them will succeed. I hope every one of you left-of-center cockroaches has to look in the mirror after the fact and deal with the consequences of your having pulled the lever for this jackass.
This guy is in so far over his head its ridiculous. scary, very scary.
Obama is in way over his head—he needs to get off this “blame Bush trip” and get real and man up when he goofs, but that’s not likely to happen with Barack Himself Obama. We are stuck with this guy for 3 more long, long years and I only hope the country can recover from the condition we will be in at that time. Found you by accident while surfing the net.
Let’s not get all that draconian about this thing. We have had two domestic intel/action failures over the past few months, at Detroit and at Fort Hood. From the reporting I have seen so far, these were human errors, apparently bad judgement by individuals in a reporting and alert system where the right call would have most likely prevented both incidents. Cannot, however, say the same for the screening system, especially at foreign airports. That needs major work, complicated by the people we have to work with over there.
The situation calls from some shaping up for sure, probably including a rewrite of the reporting/alarm regulations; a few personnel changes; some sharp lectures to the personnel involved in the system on not erring on the
side of caution in their decisions, and possibly another layer of review on all such cases so that none slip through the cracks.
All in all, we should do the math. The homeland has not suffered a major terrorist hit since 9/11; and we know from news reports that some plots have been nipped. Given the innate secret nature of the business, I do not doubt that there are many more which have not been publicized. Add to that the numbers of al-Qaeda operatives in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere who have bitten the dust at our hand. We can scream and hollar that the so-called dots were not connected in these particular cases; but it would seem to me that a great number of dots HAVE been connected over the past eight years. Study the flaws and repair them intelligently.
You cannot win a game by playing only on defense. The percentages will tell you that eventually the enemy will find a way to break through. To really solve the problem, in my opinion, you have to seek out the perps in their lairs and kill them where they live. Rather than slam Obama for being on the golf course or letting Nap make some intially stupid remarks, we have to watch closely how he conducts the offensive side in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and anywhere else al-Qaeda can be found. The idea is to get the bastards BEFORE they can buy an airline ticket to Detroit.
While in some senses, everything that happens (or not) in the federal government can be said to be the responsibility of the President, not everything is his fault. Isn’t the critical question whether anyone thinks that the Detroit incident (or Ft Hood) would not have happened under another President? I strongly suspect the Detroit incident would have happened if Bush (either one) or McCain were in the White House. In both cases, it appears that the intel function is simply not gearing into the prevention function in any meaningful way (or at least it is not doing so in every case). I’m not sure what’s realistic to expect in these situations and/or how much it can be controlled by the guy who sits in the Oval Office. But it is indeed correct, as Obama has noted, that these circumstances bespeak a breakdown at some point between the collection of the intelligence and the end use of it.
Wolverine makes some good observations. While I hope that something like Detroit doesn’t happen again, I suspect it will and that, in some ways, the process of sending sad young men with cotton wool between their ears to bring down planes with bombs that don’t work too well tells us that Al-Quaeda is being pressed very hard on a number of fronts.
I’m not sure I want the President of this country (whoever it may be) spending a lot of time on airport security details at Amsterdam Schipol. There are other things that require his attention more and that are more threatening to more of us. Napolitano should resign (her initial remarks were stupid and forced the President to get more publicly involved than he should be), attention should be given to why the intelligence isn’t getting through the system where it can be used effectively in these two incidents that we know about, and the issues of Iran, North Korea, Russia, Afghanistan, and the fiscal condition of the country are the ones I want the President and his senior team sweating bullets over.
Cato the Elder: you have always given such reasoned comments here: I am glad that you finally laid it out about Precedent B+rack Obowmao in a way that doesn’t require my dictionary to decipher. I agree with you about his whining.
and even if the President himself isn’t at fault for the Ft Hood incident, years of “political correctness” contributed to the murders as well as fear of sharing intel, also based on PC. Obama benefits from political correctness daily; in fact, i daresay it contributed to his election. so he will never chastise the military for covering up Hasan’s ideology as PC.
also, Obama went to a Muslim school in Indonesia as a child. His religion was listed as “muslim”. While not all Muslims are radical, he has indicated great sympathy for Muslims which may further embolden the radical Muslims.
Wolverine, I agree with you. However, you have to remember that these are the same people who thought that President Bush’s philosophy of fighting the terrorists in Iraq so we don’t have to fight them at home was an empty rhetorical trick. Personally, I believe that the senior Democrats in the Administration, including the President, simply don’t believe terrorism is that big a deal and have grown complacent.
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NoVAScout, I agree that the President isn’t always responsible for everything, even though he is accountable for everything. If I believed that the CIA or DHS were being led by competent people, I don’t think I’d give Obama as much flak as this. But he choose poorly qualified people for those jobs, and I will criticize him for that. Bush, for the most part, had competent people in the most senior positions, and where he didn’t (like at FEMA) he was rightly criticized for it. I agree that the President of the United States shouldn’t need to stay up nights worrying about the screening protocols in Amsterdam. But he should make it clear that he expects someone in his Administration will. It is the president’s own lackadaisical approach to international terrorism that has filtered down through the Administration. Time to end that now before our luck runs out.
I really still can’t believe there wasn’t more complaining about Panetta taking over the CIA. If a Republican President picked an ex-GOP Congressman to lead the CIA in a time like this there would have been massive reporting and whining about it from the MSM.
“We have had two domestic intel/action failures over the past few months, at Detroit and at Fort Hood. From the reporting I have seen so far, these were human errors, apparently bad judgement by individuals in a reporting and alert system where the right call would have most likely prevented both incidents”
Wolve, Kelley picked up on the same note I’m about to play.
There is entirely too much “touchy feeley” PC crap…and it will cost us a large number of citizens in the near future. There will be no excuse for this, and Americans will turn on this President, once they realize that he IS the virus we’ve told them he is.
LI, when Bush put Porter Goss in at CIA there WAS much whining and massive reporting about it. http://www.mail-archive.com/sam11@erols.com/msg00372.html
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At least Goss had significant intelligence experience as Chairman of the Intelligence committee, and had worked for the CIA before he went to Congress. Panetta didn’t even had that. At best, he got to sit in on the intelligence briefings when he was Clinton’s Chief of Staff.
Excellent point, Brian! I forgot about that.
Good post Brian. I agree with much of what you discuss in regards to this and especially those Obama put in charge of running certain agencies to include the CIA. I equated it much to having a local Sheriff without any law enforcement or agency experience running a Sheriff’s Office. Porter Goss worked in the CIA which in my opinion gives him an edge over any outsider taking over because it’s the type of job where if you have no real “hands on” or practical experience/knowledge of the job that person really does not have all the necessary tools he or she needs to lead those people.
The President is responsible for the actions of those in the federal government whether they are Democrat or Republican. Again, on a local level if a police chief’s officers are consistently screwing up they are responsible for not doing something to remedy the problem. Personally, I think this is a small portion of the overall portion in that right now terrorism is not a major concern of the administration because we have gotten complacent. Luckily, we as a country were lucky that this wake up call didn’t result in the loss of lives. I recently read “No Higher Caller, No Greater Responsibility” by John W. Suthers, (Former Colorado Governor, Attorney General and US Attorney) and in his book he noted a conference call with the Bush Administration that made fighting terrorism the number one priority. I don’t know if those calls have occurred with the new administration I think unfortunately our society sadly suffers from complacency and since we haven’t had a major (Relatively) in the United States since September 11th that doesn’t mean it can’t and won’t happen again.
Both Detroit and Ft. Hood are prime examples of the overall problem right now. Lack of communication and fear of being wrong. Although everything is clearer in hindsight, I don’t know how much further evidence someone needed in regards to the Ft. Hood incident when clear statements were made and even e-mails were located but that unfortunately goes to someone not wanting to be wrong and “profiling” someone. You cannot get in trouble for profiling if your profile leads to results nor do I believe anyone is going to cry if someone profiled wound up with explosives on their person.
Even if there were mistakes made in the previous administration it is now on President Obama and he bears the responsibility for not fixing those “mistakes” or “problems.” Finger pointing doesn’t save lives or protect our country!
Brian – I am fairly certain that both of these incidents (Detroit and Ft. Hood) would have happened regardless of who was President at the time. This doesn’t detract from anything that you and others have said about the need to improve the system, but it is not an appropriate partisan political issue. I get concerned that this kind of thing has a danger of a kind of Fox News carnival act. A lot of Rs are looking like they desperately want to use this for political jollies, rather than recognizing that fixes are going to require meticulous, down-in-the-engine-room running design changes to a very complex system. If the defects that contributed to these incidents are not properly analyzed and addressed, that becomes a competence issue that can perhaps be hung on the incumbent administration (recognizing that some of the defects were inherited from the guys who went before – same deal as 9/11). But I don’t think we’re they’re yet. And I do think the analytical starting point is the question of whether either of these events would have happened if someone else were President. My best guess is that they would have.
NoVA Scout, I can’t say that I’m as certain as you are. From my experience in government, I’ve found that those in leadership positions do have a significant impact on the work that is done by the folks further down the chain. When someone recognizes that the boss cares about a certain issue, then there’s a potential for upward mobility if they care about the issue as well. Whose to say that with different leadership in these positions stressing different priorities that either Fort Hood or the junk bomber would have happened? I think Fort Hood is more likely to have happened regardless of leadership, but I can’t say the same thing about the Christmas incident.
You may be right, I don’t know, Brian. We had this tremendous gift from the perp’s father (can you imagine what his emotions must have been when he decided to drop a dime on his son to US authorities?) and we somehow didn’t get that information to a place where it did us any good. I also think that a lot of the problem was in Amsterdam Schipol. All that said, I think Ft. Hood was more preventable. They had a lot of information about this guy and he was in the service, where oversight and supervision should have been more revealing and disciplined than if he had been a civilian. From press accounts, he seemed like he was really troubled, personally. You would think that working as an Army shrink would have put him in close contact with a lot of other mental health professionals who would have sniffed out issues. Layer the Muslim fanaticism and new-found enthusiasm for religious training on top of the personal dis-integration and you would have thought someone could have thrown a flag on him (an effective flag). But, much as I have issues with the current Administration on a number of things that I think are life-threatening for the nation (particularly fiscal issues), I really don’t detect a substantive difference between the way they approach internal security than the previous crowd did. The rhetoric may not be as high-pitched, and I guess that one could make the argument that rhetoric is important in this area. I’m jaded enough, however, to assume that rhetoric has become a cheap and over-valued good in this cable news/blog-fed age, so I may discount it more than I should.
I tend to agree with NoVA Scout on several counts. I think there was a stark difference between the Fort Hood case and the Detroit incident. My feeling is that the PC thing was a real factor in the Fort Hood case, especially with regard to those medical personnel at Walter Reed who did not make a fuss about what they heard from Hassan’s own mouth. In my book, however, the Detroit incident looks like a genuine human failure at the level of professional intelligence people — probably by some of the same people who have been instrumental in thwarting numerous other terrorist plots about which we as the public cannot be informed for reasons of protection of sources and methods. Brian is absolutely right that the big guy on the top can have an effect on the dedication and performance of those in the trenches. With regard specifically to the counterterrorism business, I can point to a very positive example –Reagan — and a very negative example — Clinton. Whatever, the case, however, an intelligence professional is sworn to protect his country and his people, not a particular POTUS; and he should be less susceptible than most to a letdown in performance because of the politics at the top. If he cannot handle that, he should step out of the shoes of a professional intelligence officer.