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Fouad Ajami chronicles the rise and fall of The One.
…There is nothing surprising about where Mr. Obama finds himself today. He had been made by charisma, and political magic, and has been felled by it. If his rise had been spectacular, so, too, has been his fall. The speed with which some of his devotees have turned on him—and their unwillingness to own up to what their infatuation had wrought—is nothing short of astounding. But this is the bargain Mr. Obama had made with political fortune.
He was a blank slate, and devotees projected onto him what they wanted or wished. In the manner of political redeemers who have marked—and wrecked—the politics of the Arab world and Latin America, Mr. Obama left the crowd to its most precious and volatile asset—its imagination. There was no internal coherence to the coalition that swept him to power. There was cultural “cool” and racial absolution for the white professional classes who were the first to embrace him. There was understandable racial pride on the part of the African-American community that came around to his banners after it ditched the Clinton dynasty.
The white working class had been slow to be convinced. The technocracy and elitism of Mr. Obama’s campaign—indeed of his whole persona—troubled that big constituency, much more, I believe, than did his race and name. The promise of economic help, of an interventionist state that would salvage ailing industries and provide a safety net for the working poor, reconciled these voters to a candidate they viewed with a healthy measure of suspicion. He had been caught denigrating them as people “clinging to their guns and religion,” but they had forgiven him. …
Joe Klein didn’t like Ajami’s above piece. Peter Wehner has some things for Joe to think about.
Time magazine’s Joe Klein is angry. Again. This time his animus is aimed at the Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami and yours truly. Again. And so, one more time — just for the fun of it — let’s take a look at what is fueling Joe’s fury and see if we can make some sense of it.
Here’s what Klein writes: …
In the WaPo, Richard Cohen is one of the disillusioned liberals. He still has to comment on Bush, of course, but the rest of the article is really quite something.
There is almost nothing the Obama administration does regarding terrorism that makes me feel safer. Whether it is guaranteeing captured terrorists that they will not be waterboarded, reciting terrorists their rights, or the legally meandering and confusing rule that some terrorists will be tried in military tribunals and some in civilian courts, what is missing is a firm recognition that what comes first is not the message sent to America’s critics but the message sent to Americans themselves. When, oh when, will this administration wake up? …
…Administration officials defend what happened in Detroit and assert, against common sense and the holy truth itself, that they got valuable intelligence — and so what more would you want? But Abdulmutallab went silent before terrorism experts from Washington could get to him. It has been more than a month since he last opened his mouth, and even if he resumes cooperating — a deal may be in the works — he now knows just a bit more about the present-day location of various al-Qaeda operatives than does Regis Philbin. …
…KSM, Abdulmutallab and other accused terrorists should be tried. But these two are not Americans, and they are accused of terrorism, tantamount to an act of war — a virtual Pearl Harbor, in KSM’s case. A military tribunal would fit them fine. If it is good enough for your average GI accused of murder or some such thing, it ought to be good enough for a foreign national with mass murder on his mind. …
Nile Gardiner, in the Telegraph Blogs, UK, criticizes Obama for his lack of vision and leadership in foreign affairs.
…But the scant attention paid in the State of the Union speech to US leadership was pitiful and frankly rather pathetic. … Needless to say there was nothing in the speech about the importance of international alliances, and no recognition whatsoever of the sacrifices made by Great Britain and other NATO allies alongside the United States on the battlefields of Afghanistan. …
…Significantly, the global war against al-Qaeda was hardly mentioned, and there were no measures outlined to enhance US security at a time of mounting threats from Islamist terrorists. Terrorism is a top issue for American voters, but President Obama displayed what can only be described as a stunning indifference towards the defence of the homeland.
The Iranian nuclear threat, likely to be the biggest foreign policy issue of 2010, was given just two lines in the speech, with a half-hearted warning of “growing consequences” for Tehran, with no details given at all. There were no words of support for Iranian protestors who have been murdered, tortured and beaten in large numbers by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s thuggish security forces, and no sign at all that the president cared about their plight. Nor was there any condemnation of the brutality of the Iranian regime, as well as its blatant sponsorship of terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As the example of Iran showed, the advance of freedom and liberty across the world in the face of tyranny was not even a footnote in the president’s speech. I cannot think of a US president in modern times who has attached less importance to human rights issues. For the hundreds of millions of people across the world, from Burma to Sudan to Zimbabwe, clamouring to be free of oppression, there was not a shred of hope offered in Barack Obama’s address. …
In the Washington Examiner, Michael Barone asks who Obama is trying to score points with by being soft on terrorism.
..If the answer to these questions is that we are trying to impress Islamist terrorists, we have clearly failed.
It is a matter of simple fact that the announcement that we would close Guantanamo and other implement policy changes did not prevent Abdulhakim Muhammad from killing U.S. soldiers at the Little Rock recruiting station last June. It did not prevent Nidal Hasan from killing U.S. soldiers at Fort Hood in November. It did not prevent Abdulmutallab from attempting to blow up Northwest Flight 253 over U.S. or Canadian airspace on Christmas day.
Public opinion polls in the Arab and Muslim world have shown only slight upticks in opinion about America in the months after Barack Obama’s speeches in Cairo and Turkey and after these administration policy changes. Terrorists did not say, “Gosh, now that Obama is closing Guantanamo and terrorists are being given Miranda rights, I’ve got to change my mind and decide that the United States is a really nifty country and that freedom and democracy are good things after all.”
But perhaps our goal was to convince not terrorists but “world opinion.” Are the government and billion people of India going to think better of the United States if we treat terrorists more gently? Not likely; they’re the targets of terrorists themselves. …
In the National Review, Andrew McCarthy reviews commentary from former CIA director, General Michael Hayden, on the amazingly poor judgment of Attorney General Eric Holder. He ends with an important point about the Abdulmutallab situation that the president can still rectify. Perhaps Obama should hold a national security summit to help him make a decision.
…Remember, though, that this is not a done deal. The Obama administration is treating what everyone now agrees was a mistake as if it were a bell that can’t be unrung. That is wrong, and it is irresponsible.
Right this minute, President Obama could designate Abdulmutallab an unlawful enemy combatant (or, as they now call it, an “unprivileged belligerent”) and proceed with his interrogation, unimpeded by a defense lawyer or Miranda restrictions. It is a power he has had every minute since Abdulmutallab’s capture five weeks ago. The case would still be there, and it would still be a slam-dunk, whether it were tried two, three, or five years from now. The only potential downside for the case is no downside at all: Prosecutors would not be able to use any statements he makes. …
…Moreover, we’re not merely rehashing past mistakes. This is an ongoing problem. After four months of al-Qaeda training in Yemen, Abdulmutallab has valuable information. President Obama still has the legal means to get it. Every day he fails to act — every day he elevates trifling trial strategy over vital intelligence collection — is a new, reckless failure to secure the nation.
And in The Corner, Dana Perino points out the problems with leaks about Abdulmutallab talking now.
… Now the administration has begun systematically leaking to the press that he started talking again last week after FBI agents prevailed upon his family in Nigeria to convince him to cooperate.
Last week?! So, first of all: How many of his fellow terrorists have rolled up operations since Christmas Day and headed for the hills? They’ve skedaddled for sure. It’s a classic al-Qaeda tactic: hold out for as long as you can so your fellow terrorists can go underground.
But even worse is that someone in the administration is leaking this at all. How does it further our national-security interests to tell Abdulmutallab’s fellow terrorists overseas that he is informing on them? What would you do if you were one of those fellow terrorists? If you hadn’t already gone to ground, you sure would do so now.
If the administration believed it was important to reassure Congress that Abdulmutallab was cooperating, they should have done so in private in closed session with the Senate and House Intelligence Committees. This kind of sensitive information is shared all the time in that way. It is bad practice to tell the world that a terrorist has agreed to spill the beans on his fellow terrorists who are still walking around free overseas. That is, of course, unless the principal motivation is to try to save political hides at home, even at the expense of actually finding the terrorists Abdulmutallab worked with. …
Robert Costa blogs in the Corner about one of the few budget cuts that the White House has proposed. It is in education, no less. It is not much, only one million dollars. But, what it does show is what a nasty piece of work Barack Obama is. The program to be cut is a scholarship program named after the deceased son of Rep. Bart Stupak (D., Mich). Rep Stupak did not toe the ObamaCare line.
With tax hikes dominating today’s budget debate, you will not hear much about the smaller federal grants that President Obama is hoping to slash. One proposed cut sticks out: Obama’s budget eliminates a $1 million scholarship program for aspiring Olympic athletes at Northern Michigan University. Here’s why it matters: In 1998, the program was renamed to honor B. J. Stupak, the late son of Rep. Bart Stupak (D., Mich.), who committed suicide in 2000. Is the cut related to Stupak’s playing hardball on health care last year?
Stupak won’t speculate on the politics of the decision, but he does tell National Review Online that he is “disappointed” to hear about the cut. He says he found out about it through the media, not the president or the Democratic leadership. He notes, however, “that in the 18 years I’ve been in Congress, never has a presidential staff called me to tell they are cutting something. Usually everyone around here scrambles after a budget is released.”
Stupak pledges to fight for the grant to be reinstated into the budget. “I’ll do my appropriations request and put in testimony. I want it to be funded on its own merit. President Bush did the same thing, and we always restored it. We need to do a better job explaining the program.” Stupak adds that with the Winter Olympics approaching, it is “time to remind Congress why it is important to provide educational assistance to aspiring young Olympic athletes. We’ll all be cheering our athletes next month, but we should remember that programs like this give a major boost to those training for the games. Shani Davis, the first black speed skater to make the U.S. Olympic team, credits the scholarship with keeping in him school. There are hundreds of stories like that. This program has become a small farm team for Olympic education.”
Thomas Sowell dispels a few myths that pass as logic for politicians and the MSM.
…The big question that seldom— if ever— gets asked in the mainstream media is whether these are a net increase in jobs. Since the only resources that the government has are the resources it takes from the private sector, using those resources to create jobs means reducing the resources available to create jobs in the private sector.
So long as most people do not look beyond superficial appearances, politicians can get away with playing Santa Claus on all sorts of issues, while leaving havoc in their wake— such as growing unemployment, despite all the jobs being “created.” …
Roger Simon has words for the pseudo-leftism of John Edwards.
Now that we have reached the black comic post-portem stage of the John Edwards scandal with Andrew Young’s book out and pundits playing mop up, it’s time to address an interesting question: To what degree did John Edwards’ “leftism” affect his extraordinarily narcissistic behavior?
The quotes around leftism are, of course, deliberate because Edwards wasn’t a real leftist. He is the poster boy for a faux-leftism that permeates our culture. Nothing could be more obvious than that Edwards, who took the furthest left stance of the three Democratic presidential candidates in the last election, cared next to nothing for “the people” but excessively for himself, building the McMansion of McMansions, etc. And “stance” is the operative word here, because his positions always seemed adopted, not felt.
Is there a cause and effect relationship here? We do live in an era when the private behavior and lifestyles of liberal-left politician seem completely out of whack with their public pronouncements. Besides Edwards, Al Gore and Nancy Pelosi come quickly to mind, but there are others. It’s doubtful Gore and Pelosi lived personal lives anywhere near as execrable as Edwards’ but there are parallels, especially in the area of personal enrichment (“green” or otherwise). …
A new blog for us, Doug Jones at Journal us has the lowdown on some of the lowdown uses of military jets by Nancy Pelosi’s family.
Is it a legitimate use of military jets to transport the Speaker of the House and her favored Congressional coterie for routine travel? Even if you believe it is — and, personally, I do not — any rational taxpayer would admit that it is monumental waste of money. Military flights cost between $5,000 and $20,000 per hour to operate. The Speaker and her passengers routinely reimburse the Air Force $120 to $400 for each flight.
Since Nancy Pelosi took over as Speaker in 2006, she’s rung up millions in military travel expenses to commute between San Francisco and Washington.
Worse still, she also appears to have requisitioned entire flights for the personal use of her children and grandchildren. That is, unaccompanied by any member of Congress, her kids, in-laws and grandchildren are utilizing entire military passenger jets for their routine travel needs. …