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Jennifer Rubin highlights how Bush policies made the Bin Laden operation possible.
…John Yoo, who underwent years of investigation by inept lawyers and faced the loss of his law license for his work in setting the ground rules in the war on terror, has reason to find solace in an operation that was the anthesis of the criminalization of the war on terror. He writes:
“Imagine what would have happened if the Obama administration had been running things back in 2002–2008. It would have given Miranda warnings and lawyers to KSM and other al-Qaeda leaders. There would have been no Gitmo, no military commissions — instead civilian trials on U.S. soil with all of the Bill of Rights benefits for terrorist defendants. There would have been no enhanced-interrogation program, no terrorist-surveillance program, and hence no intelligence mosaic that could have given us the information that produced this success. In the War on Terror, it is comparatively easy to pull the trigger — the truly hard task is to figure out where to aim. President Obama can take credit, rightfully, for the success today, but he owes it to the tough decisions taken by the Bush administration.”
It has always been a misnomer that the Bush administration acted ”lawlessly.” To the contrary, George W. Bush, his advisers and lawyers understood there is criminal law and there is the law of war. And they understood we should not confuse the two. The latter allows, as Congress proscribed, for military tribunals and for interrogations that fall short of torture but would not be countenanced in a civilian court. The latter allowed us to operate the Nuremberg trials. The latter was the legal tradition in this country for more than 200 years. Now Obama and his team have figured it out as well, after two years of a misguided experiment in which they castigated critics as legal and moral dunces.
But now there is agreement by both sides in this raging debate. You don’t send cops to arrest Osama. You send SEALs. Perhaps now we can set aside all that poppycock about Bush’s “shredding the Constitution.”
Peter Wehner demonstrates the hypocrisy of the Left on raising the debt ceiling.
…Dionne had particularly harsh words for Marco Rubio, the Florida Senator who said:
“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.”
Hold on. Wait a minute. I’m sorry; I’ve made a terrible mistake. These aren’t the words of Senator Marco Rubio; they’re the words of then-Senator Barack Obama, from 2006. Which raises this question: Do you recall the column by Dionne excoriating Obama and other Democrats for voting against raising the debt ceiling during the Bush presidency? That’s funny; neither do I. Which tells you much of what you need to know about Dionne these days.
Peter Wehner scores another point against the hypocritical Left.
Here’s Nancy Pelosi from a press conference on September 7, 2006:
[E]ven if [Osama bin Laden] is caught tomorrow, it is five years too late. He has done more damage the longer he has been out there. But, in fact, the damage that he has done . . . is done. And even to capture him now I don’t think makes us any safer.
And here’s Nancy Pelosi yesterday:
The death of Osama bin Laden marks the most significant development in our fight against al-Qaida. . . . I salute President Obama, his national security team, Director Panetta, our men and women in the intelligence community and military, and other nations who supported this effort for their leadership in achieving this major accomplishment. . . . [T]he death of Osama bin Laden is historic. . . .
This devastating then-and-now comparison comes to us courtesy of John Hideraker of Power Line. It underscores the degree to which partisanship can ravage people’s fair-mindedness and, in the process, make them look like fools and hacks. Such things aren’t uncommon in politics—but what is rare is to see such intellectual dishonesty proven so conclusively.
Michael Barone weighs on “leading from behind.” He notes how Ryan Lizza’s article shows Obama’s adolescent, reactionary views on foreign policy issues.
…Arriving in the Senate in 2005, when it was clear that things were going sour in Iraq, Obama took the side of “realists” who always advised caution about military involvement abroad rather than the “idealists” who had backed such involvements in the Clinton years and after.
…And Obama’s scornful dismissal of George W. Bush’s “idealist” calls for advancing democracy around the world had something in common with the adolescent discovery that “Dad is wrong about everything!”
Of course when Obama got to college, er, the White House, he found that Dad was right about some things. The surge in Iraq was allowed to continue succeeding and something like a surge was ordered in Afghanistan. Guanatanamo remains open and CIA interrogators are not going to be prosecuted. Robert Gates was kept in the Pentagon and Hillary Clinton installed at State.
…It’s not uncommon for college students to have wildly oscillating views on issues as the months go by. It’s more consequential for a president to do so. As foreign policy analyst Walter Russell Mead notes, “President Obama likes to hedge. If he puts four chips on black, he almost immediately wants to put three chips on red.”…
The WSJ editors discuss the vindictive and unethical behavior of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius.
…HHS this month sent a letter to 83-year-old Forest Labs CEO Howard Solomon, announcing it would henceforth refuse to do business with him. What earned Mr. Solomon the blackball? Well, nothing that he did—as admitted even by HHS. …
This is a threat to every health CEO in America. If Forest wants to continue to sell its drugs to Medicare, Medicaid and the Veterans Administration—the biggest buyers of pharmaceuticals—it will have to change management. Losing the federal government as a customer is potentially crippling to a drug company.
…Forest Labs is sticking by Mr. Solomon, saying the exclusion is “unjustified.” But even the company has acknowledged that if Mrs. Sebelius implements her ban, Mr. Solomon would be forced to step down at least temporarily while the company takes her to court. Every CEO in America will get the message that his job is at risk if he quarrels with an Administration’s bureaucratic orders.
…CEOs are accountable for their actions, but it is simply unjust for a powerful regulator like Mrs. Sebelius to threaten a company with ruin if it doesn’t dismiss a CEO who has had no formal charges or proof of wrongdoing brought against him. …
Clive Crook talks about how to raise taxes.
…Misguided as their opponents may be, however, Democrats are wrong to think that “soak the rich” is both good economic policy and a sure-fire electoral winner. It is neither.
…The base needs broadening, so that marginal rates can stay put or even come down while revenues go up. That is what the Bowles-Simpson commission and other fiscal inquiries have suggested. Mr Obama has inched in this direction lately by mentioning the case for reducing “tax expenditures” (ie, limiting the value of tax deductions), but the president has given the idea nothing like the prominence of higher top marginal rates.
…It worsens the problem that the president’s line between the middle class (whose taxes he has promised not to raise) and what one Democratic party spokesman recently called the ultra-rich is a household income of $250,000. The figure is too low. True, less than 3 per cent of households make that much at any one time – but a police officer married to a civil servant could sneak into this category. …
In the Weekly Standard, John McCormack comments on Paul Ryan’s town hall meetings.
…Wielding a laser pointer, Ryan lays out the federal budget, our deficit, and how entitlement programs, plus interest, are on track to consume all federal revenue in over a decade.
There are occasionally audible gasps in the crowd when the he clicks the slide that shows the gusher of red ink that consumes the budget on our current path. He then shows the GOP budget proposal to gradually eliminate the deficit and the debt. “It’s just like a mortgage,” Ryan says. “The alternative is we have a debt crisis. The alternative is everybody gets hurt.”
The final slide compares how he and President Obama would change Medicare. It’s not a debate about whether or not to reform Medicare but how. Ryan asks everyone 55 and older to raise their hands (most do). He then tells them that nothing changes under Medicare for them. Ryan describes the plan to reform Medicare for the under-54 set by subsidizing their premiums and letting them pick among a variety of plans regulated by Medicare. The Medicare prescription drug benefit came in 41 percent below Congressional Budget Office predictions because seniors get to pick among competing plans, Ryan says.
…Ryan is well aware that the debate over his proposed budget has just begun, but it seems that Ryan and the Republicans have the edge so far nationwide.
…Ryan is proof that politics is not an entirely deterministic enterprise. “It’s the economy, stupid!” Yes, structural factors matter. But candidates matter, too. Rational argument and moral suasion matter. There’s a reason why Ryan won 68% of the vote in 2010 and 64% of the vote in 2008, when John McCain only garnered 47.5% of the vote in Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District. …