In Europe, he chastised America for what he called our "arrogance." In the Caribbean, he gave the dictator of Venezuela a warm smile and a handshake, and called him "amigo." Before the Saudi king, he bowed low and long.
And just the other day, in a cynical nod to Turkish generals, the American president who campaigned for human rights quietly avoided the word "genocide" in a resolution marking the anniversary of the 1915 Ottoman Turkish slaughter of more than a million Armenian Orthodox Christians.
A few years after that slaughter, as he prepared to engage in his own genocide of the Jews, Adolf Hitler was credited with saying: "Who remembers the Armenians?" The United States may remember, but our president can't call it genocide.
Still, President Barack Obama offers himself up to an adoring world -- and the enraptured, Hopium-smoking American media that helped elect him -- as a leader more flexible than his hopelessly rigid predecessor, George W. Bush.
And he's proved it, charming nations and their leaders, remaining in campaign mode, where he's most comfortable.
But last week, he bowed to his base in the hard political left by reversing himself, opening the door for the prosecution of Bush Justice Department officials who helped develop harsh interrogation policies for suspected terrorists.
Some call it torture and legitimately oppose it. Others say harsh interrogation -- such as waterboarding -- was necessary after the Sept. 11 attacks.
But what Obama accomplished by opening the possibility of political witch hunts was to offer up one of his own eyes to his political supporters. He needs both eyes to see a dangerous world.
The week began when Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, appeared on ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos to reiterate Obama's pledge not to prosecute.
"He believes that people in good faith were operating with the guidance they were provided," said Emanuel, no fool. "They shouldn't be prosecuted. ... It's time for reflection. It's not a time to use our energy in looking back in any sense of anger and retribution."
Two days later, Obama abruptly changed course to please his anti-war base that demands a few severed political heads.
"With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say, that is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general," he said. "I think there are a host of very complicated issues involved there."
His critics used phrases such as "chilling effect" on intelligence gathering, but I call it the pucker factor. In all bureaucracies, it rolls down hill.
Reporters are kind of like intelligence gatherers. We don't waterboard politicians, but we're under pressure to get good information. So, let me tell you a story.
In 1985, I was a kid in the news business, and our gossip columnist, Mike Sneed -- now at the Sun-Times -- got the story of the year: "Reform" Mayor Harold Washington had been secretly taped pressuring a fellow to get out of the 3rd Ward aldermanic race. It sounded like raw politics. It didn't sound anything like reform. And Washington was enraged.
Jim Squires, then our editor, decided to publish transcripts but tell readers the tapes were leaked by Washington's white ethnic political opponents who wanted to embarrass him. Fair enough.
Then he ordered me and another young reporter to find Sneed's source and walk back the cat. I didn't want to do it, but he was the boss and Sneed understood, and after a few days, he dropped his harebrained scheme.
Yet for a long time afterward, sources worried they might be outed. Reporters were concerned their bosses might investigate their sources. And in the gathering of political intelligence, when sources start puckering up, they're not going to kiss you. You get scooped.
And some editors shriek, "How did you get scooped?!" even when they knew that the boss made a decision that sent spasms through everything. More spasms ensue. The pucker factor multiplies exponentially.
Obama isn't an editor. He's the president of a nation targeted by terrorists and constantly probed for weakness, even by our allies.
His intelligence gatherers -- and others who give them the tools and the go-ahead -- can't spend their time wondering if he has their backs.
His statements surely sent spasms through bureaucracies that are vital to his own success and America's safety. All because he wanted to campaign, rather than lead.
Our president has a fine ear for language and nuance. Yet sometimes he shapes his principles to fit the moment, something anyone who watches Chicago politics understood years ago. The Democratic machine candidates he eagerly endorsed for re-election -- from Boss Daley II to Cook County Board President Todd Stroger to disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich -- are testament to Obama's flexibility.
But he must stop campaigning someday, and start thinking like a chief executive. And he'll need both eyes to see where he's got to go.
#1
Obama doesn't know how to lead. He knows how to campaign (and he's very good at it). He knows how to vote present. But he has no leaderhship experience whatsoever. That means Pelosi and Reid will be running the country. God help us all.
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/26/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Only 100?
Someone obviously lost count early on....
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/26/2009 0:15 Comments ||
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#2
It's like a 'Best of ...' list.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/26/2009 0:56 Comments ||
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#3
"It's like a 'BestWorst of ...' list."
Fixed that for ya', Dr. Steve.
No extra charge. :-D
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/26/2009 16:54 Comments ||
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#4
He's doing just swell. This is from the NYSlimes on the current U.S. health emergency:
"The outbreak in the United States comes before President Obama has his full health team in place. His nominee for health secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, has not yet been confirmed by the Senate, nor has the woman he selected to Food and Drug Administration, Margaret Hamburg, a former New York City health commissioner. Mr. Obama has not yet named anyone to run the Centers for Disease Control or the National Institutes of Health."
VIENNA (AP) - The U.S. is obligated by a United Nations convention to prosecute Bush administration lawyers who allegedly drafted policies that approved the use of harsh interrogation tactics against terrorism suspects, the U.N.'s top anti-torture envoy said Friday. Earlier this week, President Barack Obama left the door open to prosecuting Bush administration officials who devised the legal authority for gruesome terror-suspect interrogations. He had previously absolved CIA officers from prosecution. Gruesome? I believe not. Harsh? Hardly. Manfred Nowak, who serves as a U.N. special rapporteur in Geneva, said Washington is obligated under the U.N. Convention against Torture to prosecute U.S. Justice Department officials who wrote memos that defined torture in the narrowest way in order to justify and legitimize it, and who assured CIA officials that their use of questionable tactics was legal.
"That's exactly what I call complicity or participation" to torture as defined by the convention, Nowak said at a news conference. "At that time, every reasonable person would know that waterboarding, for instance, is torture."
Nowak, an Austrian law professor, said it was up to U.S. courts and prosecutors to prove that the memos were written with the intention to incite torture. They were written to with the intention of getting information to keep U.S. Citizens from getting murdered.
Nowak also said any probe of questionable CIA interrogation tactics must be independent and have thorough investigative powers. Bite me, Manfred.
"It can be a congressional investigation commission, a special investigator, but it must be independent and with thorough investigative powers," Nowak said.
The memos authorized keeping detainees naked, in painful standing positions and in cold cells for long periods of time. Other techniques included depriving them of solid food and slapping them. Sleep deprivation, prolonged shackling and threats to a detainee's family also were used. Oh, the Humanity! How gruesome!
Nowak said Saturday that Obama's decision not to prosecute CIA operatives who used questionable interrogation practices violates the same U.N. convention. But at that point he did not specifically address the issue of how the convention would apply to those who drafted the interrogation policy and gave the CIA the legal go-ahead.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
04/26/2009 09:42 ||
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Nowak said Saturday that Obama's decision not to prosecute CIA operatives who used questionable interrogation practices violates the same U.N. convention.
Maybe Manfred can get an arrest warrant for Obama?
Posted by: john frum ||
04/26/2009 10:17 Comments ||
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#2
A: What are you going to charge Bush's lawyers with? Having opinions?
B: I was unaware the Al Qaida was a UN member or signatory to any UN convention.
#3
I wonder what Obama's position will be on this, vis-a-vis a command from a UN for the US to ignore its own laws and instead let UN laws take precedence. Surely a maverick like him wouldn't cravenly obey.
#4
we never seem too prosecute the UN delegates or anyone else(soldiers, Kofi Annan, the guy who threw his aunt down an elevator shaft) affiliated with the UN so why they worried about who we prosecute for this. Can't wait for the day when we get a president that runs on getting the UN out of the US
#7
Meanwhile, the buttocks gluers of Iraq get a free pass.
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
04/26/2009 15:39 Comments ||
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#8
And our spineless POS for a pres will follow the UN all the way to ruin.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
04/26/2009 19:36 Comments ||
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#9
I can see it now: we capture a terrorist who we know has some actionable information. The CIA operatives ask headquarters if it is OK to do something not nice to him. The headquarters people ask the CIA lawyers for an opinion. The CIA lawyers ask the White House for an opinion. The White House asks the White House lawyers for an opinion. The White House lawyers ask their personal lawyers if they can give an opinion. The personal lawyers hem and haw, and eventually recommend against giving an opinion, because the White House lawyers might later on be prosecuted by a subsequent administration, or by the UN. The White House lawyers the the White House that they have no opinion ...
Eventually, DC disappears under a mushroom cloud.
Note, I am not talking about beating the terrorist or attaching electrodes to his genitals or any of the things the North Vietnamese did to John McCain and the other POWs. I am talking about making the terrorist stand in an uncomfortable position, or waterboarding him, or yelling at him to get him to talk.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
04/26/2009 21:07 Comments ||
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#10
The CIA does have another option, Rambler.
Besides asking the President, call up Nancy Pelosi and ask her what they can do to the terrorist.
Better yet, get the whole damn Congressional "oversight" committee involved. What, exactly, can we do to make this terrorist talk, oh great overseers? Put your names to what we do. Or we do nothing, on your say-so (or lack thereof).
And if you think your answer will be kept secret in the years to come, you obviously haven't been in D.C. long enough to matter. >:-(
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/26/2009 21:42 Comments ||
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#11
And our spineless POS for a pres will follow the UN all the way to ruin.
And Justice POS Ruth Ginsberg has been jonesing for that for at least a decade now.
By Dr Farrukh Saleem
Five thousand square kilometres of Swat are now under Taliban control -- de jure. Chitral (14,850 sq km), Dir (5,280 sq km), Shangla (1,586 sq km), Hangu (1,097 sq km), Lakki Marwat (3,164 sq km), Bannu (1,227 sq km), Tank (1,679 sq km), Khyber, Kurram, Bajaur, Mohmand, Orkzai, North Waziristan and South Waziristan are all under Taliban control -- de facto. That's a total of 56,103 square kilometres of Pakistan under Taliban control -- de facto.
Six thousand square kilometres of Dera Ismail Khan are being contested. Also under 'contested control' are Karak (3,372 sq km), Kohat (2,545 sq km), Peshawar (2,257 sq km), Charsada (996 sq km) and Mardan (1,632 sq km). That's a total of 16,802 square kilometres of Pakistan under 'contested control' -- de facto. Seven thousand five hundred square kilometres of Kohistan are under 'Taliban influence'. Additionally, Mansehra (4,579 sq km), Battagram (1,301 sq km), Swabi (1,543 sq km) and Nowshera (1,748 sq km) are all under 'Taliban influence'. That's a total of 16,663 square kilometres of Pakistan under 'Taliban influence' -- de facto. All put together, 89,568 square kilometres of Pakistani territory is either under complete 'Taliban control', 'contested control' or 'Taliban influenced'; that's 11 per cent of Pakistan's landmass.
All put together, 89,568 square kilometres of Pakistani territory is either under complete 'Taliban control', 'contested control' or 'Taliban influenced'; that's 11 per cent of Pakistan's landmass.
Where is Pakistan army? To be fair, under our constitution law enforcement -- and establishing the writ of the state -- is the responsibility of our civil administration. Yes, under Article 245, the federal government can call in the army "in aid of civil power" but the overall strategy has to be devised by our politicians. Counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency are very specialised operations. Textbook counter-insurgency has three elements: Clear-Hold-Build (C-H-B). The army may be required to 'clear' insurgents from a particular area but every army operation creates a vacuum that has to be filled by a civil-political administration. After the 'clearing' of insurgents it has to be the politicians to 'hold' that area and then fulfil the social contract -- dispensation of justice, municipal services etc -- between the ruled and the rulers (classic counter-insurgency is DDD, disrupt, dismantle and defeat).
At least 11 per cent of Pakistan's landmass has been ceded to the Taliban. Where is the Pakistan army? I Corps is in Mangla, II Corps is in Multan, IV Corps in Lahore, V Corps in Karachi, X Corps in Rawalpindi, XI Corps in Peshawar, XII Corps in Quetta, XXX Corps in Gujranwala and XXXI is in Bahawalpur,
In effect, some 80 to 90 per cent of our military assets are deployed to counter the threat from India.
In effect, some 80 to 90 per cent of our military assets are deployed to counter the threat from India. The Pakistan army looks at the Indian army and sees its inventory of 6,384 tanks as a threat. The Pakistan army looks at the Indian air force and sees its inventory of 672 combat aircraft as a threat. The Pakistan army looks at the Indian army and notices that six out of 13 Indian corps are strike corps. The Pakistan army looks at the Indian army and finds that 15, 9, 16, 14, 11, 10 and 2 Corps are all pointing their guns at Pakistan. The Pakistan army looks at the Indian army and discovers that the 3rd Armoured Division, 4 RAPID Division and 2nd Armoured Brigade have been deployed to cut Pakistan into two halves. The Pakistan army looks at the Taliban and sees no Arjun Main Battle Tanks (MBT), no armoured fighting vehicles, no 155 mm Bofors howitzers, no Akash surface-to-air missiles, no BrahMos land attack cruise missiles, no Agni Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles, no Sukhoi Su-30 MKI air superiority strike fighters, no Jaguar attack aircraft, no MiG-27 ground-attack aircraft, no Shakti thermonuclear devices, no Shakti-II 12 kiloton fission devices and no heavy artillery.
Pakistan is on fire and our fire-fighters are on the Pakistan-India border
Pakistan is on fire and our fire-fighters are on the Pakistan-India border. To be certain, none of those Indian tanks can cross the Himalayas into China so Arjun MBTs must all be for Pakistan. Thus, the Pakistan-India border has to be defended. Then, what about this hyperactive insurgency that is snatching away Pakistani physical terrain -- bit by bit? There certainly is no easy way out. America wants the Pakistan army to neutralise threats to the mainland US. The Pakistan army, on the other hand, has to defend the Pakistan-India border. The need of the hour, therefore, is for all organs of the Pakistani state -- the executive, the legislature, the judiciary and the military -- to put their heads together and devise a National Counter-Insurgency Policy.
The writer is the executive director of the Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS).
Posted by: john frum ||
04/26/2009 08:38 ||
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At least 11 per cent of Pakistan's landmass has been ceded to the Taliban
If the Pak army had their way there would be alot more than 11%!
[Asharq Al-Awsat] Do you think that the Taliban will regain power in Afghanistan once again? If so, what is the timeframe?
[Gul] I am not saying that the Taliban will regain Afghanistan. But I am certain that the freedom-loving Afghan citizens will soon be in power in Afghanistan.
[Asharq Al-Awsat] When will this happen? What is the timeframe that you expect for this to happen?
[Gul] Not more than two years. I think the United States will have to leave Afghanistan.
[Asharq Al-Awsat] How long do you think the Americans will remain in Afghanistan?
[Gul] If the Americans are wise, they will leave Afghanistan within one year. If they are not wise, Pakistan will witness a revolution as a result of the US presence in Afghanistan. They will be defeated in Afghanistan and they will have to leave Afghanistan in 2010 or 2011.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
