Category Archives: Barack Obama

Updated: The Politics Of Torture

America, Barack Obama, Bush, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Neoconservatism, Republicans, Terrorism

When I think of a libertarian-leaning patriotic warrior, I think of Michael Scheuer. The chief of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit from 1996 to 1999, Scheuer is also the man behind the enhanced interrogation methods, which the hard-left and their friends on the libertarian left would have you believe are as heinous as the war crime at Hiroshima.

Like myself, Scheuer opposed the invasion of Iraq, opposes the occupation of Afghanistan, the presence of permanent troops across the world, and the nation-building farce. Scheuer, like this classical liberal writer, has excoriated Bush as much as he has Obama (adjusted for time in office).

Scheuer told Glenn Beck (May 21) that the Clinton administration practiced exactly the same interrogation methods with terrorists—including rendition and water boarding — methods he had a hand in devising. Both Republicans and Democrats, said Scheuer, are playing politics with the security of Americans, and that includes Mr. Hannity’s hero: Dick Cheney.

I wrote this about the hysteria: “The two parties are exchanging fusillades over ten interrogation techniques deployed with fourteen ‘high value al-Qaida detainees,’ three of whom endured the most controversial method of all, because they were purported to possess ‘credible intelligence of an imminent terrorist attack,’ as well as ‘actionable intelligence’ to ‘prevent, disrupt or delay an attack.’ …
there is a vigorless, extinction-courting quality to those who squeal about placing a bug in the bug-phobic Abu Zubaydah’s ‘confinement box.’ These are just the type of insects the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would delight in squashing.”

Scheuer nails it in a Washington Post op-ed: This “episode of political theater [is] another major step in the bipartisan dismantling of America’s defenses based on the requirements of presidential ideology. George W. Bush’s democracy-spreading philosophy yielded the invasion of Iraq and set the United States at war with much of the Muslim world. Bush’s worldview thereby produced an enemy that quickly outpaced the limited but proven threat-containing capacities of the major U.S. counterterrorism programs — rendition, interrogation and unmanned aerial vehicle attacks.”

And this important insight as to the self-righteous, reality averse Utopianism which unites neoconservatives, liberals and libertarians:

“Obama now stands alongside Bush as a genuine American Jacobin, both of them seeing the world as they want it to be, not as it is. Whereas Bush saw a world of Muslims yearning to betray their God for Western secularism, Obama gazes upon a globe that he regards as largely carnivore-free and believes that remaining threats can be defused by semantic warfare; just stop saying ‘War on Terror’ and give talks in Turkey and on al-Arabiyah television, for example.”

“Incorrigibly anti-American” all.

Update (May 23): Andrew C. McCarthy (via reader Robert Glisson) raises a perfectly good point about ex post facto prosecutions, which the Constitution prohibits for obvious reasons.
The point about the Democrats conducting a political fishing expedition is true too. For, the invasion of Iraq, as I’ve said, repeatedly, not the dunking of the unlovely KSM and Abu Zubaydah, is the real issue here. You’re following the wrong scent, and I have no idea why:
“The torture kerfuffle is secondary to—and subsumed within—the broader category of an unjust war, waged by George Bush with Democratic assent.”
Given that the jack-ass Democrats welcomed the opportunity to “lug an army across the ocean to occupy a third-world country that was no danger to us and had not threatened us,” it behooves them to focus on bubkiss, minutia.
That our friend Myron is following the scent of the females and pacifists is, well, baffling. The greatest sin of all is pacifism.
I’d trust the patriotic and moral Scheuer, who knew a thing or two about the capabilities of al-Qaida, to protect me, over the Pussy Brigade (PB).
If someone suggests prosecuting Bush and the gang for invading Iraq, they’ll get my full attention. Until such an unlikely day, please spare me the self-righteous fussing over what the PB decries as torture and the loss of Our Values (what values?).

Updated: ‘Secure Fences Work at White House’

Barack Obama, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Technology

What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Jon Feere of the The Center for Immigration Studies exposes the hypocrisy of the man who’s entrusted with the protection of his countrymen. That goes for the previous occupant of the heavily fortified White House:

“Open-border advocates often claim that fences don’t work. Why, then, does the White House have a secure, dual perimeter fence (both metal and ‘virtual’) and limited points of entry—with officials doing quick background checks at each?

Answer: Because fences work to filter the good from the bad. This fact was just illustrated at the White House yesterday when two illegal aliens attempted to enter the premises for a tour. The individuals were taken into custody after a routine background check by the Secret Service uncovered that they had outstanding immigration orders against them.

So the President is safe, but what about the rest of us?

It’s not that difficult to imagine such a system along our national borders. Is it too much to ask that our government protect those of us not fortunate enough to live in a gated community?”

Updated: Myron, how genteel. Sean, also in the business of designing all those signal things, laughed at the notion of a virtual fence. Unlike a dog, man will not turn and run from high-frequency signals. As Sean quipped: the sturdy illegal will stuff earplugs in his ears and march on. Unless you have a physical presence to turn back flesh-and-blood people, signals are worth squat.

Updated: 'Secure Fences Work at White House'

Barack Obama, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Technology

What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Jon Feere of the The Center for Immigration Studies exposes the hypocrisy of the man who’s entrusted with the protection of his countrymen. That goes for the previous occupant of the heavily fortified White House:

“Open-border advocates often claim that fences don’t work. Why, then, does the White House have a secure, dual perimeter fence (both metal and ‘virtual’) and limited points of entry—with officials doing quick background checks at each?

Answer: Because fences work to filter the good from the bad. This fact was just illustrated at the White House yesterday when two illegal aliens attempted to enter the premises for a tour. The individuals were taken into custody after a routine background check by the Secret Service uncovered that they had outstanding immigration orders against them.

So the President is safe, but what about the rest of us?

It’s not that difficult to imagine such a system along our national borders. Is it too much to ask that our government protect those of us not fortunate enough to live in a gated community?”

Updated: Myron, how genteel. Sean, also in the business of designing all those signal things, laughed at the notion of a virtual fence. Unlike a dog, man will not turn and run from high-frequency signals. As Sean quipped: the sturdy illegal will stuff earplugs in his ears and march on. Unless you have a physical presence to turn back flesh-and-blood people, signals are worth squat.

Big Man Barack

Africa, Barack Obama, Constitution, Democrats, Economy, Ethics, IMMIGRATION, Intellectualism, Israel, Journalism, Law

To go by the dictionary, and “within the context of political science, big man, big man syndrome, or bigmanism refers to corrupt and autocratic rule of countries by a single person.”

Back in February, Democratic Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), “a stern constitutional scholar who has always stood up for the legislative branch in its role in checking the power of the White House,” warned about Obama’s executive-branch power grab.

According to Politico, “Byrd complained about Obama’s decision to create White House offices on health reform, urban affairs policy, and energy and climate change. Byrd said such positions ‘can threaten the Constitutional system of checks and balances. At the worst, White House staff have taken direction and control of programmatic areas that are the statutory responsibility of Senate-confirmed officials.'”

Byrd is an old Southern gentleman after whom Republicans are always chasing for his past indiscretions. George Will follows in Byrd’s footsteps in making a similar point, only later in the game, and leveled at a president he did not support.

“The Obama administration is … careless regarding constitutional values and is acquiring a tincture of lawlessness,” writes Will. After detailing the flouting of contracts, the use of TARP as a slush fund, and the bullying of business, Will concludes:

“The Obama administration’s agenda of maximizing dependency involves political favoritism cloaked in the raiment of ‘economic planning’ and ‘social justice’ that somehow produce results superior to what markets produce when freedom allows merit to manifest itself, and incompetence to fail. The administration’s central activity — the political allocation of wealth and opportunity — is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.”