The maniacal behavior of Obama and the Democrats in Congress is heading down a path of ignoring, and in fact impeding, our intelligence services. An article by David R. Stokes points this out on Townhall.com:
The current climate of suspicion, accusation, and posturing surrounding the relationship between various entities in our intelligence communities and two of three branches of the federal government should be a source of grave concern to Americans. While games are being played, we must ask: Are we safer today than we were two years ago, or four or eight?
The nonsense of going after Dick Cheney for his “CIA Secret Al Qaeda Plan” was also reported in a Time Magazine article.
Stokes points out:
A few weeks ago, former Central Intelligence Agency Director, General Michael V. Hayden, wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post entitled, “Defenders At Risk” He decried a “troubling reality. A whole swath of intelligence professionals – the best we had, the ones we threw at the al-Qaeda challenge when the nation was in extremis – are suffering for their sacrifice, being held up to recrimination for many decisions that were never wholly theirs and about which there was little protest when we all believed we were in danger.”
That last phrase is haunting: “when we all believed we were in danger.”
This is so going to bite us at some point in the future. It is so sad how few Americans seem to have any sense of History. And it’s ironic, because I always hated “learning” about history when I was a kid.
In the 1930s, Joseph Stalin conducted a paranoiac purge that impacted all segments of Soviet society, notably the military. Having killed off most of his best generals and military minds, he and his nation paid the price in the early years of World War II. He bought time with his pact with Hitler in 1939, but was still nearly defeated two years later at the beginning of the Nazi invasion of his country. Some of those dead, but smart and experienced generals might have helped old Uncle Joe.
I “get this” because I’m from the generation that remembers hearing and reading about World War II. So many people, including Germans, never thought there would ever be another big war after World War I. Well, so many folks just don’t seem to have a grasp on human nature. There always has been, and probably always will be wars.
Stokes makes this observation:
I may be quite wrong on this, but stay with me anyway. While all the punching and counterpunching is going on between Congress and the intelligence communities, President Obama has been sending mixed signals. He certainly wants to please those who put him where he is, and his campaign promises with respect to national security issues were pretty clear.
But since taking office, his rhetoric has toned down, at least a bit. And there is no doubt that he has shown some willingness to act counter to what he said while running for office. Gitmo’s in; Gitmo’s out. We’ll release the photos; no we won’t. Shifting gears is part of par-for-the-course-political-speak in Washington, but logic suggests something else may be involved.
And now I can be a little optimistic (for a change).
Why would a man who was elected on a platform that was decidedly critical of the outgoing president’s intelligence and national security record ever be tempted to change his mind and act contrary to the will of his core constituencies?
There is only one logical answer: Because he has since learned some things that have changed his mind. Things he didn’t know while he was running for office. Details he didn’t have.
Additional facts tend to influence subsequent behavior. There is no other conclusion to be drawn from Mr. Obama’s “softening” on some once-ridiculed Bush administration policies and practices. The man now knows what he did not know before. How he deals with the stuff he now knows and how he responds to political pressure from those who got him elected in the first place will define his presidency and impact us all.