Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Mark This Moment?

I was confused and then incredulous this past Monday evening while watching the Fox News Special Report panel discuss the Obama administration’s decision to investigate CIA interrogators.  The discussion was whether or not politics played into it and some on the panel agreed that the decision was made, or at least announced that day, to deflect attention from Obama’s failing health care bill.  I nearly refused to believe it.  I’ve been arguing in this space for quite some time now that I believe Obama and the people that surround him are essentially amateurs in over their heads.  But could they really be this stupid?

The American people support the CIA interrogations by a wide margin.  They understand instinctively that the program has produced results over the years and has helped keep us safe.  Even those who may be uneasy over some of the methods being used understand the importance of the work, and they have little sympathy for terrorists getting smoke blown in their faces or bugs placed in their jail cells.  They further understand that to go after the people doing this difficult work will almost certainly put an end to the program.  Who, after all, would be willing to press hard during an interrogation if there exists a strong possibility that they may end up going to jail for doing so?  The investigators will mail it in from now on, and who can blame them?

Even if there is no terrorist attack on American soil during their tenure, I am convinced that the Obama administration will one day rue this decision.  For it reinforces the belief that they much more serious about going after former Bush officials than about fighting the war on terror.  Furthermore, it does so at a time when Obama’s poll numbers are diving and his domestic agenda is in complete disarray.  Americans have already begun to distrust his judgment.  And now this. How could they possibly think this decision would play well with the majority of Americans?

Charles Murray has an answer in this very interesting post.  Mr. Murray is one of the smartest men we have so he should be listened to.  (I would point out though, that Pauline Kael did not say that.  What she said was far less egregious.  When asked about her reaction to Nixon’s election she commented that she did not feel qualified to talk about it because no one she knew had voted for him. Conservatives have been using the story Mr. Murray tells for years to demonstrate liberal insularity.  While Ms. Kael was certainly a liberal, she was not stupid.  Having said that, I would not dispute that their is a “Pauline Kael syndrome” among liberals.  The syndrome simply needs another name.) 

Money quote:

But they’ve been in the bubble too long. They really think that the rest of America thinks as they do. Nothing but the Pauline Kael syndrome can explain the political idiocy of letting Attorney General Eric Holder go after the interrogators. 

Over at Commentary’s Contention blog, the marvelous Jennifer Rubin says something similar:

…the Obama team and its irritated left-wing supporters are acting like moths to a flame—they cannot pass up a chance to bash the Bush team. Even when it’s counterproductive, politically unpopular, lacking in factual support, or all three, they can’t help themselves. It is what motivates them, what gives them a sense of moral superiority. They are “un-Bush” and must perpetually remind us of their disdain for all things, people, policies, and events of the Bush years.

Over at Hot Air, Doctor Zero sums up my own thinking on the subject:

The Obama Administration, aware that everyone outside of union bosses, and interest groups looking for billion-dollar ribeye steaks of taxpayer money, is having trouble remembering why they voted for Obama, has decided to drag CIA interrogators and Bush Administration officials into court, where they will be persecuted for their role in defending America from terrorist attacks. Apparently Obama and his accomplices decided to distract their liberal base from the fiery Hindenburg crash of socialized medicine, by offering them a relaxing cruise on the Titanic of leftist foreign policy. As with everything else the current Administration does, it’s a remarkably foolish move: dangerous for America, and self-destructive as a strategy.

Finally, Jonah Goldberg over at The Corner, tells us to take note of this moment:

For years to come, this moment will resonate. Columnists will talk about how the deficit spiraled (even further) out of control in the summer of 2009 and the emasculation of the dollar became irreversible. Hawks will blame the castration of the CIA as the fons et origo of the next terror attack or the cause of the bureaucratic calcification of the CIA that led to some other intelligence catastrophe. Of course, there will be rebuttals to these contentions, there always are. And today's events are the children of yesterday's. The Church Committee didn't burst into existence ex nihilo and neither did the Holder inquisition. But this moment, it seems to me, will be the symbolic inflection point in conversations and arguments for years to come. So take notes, folks.

I couldn’t agree more. 

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