“Obama in Bush’s Clothing”
Charles Krauthammer is up to his usual high standards with a piece on Obama’s flip flopping and political posturing.
If hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue, then the flip-flops on previously denounced anti-terror measures are the homage that Barack Obama pays to George Bush. Within 125 days, Obama has adopted with only minor modifications huge swaths of the entire, allegedly lawless Bush program.
The latest flip-flop is the restoration of military tribunals. During the 2008 campaign, Obama denounced them repeatedly, calling them an “enormous failure.” Obama suspended them upon his swearing-in. Now they’re back.
Of course, Obama will never admit in word what he’s doing in deed. As in his rhetorically brilliant national-security speech yesterday claiming to have undone Bush’s moral travesties, the military commissions flip-flop is accompanied by the usual Obama three-step: (a) excoriate the Bush policy, (b) ostentatiously unveil cosmetic changes, (c) adopt the Bush policy.
Throw in a little Orwellian “Newspeak” and it becomes plain that either Obama’s campaign rhetoric was “boob bait for his leftist Bubbas”, or the reality of actually governing this great nation and keeping it safe from our enemies has intruded upon the lovely little fantasy constructed in the ivory halls of leftist academia.
Observers of all political stripes are stunned by how much of the Bush national security agenda is being adopted by this new Democratic government. Victor Davis Hanson (National Review) offers a partial list: “The Patriot Act, wiretaps, e-mail intercepts, military tribunals, Predator drone attacks, Iraq (i.e., slowing the withdrawal), Afghanistan (i.e., the surge) — and now Guantanamo.”
Jack Goldsmith (The New Republic) adds: rendition — turning over terrorists seized abroad to foreign countries; state secrets — claiming them in court to quash legal proceedings on rendition and other erstwhile barbarisms; and the denial of habeas corpus — to detainees in Afghanistan’s Bagram prison, indistinguishable logically and morally from Guantanamo.
I think most conservatives are willing to give Obama a pass on his hypocrisy here. After all, we were defending the last administration when it came to national security. The fact that this administration is not tearing down our safeguards wholesale, is in fact a bit of a relief! However, to those barking moonbats who saw Obama as some kind of ACLU wet dream? This must be the part of the teen slasher movie where it seems like the danger was over, only to find out that the monster…
Really.
Wasn’t.
Dead.
Krauthammer concludes:
The genius of democracy is that the rotation of power forces the opposition to come to its senses when it takes over. When the new guys, brought to power by popular will, then adopt the policies of the old guys, a national consensus is forged and a new legitimacy established.
That’s happening before our eyes. The Bush policies in the war on terror won’t have to await vindication by historians. Obama is doing it day by day. His denials mean nothing. Look at his deeds.
Obama vindicates Bush.
Howling moonbattery: Coming soon to an outraged liberal near you!
Heh.
Cross posted at Proof Positive
