President Obama

The Right Claims Obama Has More War on Terror Hubris Than Flight Suit Wearing Bush (May 2, 2012)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

Creating a new entry under the “Well don’t that beat all?” file, the former head of the CIA’s Clandestine Service, Jose Rodriguez, took to the airwaves this past Sunday night. In an interview with Lesley Stahl, Rodriguez put forth the idea that President Obama is taking on radical Islam in ways that would make predecessor President George W. Bush blush. It may surprise exactly no one to learn that Rodriguez plays for Team GOP.

Folks, I don’t know what to say anymore. The mouthpieces of this party are so used to trying to have it both ways, I sincerely believe its members are in the throes of a full-on dissociative fugue. How can Obama suffer routine hounding from birthers and other whack jobs who claim that he is a covert practitioner of the Muslim faith, yet at the same time confront lambast from critics who wish to depict him as ruthless killer of Islamic innocents?

How on Earth could Obama out-display the pitiless hubris of a flight-suit wearing Dubya standing aboard an aircraft carrier declaring a “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq? This smarmy soundbite is characterized in an apolitical Wikipedia entry as such: “While this statement did coincide with an end to the conventional phase of the war, Bush’s assertion—and the sign itself—became controversial after guerrilla warfare in Iraq increased during the Iraqi insurgency. The vast majority of casualties, both military and civilian, have occurred since the speech.”

Obama’s measured, targeted approach to the War on Terror is more ruthless than Bush’s Cowboy Diplomacy, more tasteless than a man who later admitted that his bellicose “bring ‘em on” taunt to Iraqi insurgents was an error in judgment? Yes, because nothing says “I care about humanity” quite like baiting the country you’ve invaded in order to co-opt its oil reserves.

But I do not wish to misframe the debate. Rodriguez’s claims are yet another political red herring designed to obscure the abundant, wasteful ineptitude of the Bush years – you know, the ones where Osama bin Laden was hiding in plain sight. And the former CIA employee has a book to sell – Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives.

In this wondrous tome, Rodriguez argues that enhanced interrogation techniques embaced by the Bush administration after 9/11 “saved lives.” There’s just one problem: Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats are on the verge of concluding a three-year investigation of enhanced interrogation and will report that it had little to no success in eliciting vital intelligence. The Atlantic Wire noted that “With the lack of specifics in his 60 Minutes interview, supporters of torture had probably better hope there’s more in his book to make the case.”

And what does any ex-CIA official worth his salt do when posed tough questions about previous policy for which he has no good answers? Deflect. After all it’s an election year, and every opportunity must be availed to portray the man once decried as a foreign-policy newbie who’d go soft on terror as a veritable Genghis Khan.

“We don’t capture anybody any more,” Rodriguez told Stahl. “Their default option of this Administration has been to … take no prisoners … How could it be more ethical to kill people rather than capture them? I never understood that one.”

Obama the Mercenary set in relief against Dubya the Lamb. There are just no words.

Mitt Romney Shakes His Etch-A-Sketch, But Women Don’t Forget (April 16, 2012)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

Frankly, I was surprised that Rick Santorum threw in the towel last week. The numbers made clear that a path to winning the 2012 Republican Presidential nomination was all but impossible for our favorite radical Christian, but the current slate of candidates have never gone in much for reality. I think it’s the practicality of the move that stunned me.

With Santorum disposed, Mitt Romney’s remaining competition includes King of Hubris Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul, who indicated throughout the entire primary that he understood his campaign’s futility. Quite an inspiring duo aren’t they?

So the candidate nobody in the GOP really wanted, and for whom they still can’t get an erection, is on his way to accepting the nomination in scenic Tampa, Florida this August. Tampa, land of strip clubs and men in trucker hats, seems a fitting locale for a bunch of wealthy, mostly white, patriarchal ideology producers to anoint their sacrificial lamb.

Because now Romney has to shake that Etch-A-Sketch. Game on. (I bet Eric Ferhnstrom, Romney’s adviser and utterer of the ubiquitous sound bite that keeps on giving, wished for a time machine in his Easter basket.) President Obama long enjoyed the luxury of not having to address the freak show exhibits that comprised the Republican primary slate. But now that we’ve got something approximating a general election campaign, he occasionally has to tear his attention away from running a nation facing so many challenges to swat away jabs from Mittens.

To a point I sympathize with the Romney camp. Not only is their man dull as a butter knife (no insult to butter intended), which will only become more glaringly obvious when he enters the debate arena with the President, but he’s also saddled with a comical load of flip flops and rhetorical left turns. I don’t know how his staff will find time to prepare an offense when there’s so much to combat defensively: family dogs on the car roof, Romneycare and the good old Etch-A-Sketch comment just to pick a few easy cherries.

Romney has spent months and years pandering to the GOP power base, social conservatives who treat a belief in global warming or women’s reproductive rights as a “liberal” litmus test. There have been moments when I’ve pitied the open degradation of Romney’s integrity, his unwillingness to stand by his moderate record, but it doesn’t seem to bother him.

That type of radical right kowtowing may have seemed necessary until last week. But Romney has to face the rest of us now, the mainstream whose votes he needs just as badly. And given his limp track record for uniting his own party, Mitt has a tough slog ahead. How do you hit the reset button and arrive at anything approaching credibility?

President Obama excels at campaigning, to put it mildly. He is a wunderkind, an interview subject and debater able to convey intelligence and gravity as well as charm and humor. To watch him make mincemeat of John McCain on the regular during the 2008 campaign tempted invocation of the slaughter rule.

Mitt Romney is in for it. If nothing else, McCain has a personality and the deserved respect of his country as a decorated war veteran. Romney is a corporate viper, a smarmy, colorless ladder climber who approaches the Presidency like an item to check off his career bucket list. He will say anything to win the election, hitching his wagon to the notion that his fellow Americans are a bunch of ADD-afflicted sheep who will forget everything he has said and done in the past to accept his position of the moment.

I don’t think it’s possible to shake the Etch-A-Sketch hard enough to make the nation’s women forget the attacks on their rights this year. That’s slightly over half the electorate right there. Like I said, game on.