Senator Rubio on the Obama Administration’s Scandals and Intimidation

Let’s see, in the past week or so we have learned that Obama administration officials in Libya knew that a video had nothing to do with Benghazi, that the IRS has been targeting conservative political organizations, that the Health and Human Services Secretary has been asking private industry to pay for Obamacare, and that the Department of Justice has been tracking phones of journalists. Senator Rubio is calling this a culture of intimidation.

I’ll let him speak for himself, but his point is this: when a government administration is concerned primarily with politics and will divide people to win politically, it easily turns into an abusive operation that intimidates the people whom it represents.

Even David Axelrod had it right today when he admitted that it’s impossible for a President to be aware of what’s going on in a government this large. Too bad this large government is what this President has pushed for. Axelrod may not know it, but he made a very powerful defense of conservatism by accident.

House Oversight Hearing Strongly Suggests Benghazi Cover Up

It may be because we as a culture have become so desensitized that even true scandals do not surprise or offend us much, or that when one occurs, everyone rallies to whichever side they are on with little concern for the truth. Benghazi may be an example of this. No one would argue that it was not a tragedy, and only the most partisan of people would argue that the administration did not make any mistakes in failing to prevent the attack. What the House Oversight hearing this week revealed strongly suggests that the Obama administration knowingly misled the American public about what happened in Benghazi.

The testimonies of Mr. Hicks, Mr. Thompson, and Mr. Nordstrom, all closely engaged with the situation in Benghazi, were truly heartbreaking and stunning. I submit that the people saying that those testimonies revealed nothing new were going to say that no matter what the witnesses revealed. Those willfully blind deniers are motivated only by their politics, trying to protect mostly Hillary Clinton and President Obama. As Guy Benson points out, there were at least a dozen revelations from the hearing.

Among the most important revelations from the hearing were that Hicks, who was on the ground in Libya, received a call from Hillary and her staff around 2 AM. According to Hicks, during that call–the transcript or recording or which we do not have and should try to obtain–Hicks and Hillary were on the same page about what was happening, and no one even mentioned a demonstration or a YouTube video. The folks on the ground in Libya all realized right away that they were being attacked by terrorists. Hicks testified that he was told that fighter planes were 2-3 hours away, yet never came, and that someone apparently gave a “stand down” order that prevented US forces in Tripoli from coming to help.

Mr. Nordstrom, the head of US security in Libya, testified that it was well-known that the US facility in Benghazi did not meet safety standards, and that Hillary would have known about the requests for additional security at the facility. Thompson, a former Marine, added more head-scratchers, recounting that his unit in the Counterterrorism Bureau was excluded from high level administration meetings and was cut out from the process. Thompson’s unit is supposedly trained and specialized for emergency situations like the one in Benghazi.

The cover up, which it almost certainly was, was confirmed when Hicks said that the YouTube video was a non-factor. Hicks testified that he was embarrassed when Susan Rice went on the Sunday talk shows and blamed a video that had nothing to do with what had happened. When Hicks asked his superiors on Hillary’s staff about why that false narrative was being offered by the Obama administration, he was excoriated and demoted after having received praise from his superiors in the administration for the way he had handled the situation. That this was a cover up was made even more clear by intelligence reports that initially mentioned terrorist attacks, were scrubbed to remove those mentions, and never talked about a video.

Any objective observer of the investigations into what happened in Benghazi who heard this week’s testimonies would conclude that the administration knowingly misled the American public. It is still not completely clear who made which decisions, but the testimonies in this past week’s House Oversight hearing confirm the cover up and other mistakes that were made. It would be a shame if we ignored this simply because we did not want to hurt our favorite political celebrities, which is surely a concern for many media outlets who would rather bury this story to protect their political interests.

UPDATE: Andy McCarthy adds commentary about the call between Hicks and Hillary, summarizing the situation concisely:

To sum up: State’s main guy on the ground in Libya tells Clinton in Washington that State’s people in Benghazi are under attack by the local al Qaeda franchise, Ansar al-Sharia, which might have captured the U.S. ambassador. Yet, over the next few days, with what we now know to be monumental input from the State Department, the Obama administration purges references to Ansar al-Sharia from the talking points that it uses to explain the attack to the American people. Instead, it concocts a story claiming the anti-Islamic Internet video was the culprit.

McCarthy interestingly notes that shortly after Hicks spoke to Hillary–a phone call that Hicks testified had them on the same page about the terrorist attack–President Obama called Hillary. Shortly after the President’s call, a statement was released for Hillary that blamed the video. It is not hard to come up with the subsequent question.

Rand Paul’s Important Drone Filibuster

What Senator Rand Paul did this week in a filibuster of the CIA Director nomination of John Brennan was unique, bipartisan, enlightening, and politically brilliant. Let’s not forget that it was also a risk, as Senator Paul talked for the better part of over half a day, something that a lot of members of Congress can’t and probably shouldn’t do, lest they say something really harmful to their reputations. No, Senator Paul was impressive, talking and facilitating discussion on the question of Executive branch war power in general, and specifically the use of drones on US citizens on American soil.

This was a rare display of intellectual discussion that was not at all partisan. Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee helped start a great discussion of Constitutional history and Executive power, and the GOP’s rising stars were on display. Eventually Democrat Senator Ron Wyden joined them and added to the discussion. By the end of the night, a large number of Republican Senators (including, notably, Rubio, Ron Johnson, Tim Scott, and Mitch McConnell) had shown their support for Paul’s efforts by taking the Senate floor to discuss the issue. It was a fascinating and refreshing display, especially because Paul made it clear that he wasn’t using the filibuster to block Brennan’s confirmation, but only to use the opportunity to generate some explanations from the Obama administration about when drones could be used against US citizens on American soil.

This discussion was politically wise, as Paul not only raised his credibility and public stature immensely, but it showed just how deep and diverse the new generation of Republican Senators is. Cruz and Lee are truly Constitutional law experts. Rubio clearly explained the Legislative branch’s role in the confirmation process for Executive appointees like Brennan. Several others explained the need to discuss the potential consequences of not limiting the circumstances under which the Commander-in-Chief could use drones on American soil. And Paul even distanced himself from many Bush-era war policies, helping himself and some of his colleagues gain more credibility, especially from younger voters who tend to be less hawkish in general.

Brennan was confirmed today, and Attorney General Holder also answered the original question about drone use that started the whole discussion. Life goes on. No one was hurt or offended. And the discussion about war powers with drones will continue in the public sphere.

Good for Senator Paul, who deserves much credit and respect for his efforts, regardless of whether or not one agrees with his positions on such issues.

Partisan President Delivers Partisan Inauguration Speech

The inauguration of American presidents is truly a special event. Historically, the peaceful transition of power has been rare, and the pageantry that provides the backdrop of this American tradition is both special and remarkable. The United States is a unique nation, but watching the second inauguration of President Obama, one can’t help but be concerned over what happened.

In some ways, Charles Krauthammer was correct that President Obama’s inauguration speech represented the end of the Reagan era. This is not to say that more people now identify as liberals rather than conservatives or that Reagan’s conservative policies no longer work; neither is the case. It is to say that President Obama has empowered those who do not believe that the individual liberty and markets created by our Constitutionally limited government are just and right for the country. The Reagan era was marked not only by success in the form of prosperity and strength, but by the widespread acceptance that government must be limited to provide the freedoms under which such prosperity and strength occur.

For a few decades, those who disagreed with those ideas (progressives, so to speak), had to accept the reality of an electorate that mostly espoused those limited government beliefs. Now, however, President Obama has not only empowered progressives to not have to cater to such an electorate, but to mock and insult anyone who believes in Reagan’s America of a Constitutionally limited government rather than a government of mandated positive rights. Take, for example, this list of straw man attacks directed at his opponents, provided by Michael Gerson quoting from the President’s speech:

Those who oppose this agenda, in Obama’s view, are not a very admirable lot. They evidently don’t want our wives, mothers and daughters to “earn a living equal to their efforts.” They would cause some citizens “to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote.” They mistake “absolutism for principle” and “substitute spectacle for politics” and “treat name-calling as reasoned debate.” They would have people’s “twilight years . . . spent in poverty” and ensure that the parents of disabled children have “nowhere to turn.” They would reserve freedom “for the lucky” and believe that Medicare and Social Security “sap our initiative,” and they see this as “a nation of takers.” They “deny the overwhelming judgment of science” on climate change, don’t want love to be “equal” and apparently contemplate “perpetual war.”

In other words, President Obama no longer advocates a United States above red and blue states; he now advocates the complete dismissal of those who believe there is a vast space between individuals left on the street and federal government programs as not only extreme but ill-intentioned.

This rhetoric will underscore the partisan battles that will likely continue. President Obama is not likely to achieve success like Reagan in the form of prosperity and world influence, and he is equally unlikely to overcome the reasons for the deepest partisanship of our country like Lincoln was able to. He is far more likely to facilitate a deeper hostility between the left and right as he not only pushes for more progressive policies while ignoring and exacerbating the greatest issue of our day, but also facilitates the outward manifestations of jealousy and even hatred that drive many people to blame those who have for the plight of those who have not.

No one knows exactly what the future will look like, but a good bet is that in the future, the country will remain deeply divided and will experience more animosity as animosity is encouraged.  In the meantime, the debt will grow, our wealth and prosperity will likely decrease, and a diminished American influence in the world will likely leave the world less safe.

But perhaps in a few years the poorer, weaker America can celebrate same-sex marriage and forcing Catholic organizations to provide contraception. Forward.

‘The Obama administration has chosen a course of American retrenchment and retreat’

While the country focuses on “nation building at home” that is not going so well — unemployment remains around 8% and has slightly dropped mostly due to people dropping out of the labor force — Bill Kristol sees the big picture and reminds us that the world is becoming less safe under President Obama’s weak America. Syria and Egypt, for example, are messes and threaten not only our strategic interests, but human rights. A beat up America in such a dangerous world is a scary idea, but as Kristol remembers, this country has roared back before:

We’ve recovered before. In the late 1940s, a war-weary nation looked the other way as the Soviet Union occupied Eastern Europe and China went Communist. It was only after the North Korean invasion of the South that the United States, first under Harry Truman and then Dwight Eisenhower, faced up to its responsibilities​—​but at considerable cost in lives and treasure over the next decades as we fought wars that perhaps could have been avoided and endured a Cold War that needn’t have been as threatening as it was. In the late 1970s, a war-weary nation watched as Khomeini took over Iran and the Sandinistas Nicaragua. This time, the Iranian hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan served as the wake-up call, answered first (to a degree) by Jimmy Carter, then resoundingly by Ronald Reagan.

Kristol, like many conservatives today, thinks the Republican party is probably in need of a reformation that will bring in a new generation to lead the American comeback. I believe he is correct, and while I pointed out that Mitt Romney was trying to usher in that new generation, the new faces are already emerging despite Romney’s defeat.

For conservatives and anyone not willfully blind to the disaster of the Obama administration both at home and abroad, there is reason for hope and optimism thanks to this new generation of conservative leaders stepping up. But the challenge will be daunting; America will be weakened and the world will be more unstable. As Kristol pointed out, however, that’s when The Gipper led an American resurgence that lasted for years before President Obama arrived to try to erase that success from history by convincing people that tax reform and limited government were the causes of our woes.

Weakening America: Credit Downgraded, Embassies Attacked

This week has been one of the most embarrassing weeks as I country that I can remember. Shortly after the Fed announced another round of quantitative easing (QE3), credit ratings firm Egan-Jones issued another U.S. credit downgrade. Egan-Jones cited QE3 and an enormous debt-to-GDP ratio that it forecasts growing even larger. President Obama has overseen a $5 trillion increase to our debt, thanks to record spending levels that have yielded more than 40 consecutive months of 8% unemployment and less than 2% economic growth.

Abroad, the U.S. looks as weak as it has in a while. Several U.S. embassies have been under attack by radical Islamists, and Americans have been murdered. The White House and State Department have displayed amateur hour, issuing and revoking statements, contradicting each other on our relationship with Egypt, and offering no clear position of where America stands in the world.

In a time when strength and moral clarity are needed, we look weak, and the White House can’t speak with any clarity about the motivation behind these attacks or about how we will respond. All of this has been happening while President Obama has been campaigning in Vegas this week and preparing for a fundraiser with celebrities, but won’t make time to meet with Netanyahu when Bibi has been airing his frustrations.

The country has predictably become weak, both economically and in our influence abroad. If we reelect President Obama, Americans will have condoned and therefore accepted this path.

Romney Sounds Presidential, Controls Message

As Mitt Romney gave perhaps his most impressive speech yet, President Obama was assuring voters in an ad that he believes Americans build their own businesses. Newsflash: If you have to appear in a campaign ad to assure someone you don’t actually think someone else built their business for them, you aren’t controlling the narrative. The campaign that has leveled debunked felony charges and has relied on attacks on Romney that include everything from high school bullying to Ann Romney’s horse riding habits is suddenly whining about being taken out of context while being quoted directly. Another newsflash: You shouldn’t throw punches if you can’t take them.

While the President’s ever-shrinking campaign complains about context, Mitt Romney is hitting his stride. His speech to the VFW on foreign policy was fantastic, and breaks him out of the safe mode of focusing only on the economy and of running as not-Obama. Foreign policy may take a back seat to the economy in this election, but the President must have a vision for America’s role in the world. Romney rolled out his vision this week, just ahead of his trip abroad, by advocating an American century where we no longer “lead from behind”:

Like a watchman in the night, we must remain at our post – and keep guard of the freedom that defines and ennobles us, and our friends. In an American Century, we have the strongest economy and the strongest military in the world. In an American Century, we secure peace through our strength. And if by absolute necessity we must employ it, we must wield our strength with resolve. In an American Century, we lead the free world and the free world leads the entire world.

If we do not have the strength or vision to lead, then other powers will take our place, pulling history in a very different direction. A just and peaceful world depends on a strong and confident America. I pledge to you that if I become commander-in-chief, the United States of America will fulfill its duty, and its destiny.

American leadership depends, as it always has, on our economic strength, on our military strength, and on our moral strength. If any of these falter, no skill of diplomacy or presidential oratory can compensate. Today, the strength of our economy is in jeopardy.

The last part is the three-legged stool of conservatism (economic, national security, and moral strength). Romney is saying that we need all three to remain strong, and that in an American Century, we will lead the free world that leads the rest of the world. He also made an important point for the campaign:

I have been critical of the President’s decision to withdraw the surge troops during the fighting season, against the advice of the commanders on the ground. President Obama would have you believe that anyone who disagrees with his decisions is arguing for endless war. But the route to more war – and to potential attacks here at home – is a politically timed retreat.

The choice to not remove our troops in time for the election does not mean that we have to be at war forever, but that is the straw man argument President Obama continues to make. Romney is correct when he suggests that weakness shown by politically driven retreat will not make us safer. As Ronald Reagan used to say, no wars have ever occurred because America was too strong.

The economic weakness of our country threatens our strength and influence, as does our lack of moral fortitude under our current President.  We face arbitrary and devastating cuts to our military at a time of great turmoil abroad, and the President has shown his reticence to stand for American values abroad. We need an economic recovery to help us maintain a strong military, and we need moral clarity as Reagan offered to remain the light of freedom’s torch. Mitt Romney has offered this vision for the country:

Fewer members of the Greatest Generation are with us today – and they can’t hold the torch as high as they have in the past. We must now seize the torch they carried so gallantly and at such sacrifice. It is an eternal torch of decency, freedom and hope. It is not America’s torch alone. But it is America’s duty – and honor – to hold it high enough so that all the world can see its light.

Presidential indeed.

“The Obama Way of War”

Thomas Donnelly of  AEI and the Center for Defense studies has a very interesting look in The Weekly Standard at the way that the Obama administration has conducted war. It is well-known by now that President Obama has continued many key Bush administration policies and processes for prosecuting the war on terror, and the description “leading from behind” has been accepted to characterize the Obama administration’s foreign policy approach.

While many of the President’s political and media allies who were so critical of the Bush war policies are now either supportive of or silent about President Obama’s continuation of that war conduct, the results and effects of this President’s war policies are more important than the hypocrisy. Donnelly’s analysis is critical, but fair in my view. One of the most harmful mistakes the administration might be making on war policy is to not articulate what it is doing:

If Bush saw the global war on terror as a way to expand American involvement in the Middle East, Barack Obama’s focus on terror is an attempt to limit it. New York Times columnist Roger Cohen sees this “radical shift from President Bush’s war on terror” and dubs Obama’s way of war the “doctrine of silence.” Cohen rightly argues that “there has seldom been so big a change in approach to U.S. strategic policy with so little explanation.”

The President seems to have recognized that he cannot make some of the grand changes he promised, but he also does not want to publicly promote some of the war policies he has implemented or continued. The administration said little, for example, about how much the Bush administration’s enhanced interrogation techniques may have contributed to gathering the intelligence which led to the killing of Osama bin Laden. Some have said that because of the controversy of such policies, it is better to not put them in the spotlight. Perhaps that is true to an extent, but as Donnelly concludes, the President is quietly reversing a century-long trend in American strength. That is something worth noticing.

Iraq’s Post-American Future

While probably every American wants to be able to end the war in Iraq and bring the troops home as soon as it is reasonable to do so, the President’s announcement that we would remove all but a residual force of 3,000 troops next year is a huge mistake. Undoubtedly the President was guided heavily by his re-election efforts in making that decision. While there was disagreement over an important negotiation point about immunity for American troops, the administration seemed willing to take advantage of that disagreement so that it could bring the troops home and start claiming, heading into the election year, that the President fulfilled a campaign promise.

Supporters of the President may claim that ending the war is what most voters want. That may be true, as it was true that much of the Iraq war strategy that President Bush implemented and President Obama continued was opposed by a significant number of voters. Doing what may seem popular, however, is not always wise. Such is the case with ending the Iraq effort so abruptly and risking a loss of the progress there that we have invested so much to achieve.

Former U.S. envoy to Iraq, Paul Bremer, has offered a criticism of the President’s decision to leave Iraq. He includes risks of doing so, such as more terrorism there and in the region, a weakening of Iraq’s new democratic institutions, less ability for the U.S. to gather intelligence, and the influence of Iran. Bremer’s warnings should be remembered as we unfortunately attempt to end the war on a timeline that suits President Obama’s re-election schedule.

Hold the Champagne for Libya and Iraq

The President and his administration seem jubilant that Qaddafi is dead, and that all troops will leave Iraq by 2011. To them, it seems the President’s strategy of “leading from behind” has been vindicated in Libya, and that the President will fulfill a campaign promise in Iraq. Media cheerleaders of President Obama are now suggesting that the incumbent’s strength in foreign policy will be an advantage for him in 2012. This is all entirely predictable, but before we crown President Obama as a modern foreign policy hero, let’s make sure that Iraq and Libya end up better than they were before.

Jack David and Max Boot remind us that Qaddafi’s death does not guarantee a positive outcome for Libya or the U.S., nor does it vindicate the President’s approach. As David writes, one possible consequence of Qaddafi’s ouster might be a stronger effort by tyrants to suppress citizens in order to minimize the chance of uprisings. In other words, strong horses may exercise their strength even more to stay in power. David also argues that U.S. policy had little to do with Qaddafi’s death. Boot is also skeptical of the claim that the President’s policies have been vindicated in Libya. Both David and Boot also recognize that there is no certainty about the government that would replace Qaddafi. We all remember what happened with the overthrow of the Shah in Iran, and we know about potential extremist elements that could gain power in Libya.

In Iraq, before even analyzing the potential fate of the country and the return on investment there, let’s not forget that the Obama administration is simply adhering to the agreement that the Bush administration put in place. Anyone excited about the current President’s decision should also thank former President Bush and his administration (We can credit the Obama administration’s counter-terrorism successes to Bush policies as well, for that matter) . That said, leaving Iraq is no reason to celebrate. Max Boot explains:

Ostensibly this pull-out was dictated by the unwillingness of Iraqi lawmakers to grant U.S. troops immunity from prosecution. But Iraqi leaders of all parties, save the Sadrists, also clearly signaled their desire to have a sizable American troop contingent post-2011. The issue of immunity could have been finessed if administration lawyers from the Departments of State and Defense had not insisted that Iraq’s parliament would have to vote to grant our troops protections from Iraqi laws. …

But for that to have happened, President Obama must have been committed to reaching a deal. He was not. …

Mitt Romney responded appropriately to the news:

“President Obama’s astonishing failure to secure an orderly transition in Iraq has unnecessarily put at risk the victories that were won through the blood and sacrifice of thousands of American men and women,” Romney wrote. “The unavoidable question is whether this decision is the result of a naked political calculation or simply sheer ineptitude in negotiations with the Iraqi government. The American people deserve to hear the recommendations that were made by our military commanders in Iraq.”

We have spent a lot of time and money in Iraq, and we have lost many lives. No one wants to be there militarily any longer than is necessary, but we should not jeopardize the significant gains we have made there for a chance to score points in an election campaign. We should also recognize the blatant hypocrisy of a leader who has criticized the very policies and techniques that he now claims credit for. And most of all, we shouldn’t celebrate potential successes until we are sure they are indeed successes. To do so in these instances would be to ignore history in favor of vanity and self-promotion.

UPDATE: Rick Perry’s response to the Iraq withdrawal is here, along with comments from other GOP hopefuls.