BY JOHN CARLSON:
Progressives denounced everything George W. Bush was doing in the Middle East, Iraq, and Guantanamo. Now, President Obama has adopted very similar policies.
Obama doesn’t always disagree with George W. Bush. In fact, he doesn’t often disagree with him. Consider the following...
* In May, President Obama signed a four-year extension of the Patriot Act, including its most contentious provisions.
* When bin Laden was put down in Abbottabad, the action was taken without notifying the Pakistanis or any other nation. It was as unilateral as an operation can get (which is probably why is succeeded). President Obama and Democrats have joined Republicans in heaping praise on Navy Seal Team VI, part of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) which carried out the raid. A couple of years ago, JSOC was dubbed “Cheney’s Death Squad” by Sy Hersh and other anti-Bush journalists.
* When Gen. David Petraeus defended the Iraq “surge” strategy in front of Congress three years ago, he was denounced as “General Betray-Us” in left-leaning newspaper ads. Then-Sen. Hillary Clinton said she didn’t trust him. Sen. Obama said the surge Petraeus designed was doomed to fail. Today, Gen. Petraeus is the president’s nominee to head the CIA. Who changed? Not Petraeus.
* Speaking of Iraq, President Obama essentially adopted both the strategy and the timeline of the Bush administration in place of his own to draw down American troops and responsibilities.
* But in Afghanistan, “the Good War,” he sent thousands more troops than Bush to replicate the successful “surge” policy in Iraq. After some initial success, the mission has bogged down, and the president announced that he will draw down more than 30,000 troops before the election. Perhaps a light footprint there was the smart move all along?
Back to bin Laden. His take-down was a stellar operation which the president deserves credit for approving. And it reveals the illusory “alliance” we have with Pakistan. But we now know it likely wouldn’t have happened without the use of “enhanced interrogation” (low-level torture) that led us to the identity of the courier, who led us to bin Laden’s compound nestled in the Pakistani military town of Abbotabad. As Michael Barone pointed out, “You may remember that many Democrats called for criminal prosecutions of CIA interrogators who were acting under orders vetted by legal counsel. Attorney General Eric Holder actually considered bringing such prosecutions.” As with Gitmo and Khalid Sheik Mohammad, Holder has done an about-face.
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