UPDATED: A Sort of Backtracking
Heard part of the speech, but the little I heard sounded like a bunch of excuses, justifications, and retroactive buck passing. All of that just to defend the president’s decision to close Gitmo? Little sensitive to criticism these days, isn’t he? What happened to the “I won” bravado he was exhuding in January? That was certainly a no show.
Of course, there was also irony:
Mr. Obama decried a “return of the politicization of these issues that have characterized the last several years.” He warned that “we will be ill-served by some of the fear-mongering that emerges whenever we discuss this issue.”
I guess the politicization was supposed to end on the day of Obama’s inauguration. Sorry, Mr. President. That’s not how it works. What’s good against one administration is good against another. Ask Dick Cheney. He knows. Although I gotta admit: must be tough to defend closing Gitmo when you got Gitmo substitutes in the works. Professor Jacobson explains:
Obama signalled that he would continue to detain indefinitely those detainees who could not be tried either in court or in a military tribunal or transferred to another country, but who pose a threat to the United States.
While we may quibble over the details of detention, this aspect of the speech reflects a mature assessment of national security which was lacking from campaign rhetoric…
Yeah. Reality bites. Just ask these guys. Now Obama is in control and he’s not merely “Bush Lite”. He’s outdoing Bush. So much so that he’s drawing praise from Karl Rove!
It’s ok, Lefties. You’ll get over it.
UPDATE: Tom Maguire: “I’m tough on terror, too.” Ha!
MORE: If Cheney is Darth Vader, then Obama must be his apprentice…with one feel-good difference.
