Has Obama crossed the Rubicon with CIA decision?
by Bob Hoig, Publisher
Midlands Business Journal
Better writers than this one have charted Barack Obama’s zigzags as a candidate and president.
On Iraq, gun control, secret union ballots, warrantless wire taps, the North American Free Trade Agreement, flag pins, campaign finance reform, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Israel – Obama has had his flip flops.
But the most telling and dangerous reversal as a predictor of Obama strategy might be his tacit, but obvious, okay for Atty. Gen. Eric Holder to reopen the closed investigation of CIA agents.
These were men and women who successfully interrogated major hardened terrorists after 9/11, and in the eyes of many saved Americans lives.
When conquering general Julius Caesar crossed the little Rubicon River in Italy in what turned out to his march on Rome, he dared not go back. The man who was later to be first emperor of Rome had to press on and end the Roman Republic, else he himself might wind up on trial.
Obama must hold the Democrat Congress in 2010 or he fails. And so he crosses his own Rubicon by allowing Holder to call a special prosecutor to reopen wounds.
The action is fraught with unknowable consequences. In the immediate sense, it tells this writer that Obama has opted for a no holds barred battle leading up to the 2010 election in November.
Unleashing Holder reassures Obama’s leftist base in ACORN and the more militant unions and it girds the troops for battle.
If Democrats retain control of Congress in the mid-term election, Obama’s master plans for cap and trade energy limitations, government run health care, more social programs and likely more deficit spending will be safe.
If he loses control in the House or Senate or House and Senate, it is Obamaism itself that is defeated and possibly rolled back. Coming to mind for review would be the administration’s take-over of the American auto industry and the bailout and high-handed actions spread over whole industries from banking to insurance and beyond.
So, the stakes are high: free enterprise versus expanding socialism; individual liberties versus vague “social justice.” The term can cover a lot of ground under true believers.
Holder’s decision to reverse Obama’s pledge on the CIA interrogations is strange. Since 2004, key committees in House and Senate have known the facts.
The CIA agents except one were cleared of torturing prisoners to gain information of terror plans. That one was tried, convicted and jailed. The meaning of “torture” also has taken on some twists, being extended to firing a weapon in another room and allowing smoke around the suspect.
The CIA agents were cleared by career Justice Department prosecutors. The lawyers were not political appointees of the Bush White House, whose actions might have been suspect, just as Holder’s actions are suspect now.
Holder had a lot to answer for himself when at the end of the Clinton Administration, he engineered a pardon for fugitive multi-millionaire financier Marc Rich, a major Clinton donor accused of tax evasion.
The CIA agents that Holder – and by extension, President Obama – have chosen to place in the shadow of possible criminal prosecution for doing their duty have already been shown to have acted in a manner approved by law as interpreted by their superiors.
Holder notwithstanding, this newspaper accepts the word of one of the highest of these superiors, former Vice President Dick Cheney, that the information gathered saved American lives.
Holder and the president might feel they are unleashing the wind with the CIA issue. We think they will reap the whirlwind.
It is not pleasant to contemplate Obama’s ACORN and union factions clashing at town halls, tea parties and rallies with Rush Limbaugh’s “ditto heads” and the followers of Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Bill O’Reilly.
The Holder-Obama decision for a special prosecutor puts the lie to any Obama pretense to be some “post-partisan” healer of national differences.
August 2009
