Victor Davis Hanson makes an excellent point on the tone deaf nature of President Obama’s and Speaker Pelosi’s hypocrisy on the issues of EIT and war Bush era tactics:
A Nancy Pelosi, hellbent on releasing once-classified memos for partisan advantage, and eager to begin ‘Truth” hearings, suddenly believes such an inquisition will not apply to herself, despite the fact that she, like so many Democrats from Senator Schumer to Senator Rockefeller, in that dark period in 2001, spoke of the need for, or was complicit in, approving enhanced interrogation techniques.
Then the president himself, who jump-started his campaign in Iraq’s crisis year by slamming the commander-in-chief on renditions, military tribunals, email and phone intercepts, Predator drone attacks, and Iraq, now suddenly wishes to explain the nuances and complexities of these policies and why he will continue the Bush protocols — apparently oblivious to the hypocrisy involved with his own prior self-interested stridency. These examples could be easily augmented.
The problem is that between 2003-2008 there was such hysterical antagonism to Bush that the combatants never worried about the often vicious means they used to achieve their supposedly lofty ends, and so now, finding themselves in a position of responsibility, are infuriated that anyone, well, would even conceive of playing hardball as they once did.
I think the term hysterical antagonism neatly captures the style and substance of what substituted for Democratic debate in the run up to the 2008 elections. The Obama administration has obviously come to grips with the vacuous campaign “debate” given their policy reversals and embrace of Bush doctrine. That they have now loosed their own CIA director to put down Pelosi is further evidence that they have nothing intellectual or substantive to add to a campaign polemic now thoroughly swarmed by reality.
The only unresolved matter in this brouhaha is the still evolving meme being circulated in the fever swamp that all of this will lead to some investigation of the allegedly phony evidence used by Darth Cheney to trick the American people into going to war against Iraq. Pelosi teed up this argument by weaving the WMD debate into her awful presser on Thursday.
It is hoped that the Left keeps this up because as our commenters noted yesterday the BDS crowd is ignoring the rule of holes, much to the benefit of an otherwise ineffective opposition response. Carry on Madam Speaker.
