OBAMA THE POLITICIAN, AND NATIONAL SECURITY - AT 7:40 A.M. ET:  Terrorism expert Con Coughlin, writing in Britain's Telegraph, warns against President Obama politicizing, and weakening, national security:

All it is going to take is a massive terror attack to teach President Obama that there is a world of difference between the politics of the campaign trail and those of high office.

Right now, Coughlin says, the techniques of the campaign trail are infecting national policy:

Whether it is his appeal to Iran's fundamentalist mullahs to unclench their fists, his reluctance to confront North Korea's nuclear activities or his "new beginning" with Cuba, the President wants to be everybody's friend, as he was on last year's campaign trail.

But a change of leadership at the White House does not mean the world has suddenly become a safer place. Al-Qaeda is still devising plots, the Taliban continues to murder coalition forces and rogue states such as North Korea, Syria and Iran persist with efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction while supporting Islamist terror groups.

Ah, reality.  Why won't it go away?

Coughlin is critical of the Bush administration, but decries the release of memos justifying enhanced interrogation techniques to be used on terror suspects:

...there is little new in the revelations that the CIA had used White House-sanctioned methods of torture – such as water-boarding, in which a detainee suffers simulated drowning...

...So why did Mr Obama reopen old wounds by publishing the Justice Department's legal opinions? The answer lies more with the President's desire to heap humiliation on his predecessor than his stated aim of transparency on this dark episode. Playing party politics with sensitive security issues might work well on the campaign trail, where candidates can do so without consequences. But in office it is another matter, and runs the risk of compromising the effectiveness of intelligence and security agencies.

That is exactly what former CIA chief Michael Hayden said over the weekend.

Jimmy Carter's drive to cleanse the CIA after the scandals of the Nixon years left the organisation neutered to the extent that the White House found itself unsighted on two of the most cataclysmic events of the late 1970s – the Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Mr Obama runs a similar risk if he continues to undermine the morale of America's lead intelligence-gathering agency.

Ah, the comparisons with Jimmah Carter.  Sadly, some in the Obama administration would be proud of those comparisons.

Say what you like about the Bush administration, the former president left office proud in the knowledge that he had achieved his most important goal in the aftermath of September 11 – to prevent America from suffering a repeat attack. If Mr Obama wants to emulate that success, he must provide effective leadership to the legions of dedicated professionals in whose hands the defence of America and its allies rests.

COMMENT:  Well stated.  Obviously, we cannot be blind to improper activity in an intelligence agency, as in any other department of the government.  But undermining the effectiveness of that agency is another matter altogether.  Coughlin correctly notes the virtual destruction of the CIA in the 1970s.  Some would dearly love to do it again, and they might just try.  Some of them are the very same people who were active in the seventies.  Now they have greater seniority.

April 20, 2009