The news that CIA Director Leon Panetta has canceled a secret program that would have, if carried out properly, covertly killed top al Qaeda leaders, has dominated recent headlines. That’s right — not the lowly al-Qaeda operatives that American forces have been targeting in Afghanistan for the last eight years, but top leaders who have been elusively traversing the territories of Afghanistan and Pakistan, plotting terrorist attacks against the United States of America at home and abroad.
That a program of this nature exists should be a non-starter. If our intelligence community is not hunting down our enemies, then what exactly are they doing? The real story is that Panetta has not the stomach to implement this program fully. It’s helpful to recall the criticism levied at Obama and Panetta when the nomination for CIA director was announced:
The selection pairs a top military man with a quintessential Washington insider – but that combination appeared to irk some key Senate Democrats, who expressed concern that Panetta does not have an intelligence background. “My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best-served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time,” said California Sen. Diane Feinstein, who will oversee Panetta’s confirmation as chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence.
Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), the vice chairman of the committee, also questioned the choice of Panetta. “Job number one at the CIA is to track down and stop terrorists. In a post-9-11 world, intelligence experience would seem to be a prerequisite for the job of CIA Director. While I will reserve final judgment on President-elect Obama’s nomination for the leader of our terror-fighting agency, I will be looking hard at Panetta’s intelligence expertise and qualifications.”
And in a quintessential Washington-insider move, Panetta revealed the secret plans for this program soon after hearing about it. In this case, Senators Feinstein and Bond were exactly right: Leon Panetta is not the right man for the job.
Good for him. As I suspected, the culprits here are the few within AIG that tripped up an otherwise sound and profitable organization and the hyenas in Congress that wouldn’t be able to successfully run a lemonade stand in the middle of the desert – special notice going out to the despicable behavior of the Congressmen from my native Massachusetts.
One now wonders if ACORN is sponsoring a chartered bus to transport protesters to Mr. DeSanits’ home this morning.
Do we honestly think that this sort of institutionalized capriciousness is a good idea?
I do!!!
# 2 – You remind of the scene in “A Man for All Seasons” when Thomas More asks his son-in-law if he would abrogate every law in order to give justice to the Devil.
What are you going to do when these thugs you so applaud now come for you?
Good for Liddy. This resignation in itself is a public service.
Steve J. I don’t think you deserve the compensation you’re presently making; I think I’ll write my Congressman and the District Attorney! Or maybe charter a bus. . . .
AIG should be in bankruptcy just like any other insolvent corporation.
Margo, as regards #2 returning his compensation, I’m sure he will find it difficult to put coins back into those bottle-redemption machines.
good for liddy
#3 — In one sense, our basic problem is too many William Ropers, Thomas Cromwells, Cardinal Wolseys, and Richard Riches, and not enough Thomas Mores.
#3…..Alan: An excellent post!
My prediction, this will have zero effect on the political class. Obama tried to cram that genie back in the bottle when he warned about demonizing the investor class. Uh, sir, try telling that to the guy you see every morning in the mirror, the Demonizer-in-Chief.
Does anyone really think Frank, Dodd, Giethner, Pelosi, and the other blowhards in Washington will shed a tear for DeSantis? There are private individuals, not much different the us commenters on this blog, that are being sought out for public scorn by our government. How have we arrived at this moment? Never mind the blame game. That time has passed. How have we come to a point where elected politicians can go on a witch hunt after private individuals who have been promised something that the elected politicians approved?! This is a complete bizzaro world, and it has to stop!
How many regular commenters here work for a financial or insurance firm? Are you next? Is Coumo, Blumenthal and Frank going to seek your name for public scorn and riducule? If it happened to DeSantis, it can happen to all of us.
We are all Americans, and regardless of what industry any of us work in, we are owed more respect by those we elect to serve. But this is happens when we keep sending the same politicians to Washington over and over again. It is high time to take back OUR government.
As it stands, the entities that are targets of scorn in the Age of Obama are American capitalists, Rush Limbaugh, and the Israel Lobby. Yes, that is a lot of change for 8 weeks! It is becoming more clear that this administration is leading an all out war on free markets, free speech, and free societies.
Let’s see what the future has in store. When the 900 million dollars is transferred to Hamas and used as bonuses to terrorist cells attacking the democracy of Israel, will Pelosi, Reid, Obama, and Cuomo shame and name the Hamas leaders? Will they take back the “aid” and send ACORN planes to fly over to Gaza, dropping off Obamtons in front of the homes of Hamas leadership? Will they pick out conservative Arabic voices and shout, “Enough!”
Its only fair and equal for the liberal elitists to spread their anger everywhere.
The problem is that Congress is a bipartisan lynch mob motivated at least in part by fear of us the voters. How to elect people who are not or do not become either corrupt or cowardly or both is a real problem which may be inherent in democratic governance. In a sense the current disgust and cynicism helps legitimize the mandarinism we also decry, just as similar sentiments bolstered statist thinking in earlier eras.
Incidentally, wasn’t it the consensus six months ago that AIG was going to be a “controlled bankruptcy”? Only now do Geithner and Bernanke complain that they lack the “tools” to engineer it. (Who would have thought there were not enough “tools” in Washington….)
The Left/Liberal/Progressives — whatever name they whiningly call themselves — are displaying the mob mentality that they would decry in others — except, of course, any Left dictatorships. But, since the Left has no self-critical gene, and since the MSM is itself part of the Left, they will continue in the lynching of their political opponents or of whomever they need/desire to demonize.
This is how tyranny comes to our shores.
Watch now for the blowback on DeSantis. He will be investigated like Joe the Plumber (but not like Tim the Treasury Secretary). Right now wackos at Huff Post, Kos, etc. are scouring public records for dirt on this guy. Olbermaniac will trash him tonight, as will Stewart. Probably Bernanke and Timmy-in-the-well will ask for authority to send him back to work at AIG-FP, still at a dollar a year, to help fix the mess others made.
So, what we see is the continuation of a baleful trend initiated by Democrats some 24 years ago–the criminalization of politics, followed by the politicization of economics, which eventually means the criminalization of economics. I do believe it was behavior of this sort on the part of the Senatus Romanum that led to the collapse of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Principate.
Thank goodness Barack Obama is no Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus Augustus. Lacks the brains, the self control and the cold bloodedness. On the other hand, if Democrats are going to behave like the Boni of the Roman Republic, then perhaps this country is going to need a Caesar Augustus to rescue us from the chaos that is about to ensue.
The end of year bonuses are usually defined by management through a pool. The size of the pool is based on the firms complete earnings and profitability. If one side of the firm fails the ENTIRE firm suffers. That is what a team is about. Maybe if everyone at AIG were under the assumption of all for one and one for all then the CDS team would have been better watched. Sorry Mr. DeSantis, but your COMPANY screwed up and maybe you should help fix it for the rest of America and not just yourself. BTW I’ve been on Wall Street for 24 years and when the traders screwed up the support staff took the reductions in bonus, but we kept working for the team. So I’ve been taking the business losses for years in my bonuses while you guys got rewarded for screwing up. Grow Up!
#17 – H’uh? DeSantis was trying to help fix it, and his reward was the demonization by elected officials. One can argue whether he deserved the bonus, but regardless, he is targeted with a 90% tax (unconstitutional tax, but hey, who pays attention to that old document anymore).
#16,”perhaps this country is going to need a Caesar Augustus to rescue us from the chaos that is about to ensue.”
Perhaps Mitchus Romnius or the revered Amazon, Sarinius Palinius
#16,”_____ “followed by the politicization of economics, which eventually means the criminalization of economics.”
So who gets the blame for the colossal mismanagement of our currency in that same time period? The #1 enemy of capitalism and freedom is currency mischief.
A reminder that Andrew Cuomo was McCain’s hypothetical choice for SEC chief. And I doubt President Maverick would have restrained himself about those bonuses. Just searching for that silver lining, people.
Dick Morris said last night on Fox that he believes that the President realizes that his plans will result in them failing for exactly the reason noted above, which is that all the good people will be too scared to work for any of these companies if they are associated with the government – and that therefore he will be able to say that he tried to do it the capitalist way and it didn’t work, and therefore he needs to nationalize all these companies.
(I don’t think this is so farfetched. If this is indeed part of his strategy, it will require very different methods to combat than if he is simply clueless in this regard. Apropos that, I saw an interview on Charlie Rose with Hank Greenberg who founded and owned AIG and was kicked out by his board a couple of years ago right before all this mess in the Financial Products Division started. One of the participants, a canny woman from the financial sector said that all the thousands of (frequently young and/or clever) people in New York who have been thrown out of work in the financial sector because of all this turmoil would be going in droves to Washington to get jobs there and help solve the problems if they weren’t so scared of the witch hunters and lynch mobs that the Congress and federal government have turned into.
(This view requires new strategic thinking on our part.
Much like the sweeping powers Bush/Cheney seized in wiretapping, torture, and suspension of international treaties.
#16,”perhaps this country is going to need a Caesar Augustus to rescue us from the chaos that is about to ensue.”
Perhaps Mitchus Romnius or the revered Amazon, Sarinius Palinius
All hail Sarinus Palinus! We who are about to die (in the great Third World War to perpetuate The Great American Empire) salute you!