著名なリベラル派女性コラムニストがオバマ氏の安保観を痛烈批判 |
1月7日、オバマ政権は、情報管理体制の再検証結果を発表したが、これに対し、大統領の姿勢に疑問を呈する声がリベラル派内部からも上がっている。
リベラル左派の『ニューヨーク･タイムズ』中でも最も左派的なコラムニストとして知られるモーリーン・ダウド（写真）の批判など、終始皮肉交じりで、意外なほど厳しい。
身内からのここまでの批判は、オバマ政権にとって明らかに痛手であるし、民主党大物議員が数人、再選断念に追い込まれたことと併せ、流れの変化を感じさせる。
ダウドのコラム、「“当たり前”隊長、クールの限界を学ぶ」を参考までに引いておく。要旨は以下の通りである。
「わが大統領が山頂より降り来たった」。
彼は、情報システム再検証の「セミナー」を開き、その結果を発表した。目を見張るべき事に、「太陽は東から昇る。2＋2は4である」に類する自明の論、「誰もがすでに知っていること」ばかりである。情報強化予算が非常に効果的に使われているさまに感動せざるを得ない。
犯人（ウマール）の父親が息子の様子がおかしいと米大使館に通報したものの、国務省職員が名前を書き間違え、生かされなかった。
国境警備官が、当該機の飛行中に、ウマールは過激集団と関係があると気付いたが、なぜか到着後に尋問すればよいと決めた。
これらのどこに、過去の反省や進歩が見られるのか。
いかにも沈着冷静に、「究極の責任は私にある」と、「当たり前隊長」、「クール大統領」、「ノー・ドラマ・オバマ」は語りかける。しかし、「米国民が恐怖を感じる中、安全保障問題でクールであるのは正しい態度ではない」。
ただ落ち着いているのではなく、「侵入者から家を守る強い父親のよう」でなければならない。
しかし、オバマはむしろ、「危機管理室をゼミ室に変えてしまった現実離れした父親」のようだ。 （以上要旨）
原文は下記。なお、標題にあるCaptain Obvious（キャプテン自明、当たり前隊長）は分かりきった話をする人のこと。漫画のキャラクターもある。
オバマ氏より数段ナイーブで無責任な鳩山･汚沢政権を、リベラル派も含めた米側がどう受け止めるか、これまた自明だろう。
January 10, 2010
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Captain Obvious Learns the Limits of Cool
By MAUREEN DOWD
Our president came down from the mountaintop.
He had applied the freshness of his independent thought to the critical matters at hand. He had convened his seminar, reviewed the reviews, analyzed the intelligence every which way, thought anew about everything, and lo and behold, he finally emerged to tell us some stuff we already knew.
We are under attack.
There is evil in the world.
Al Qaeda is determined to attack inside the
Al Qaeda is casting a wide recruiting net for vulnerable young men.
Aspirational terrorists eventually become operational terrorists.
Our airports are not safe.
Metal detectors can’t detect nonmetal explosives sewn into underwear.
Our incomplete no-fly lists are more like “Welcome aboard” lists.
We still can’t connect the dots, even when the dots are flying at us like 3-D asteroids.
The sun rises in the east.
Two plus two equals four.
”We must do better,” Captain Obvious said Thursday at the White House, “in keeping dangerous people off airplanes while still facilitating air travel.”
John Brennan, the deputy national security adviser, was equally illuminating. “The intelligence,” he informed us, “fell through the cracks.”
He also offered this: “Al Qaeda is just determined to carry out attacks here against the homeland.” That rings a bell.
The president and his intelligence officials stressed that these were not the same mistakes made before 9/11.
“Rather than a failure to collect or share intelligence,” President Obama said, “this was a failure to connect and understand the intelligence that we already had.”
Wow. That makes me feel that all those billions spent on upgrading the intelligence system were well spent.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s father personally delivered a neon warning to our embassy in
Border security officials figured out while he was in the air that the young man had extremist links, but inexplicably decided to wait until he landed to question him, failing to notify the pilot of his plane. After all, what harm could a foreign extremist bring to a plane over American soil.
So it wasn’t bureaucratic turf wars that caused the intelligence to fall through the cracks this time. The C.I.A. and counterterrorism agencies weren’t hoarding information and refusing to pool tips. They were just out to lunch.
And this is supposed to be progress?
I’d rather they were hoarding. It would be more reassuring to think our intelligence analysts actually knew what was going on but were hampered by power grabs than to think they were cooperative but clueless.
Even though Russ Feingold, who is on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been pointing out since 2002 that we need to focus on Yemen — “It’s the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden and the place where Al Qaeda blew up the U.S.S. Cole and we lost 17 people,” he impatiently notes — the president said that the intelligence community was caught off guard by the attack planned by the Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, even though “we knew that they sought to strike the United States, and that they were recruiting operatives to do so.”
Senator Feingold told me that “this is obviously an international network and we have to start thinking about it that way rather than as a country-by-country eradication process.”
Unlike the Republicans, who have yet to take responsibility for a single disastrous thing they did, President Obama said “ultimately the buck stops with me.”
But when he failed to immediately step up to the microphones in
No Drama Obama is reticent about displays of emotion. The Spock in him needs to exert mental and emotional control. That is why he stubbornly insists on staying aloof and setting his own deliberate pace for responding — whether it’s in a debate or after a debacle. But it’s not O.K. to be cool about national security when Americans are scared.
Our professorial president is no feckless W., biking through Katrina. He is no doubt on top of the crisis in terms of studying it top to bottom. But his inner certainty creates an outer disconnect.
He’s so sure of himself and his actions that he fails to see that he misses the moment to be president — to be the strong father who protects the home from invaders, who reassures and instructs the public at traumatic moments.
He’s more like the aloof father who’s turned the Situation Room into a Seminar Room.
