Is Obama merely repackaging Bush’s anti-terror policies?
It is becoming one of the hottest questions in international politics: Is Barack Obama’s terror policy little more than the Bush policy in kinder and gentler wrapping paper? If so this would be a stake through the heart of any claims made by or on behalf of the new administration that the most controversial issue in US politics over the last eight years has been subjected to radical change. If Bush was right all along then why was Obama’s victory such a big deal? For my part, I think it is too early to give a definitive answer, though I always suspected that as Obama entered the White House he would leave many of his more radical supporters standing on the doorstep in the rain.
For an excellent discussion on the subject Jack Goldsmith — Harvard law professor and an assistant Attorney General in the Bush administration — has given a nuanced and thorough appraisal in the current edition of the New Republic.
Goldsmith takes issue with former Vice President Dick Cheney’s oft repeated charges that Obama is being irresponsible by dismantling Bush era policies:
“The truth is closer to the opposite: The new administration has copied most of the Bush program, has expanded some of it, and has narrowed only a bit. Almost all of the Obama changes have been at the level of packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric. This does not mean that the Obama changes are unimportant. Packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric, it turns out, are vitally important to the legitimacy of terrorism policies.”
To read the full article click here:
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=1e733cac-c273-48e5-9140-80443ed1f5e2&p=1
