Larry Wilkerson’s Unending Diatribe
After months of waiting, we finally get a glimpse of what a Democratic agenda looks like in Larry Wilkerson’s Baltimore Sun op-ed.
As Alexis de Tocqueville once said: “America is great because she is good. If America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
In January 2001, with the inauguration of George W. Bush as president, America set on a path to cease being good; America became a revolutionary nation, a radical republic. If our country continues on this path, it will cease to be great, as happened to all great powers before it, without exception.
Mr. Wilkerson, it seems, hates George Bush. He’s hated him from the start, too. This explains his first infamous statement that Dick Cheney had “hijacked foreign policy”, supposedly from omniscient bureaucrats like Mr. Wilkerson and other State Department peons. Mr. Wilkerson’s seething hatred is only surpassed by his superiority complex, which appears to dominate his thinking.
Mr. Wilkerson’s ego aside, he’d be wise to learn history. I’m sure that Lynne Cheney could help with that.
We Americans came not from a revolution but from an evolution. That is in large part why our so-called revolution produced success while most throughout history did not. We came as much from the Magna Carta as from our own doings, as much from British common law and parliamentary development as from the Declaration of Independence and Continental Congress.
Silly me. I thought we fought the British in the Revolutionary War. That must’ve been a persistent typo in the history books of my youth. It should’ve been the Evolutionary War. Let’s hope they’ve corrected that so future generations will know better.
Seriously, notice the denial of American exceptionalism in that brief paragraph. When he says that “We came as much from the Magna Carta as from our own doings”, he’s saying that we came from European greatness as much as from our persistence. That’s nonsense. It’s a statement filled with dismissiveness. After declaring independance, we fought hard and persisted in a war that at times seemed unwinnable. That’s America at its best. Nothing in Europe’s history comes close to it.
From the Kyoto accords to the International Criminal Court, from torture and cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners to rendition of innocent civilians, from illegal domestic surveillance to lies about leaking, from energy ineptitude to denial of global warming, from cherry-picking intelligence to appointing a martinet and a tyrant to run the Defense Department, the Bush administration, in the name of fighting terrorism, has put America on the radical path to ruin.
Mr. Wilkerson has it wrong again about the “illegal domestic surveillance…” Here’s what five FISA court judges testified to at a Senate Judiciary hearing:
“If a court refuses a FISA application and there is not sufficient time for the president to go to the court of review, the president can under executive order act unilaterally, which he is doing now,” said Judge Allan Kornblum, magistrate judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida and an author of the 1978 FISA Act. “I think that the president would be remiss exercising his constitutional authority by giving all of that power over to a statute.”
In short, they didn’t think he’d crossed the line legally. That isn’t coming from an academic either. It’s coming from the man who authored the FISA law. In light of that information, it seems that Mr. Wilkerson’s diatribe is based solely on Bush hatred, not on the law. He’s entitled to do so but he’s still wrong on the law. Perhaps Mr. Roberts could give him private lessons on the law so he gets it right.
Wilkerson also hates Don Rumsfeld, calling him a tyrant and martinet. This isn’t a new revelation since Wilkerson included Rumsfeld in his “hijacking” diatribe. Though he doesn’t give examples of Rumsfeld’s flaws, Wilkerson still expects us to simply trust his appraisal. No thanks. I’ll trust people that cite specific examples supporting their accusations.
At this point, Wilkerson is all diatribe and devoid of facts, hardly the persuasive type.
Finally, Wilkerson trots out the tired liberal line about cherry-picking the intelligence. Report after report has shown that accusation baseless, whether it was the Robb-Silvermann report or the 9/11 Commission’s report or the Senate Intelligence Committee report. It’s worth noting that the Senate Intel Committee report passed unanimously.
Wilkerson’s biggest diatribes come from things he’s gotten wrong, from the NSA intercept program’s legality to the cherry-picking of intelligence to the accusations against Rumsfeld.
It’s safe to say that Wilkerson is a hate-filled bitter man who thinks that his way is the only way. Thankfully, he isn’t part of this administration anymore.
Technorati Tags: Larry Wilkerson, Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Revolutionary War, NSA Hearings
Cross-post at LetFreedomRingBlog
April 23rd, 2006 at 6:44 pm
Wilkerson’s Tocqueville quotation is fake. See http://www.tocqueville.org/pitney.htm
April 24th, 2006 at 1:35 am
Two stories got my crow today. I read this Larry “I know better than the elected representatives of the people†Wilkerson’s op-ed and read the media take on the firing of Mary “I gave 7500 dollars in campaign contributions to Kerry and the DNC†McCarthy for leaking classified information and became physically ill. Is not their actions, as repulsive as they were, that made me sick. Nor their lionization by the MSM. Is the complete lack of testosterone on the part of the justice department. They have allowed these two, who have admitted sedition, treason and espionage, in a time of war, to get away with it. And please don’t discount my words as those of a kook. The charges I make are severe, but so are their actions. Larry Wilkerson, formerly second in command at the state department, admits openly that while he was at the state department he worked against the policies of the elected representatives of this nation. That is treason and sedition. Mary McCarthy, who disagreed with the CIA foreign detention camps, released information of their existence in order to force them to close. That is treason and espionage. But lets say we forget those two. After all, the damage is already done and this spineless administration does nor want to look “meanâ€. The problem is that this is not about Democrats, it is about our democracy. If we allow sedition, espionage and treason to be swept under the rug in order to “foster dialog and debateâ€, more people will commit treason espionage and sedition. A great example of this is the 6 generals. Before Weasely Clark retired and started speaking against the elected representatives, no general, retired or active duty, would have thought of bad mouthing the elected civilian representatives. Now any retired general with a bone to pick can say whatever he wishes. What next, active duty generals opposing the orders and policies of elected leadership? After all, been retired does not mean you are not covered by regulations. You are placed on the retired roles but are still a general. Only by resigning can you be free of military regulations. So technically, future active duty generals are free to publicly tell elected officials to go to hell, as long as the officials are republicans that is.
I understand that this president is not a conservative but a republican. His goal is to advance the power of the party, even if the conservative agenda takes a hit (see no child left behind, prescription drug benefit and lack of border enforcement). But this is much more than a Republican thing, it’s a republic thing. Our republic can not stand if we refuse to defend her against all enemies, foreign or domestic, for political expediency.