Leiter Is Living Proof of Why Obama Must Stop Continuing Failed Bush Policies

General David Petraeus has been oft-quoted recently for his bold, “We are in this to win,” statement, but how do we define “win” in the War on Terror? Not everyone can get what they want (or what they deserve) out of this continually costly conflict, and were any of the U.S.’s goals ever really achievable in the first place? Much of this is due to the fact that the Bush administration pushed us into this conflict in the first place and that, after watching the bills and the bodies pile up since 2001, we haven’t learned a damn thing. The Obama administration has had an ample amount of time now to wake us up from this “stay the course” mentality, but in a pointless attempt to be a “centrist,” Obama is not only making the same mistakes, but allowing the same people to make them.

Michael Leiter has been the Director of the United States National Counterterrorism Center since 2007, and he’s made it quite clear over the years that he’s the type of guy who prefers security (or a false sense of it) over freedom. Like most Bush employees, he’s all for stripping everyone of their civil liberties in the name of “protecting the American people,” even if those people are Americans themselves, and then claiming that we’re fighting the War on Terror to protect those very liberties. It seems that you’re more likely to get picked up by a government agent who labels you as a threat than a terrorist who labels you as an infidel, and apparently both would treat you with the same lack of humanity. Leiter hasn’t changed this tune, either, yet he kept his position when Obama took office in 2009. Take a look at what he recently told Newsweek…

Q: But what is the standard that you use for targeting a U.S. citizen [who has not been charged with a crime] and what is the decision-making process for targeting that individual?

Leiter: Just to be clear, the U.S. government through the Department of Defense goes out and attempts to target and kill people, a lot of people, who haven’t been indicted.

Well thanks for making it clear that the U.S. government is still a bunch of fascist assholes who have no respect for freedom, never mind warrants. He continues…

Q: When the Bush administration declared Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen, an enemy combatant, stripped him of all his legal rights, and threw him in a military brig, there was an enormous outcry from the civil liberties community. Here, the Obama administration is going one better than that; they’re saying, “We can kill this guy. We can take him out.” And there’s been very little public debate about how that decision was made. Doesn’t the government at least owe a [fuller] explanation of how it’s reaching these decisions?

Leiter: I absolutely agree with you. These are tough issues that require a full and open debate. That may not mean there’s a full and open debate about an individual…because there are sensitive sources and methods involved. But certainly, the policy decisions about the ways in which we should or should not use force demand a full and open discussion…But I will tell you from my perspective as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, if someone like Anwar al-Awlaki is responsible for part of an operation to kill more than 300 people over the city of Detroit, I think it would be wholly irresponsible…not to at least think about and potentially direct all elements of national power to try to defend the American people.

These issues “require a full and open debate,” but we’re not going to debate them and we’re just going to do what we want anyway. Awesome. Pardon me if that’s about as comforting as a Big Brother monitor installed in my living room. So how many of these psychos are we cowering in fear from?

Q: Let’s get a sense of what the overall threat picture looks like right now. [White House chief of staff] Rahm Emanuel said [recently] that about half of Al Qaeda has been eliminated in the last 18 months. How many people is that, and how many people are left in the other half?

Leiter: I think [CIA director] Leon Panetta said on Sunday, and I agree with him, that in Afghanistan, you have a certain number, a relatively small number, 50 to 100. I think we have in Pakistan a larger number.

Q: How many?

Leiter: Upwards – more than 300, I would say.

WHAT?! So there’s roughly 400 of these assholes and I’m still supposed to feel threatened?! About four times that amount work in the White House alone, and those people are doing way more to shit on my way of life than these 400 motherfuckers hiding out in caves on their magic prayer mats. We’re still spending billions of dollars on these wars and sacrificing thousands of troops to stamp out a bunch of idiots so pathetic that they’ve resorted to hiding dud bombs in their underwear. Are we serious? Leiter even admits that the more of these people we kill (or accidentally kill) in these wars, the more potential terrorists we breed, so why continue to recruit?

And speaking of the underwear bomber, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Mr. Leiter was in charge of the NCTC when this occurred, and they ignored several valid warnings, including those from the bomber’s own father, and watched it happen. (Sounds eerily like 9/11, doesn’t it? We let the shit hit the fan so we have enough fear and confusion on our side to justify doing whatever we want.) He was the one who was famously lambasted in January for taking a skiing vacation during the incident, dodging the press and all accountability. It was up to a few brave everyday civilians to tackle the would-be bomber, not some highly trained “super spies” (like this fucking winner) funded by our tax dollars. Hell, the Obama administration even defended him and said he deserved the break…from what, exactly? Wasn’t Bush the guy who said he was declaring the War on Terror to keep us safe after he failed to keep us safe?

So, in other words, even if we agree to surrender our civil liberties and grant our government the right to assassinate any American citizen they want, without checks, balances, or due process, in the name of national defense, we still aren’t any safer because they’re not even doing their fucking jobs in the first place – they’re too busy defending their “right” to indiscriminately shoot people. Even more awesome. Leiter’s got to go, and so does this outmoded idea that we have to give up our rights to keep them. It’s about time Obama started cleaning house and dusting the cobwebs from an administration that failed so badly that they got him elected in the first place.