Obama on Verge of Hitting National Security Homerun
By Larry Johnson on November 22, 2008 at 8:23 PM in Current Affairs
Count me amazed. President-elect Obama appears to be on the verge of naming General Jim Jones (USMC, retired) as his National Security Advisor. If that is true, then the Obama presidency may actually live up to the hype and achieve some great things on the foreign policy and national security front. General Jones first and foremost is an adult. He is not a partisan. And he is fearless.
The Bush National Security Council has been an amateur hour nightmare. It has been staffed by intellectual lightweights and inept managers. His first NSC advisor, Condi Rice, was a complete disaster. She was the proverbial weak sister. She did nothing to rein in Don Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney. She failed in her main duty of coordinating the national security bureaucracy. It was Condi Rice who ignored the warnings of Richard Clarke about the need to step up efforts to deal with Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. It was Condi Rice who ignored the warnings in July 2001 from the CIA’s Cofer Black about increasing signs of a looming, monster terror attack.
But Rice is not the only failure. Her successor, Stephen Hadley has been no better. And as you work your way down the staff you will find similar incompetence. Fran Townsend, who was put in charge of coordinating Counter Terrorism and Homeland Security, was another example of fecklessness. For example, the CIA, the FBI, and DOD each had a different list of the top Al Qaeda targets. Townsend should have forced the competing bureaucracies to come to agreement on who the top targets were. Here we are seven years after the 9-11 attacks and still no consensus on something so basic.
There also has been the NSC failure to put someone in charge of the hunt for Bin Laden. When it is the job of everyone it becomes the responsibility of no one. The Bush NSC team has been a study in dysfunctional incompetence.
General Jones will not tolerate such juvenile behavior. He is a consummate professional. The last time we had this kind of leadership at the NSC another retired general, Brent Scowcroft, was in charge. He had a dandy deputy, Robert Gates. Those two gentlemen insured that all relevant agencies in the U.S. government could present their positions but did not allow anyone to filibuster. They forced decisions.
Unlike Colin Powell, General Jones is not a butt snorkeler. Jones is not afraid to speak truth to power. And that will be the best thing Barack Obama could ever ask for in a National Security advisor.
With Jones at the NSC and Hillary at State, Barack Obama will probably have the luxury of being able to focus on the substance of policy rather than sorting out turf battles. Although many pundits delight in portraying Senator Clinton as a shrill, power hungry harpie, she, like Jones, is a solid professional who puts the interests of the nation first.
It also appears that Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, will remain in place for at least six months to a year. I am no fan of Gates, who played politics with intelligence when he was the Director of Intelligence at the CIA. However, he has done a terrific job in his current position and will help the Obama team navigate the transition without derailing our military progress in Iraq. I am willing to be this is not the Barack Obama that progressives backed and that I opposed. Could be an interesting first term.
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