When John Brennan first emerged as a potential candidate to head the CIA, liberals balked because of his support for Bush-era counterterrorism policies. The fevered swamps of the reactionary right promptly turned Brennan into a hero, because the standard operation procedure is that if a liberal dislikes something, it must be good. Brennan's withdrawal was portrayed as a disaster by everywhere from The American Spectator to Pajamas Media.
A little more than a year ago, following Brennan taking himself out of the running to be CIA chief, we saw Redstate's Erick Erickson trotting out the same tired mad libs about the administration -- just remove the names and fill in the blanks as you see fit, and you have anything written by Erickson at any given point since the administration started. The significance of this post though, is that he credits Brennan with "keeping us safe and alive":
General Michael Hayden and John O. Brennan are career guys. They are not partisans. I could not tell you if either one was a Republican or Democrat or even if they voted.
They are professionals. But because they are connected to the Bush administration and the War on Terror, Obama is throwing them out.
These are the men who have kept us safe and alive for eight years. It was not Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld forcing policy positions on the intelligence community. It was the intelligence community making recommendations that were embraced by Cheney, Rumsfeld, and ultimately the President.
Erickson, who thinks his collection of all seven seasons of 24 makes him an intelligence expert, sputtered, "The low level guys, the Jack Bauers if you will, are seeing all of this." This would all be really funny if he wasn't taken so seriously, and if Republicans in Congress weren't equally craven, and also calling for Brennan's resignation.
At any rate, a little more than a year after lauding Brennan as a hero and complaining that him not having a prominent role in the Obama administration might get us all killed, Erickson is now calling for Brennan to be fired because he's been critical of the hysterical and dishonest Republican response to the handling of failed underwear bomber Umar Abdulmutallab.
Republicans think experienced career intelligence officials like Brennan are needed in the Obama administration to "keep us alive," except when they disagree with Republicans, at which point they're "radical liberals" who should lose their jobs. It's almost like they're more concerned with their political interests than national security.
It's one thing for right-wing mouthpieces like Erickson to be saying this, but the calls for Brennan to resign coming from sitting Republicans send an explicit message: National security professionals who are critical of Republicans, or who fail to politicize the national security debate in their favor, will be targeted.
In case you're wondering how we ended up chasing nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, this is it.
-- A. Serwer
