-- Also at the Naval Academy, and later laying wreaths at the Tomb of the Unknowns on Memorial Day, Obama employed identical phrasings about those who gave their lives in battle, those newly commissioned as Navy and Marine officers, and all those in military service to the nation - aptly terming them "the best of America" representing the best of the American character.
The foregoing litany is as troubling as it is uplifting.
This president is a very good man who talks a very good game. He also is very liberal (by his votes, remember, the most liberal senator), and in many areas falls exceedingly short on follow-through. But as the midshipmen he commissioned grew as their minds were disciplined during their years in Crabtown, so this president may be growing in office. One has to hope.
Gitmo and the interrogation memos disclose a lot about Barack Obama. A peripheral academic, he entered office with airy theories and noble ideals - and the bottom-line leftie notion (first promulgated by the radical French political philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau) that all men are born good but corrupted by bad institutions.
Obama declared on just his second day in office he would close Gitmo. In subsequent months on the job he has been fast-tracked in reality - and realpolitik:
-- Not all men are necessarily born good. About 100 born-bad jihadist killers can be neither tried nor let go but must be held in preventive detention.
-- His own Democrats don't want these born-bads housed in their states, so they have voted lopsidedly to deny Obama the cash to close Gitmo.
-- Waterboarding did produce information that likely saved many American lives.
-- Although the Declaration and the Constitution contain the highest principles, Kim and Mahmoud disdain them. What's more, it's a bust to call upon the nation's military ("the best of America") and its newly commissioned officers to uphold such principles while releasing born-bads dedicated to eviscerating those in the military and the civilians they protect - thereby gaining eternal life with allah and 72 virgins.
***
Obama may be thinking....
Let's see. To acknowledge much of this would strike a lot of people as an admission that Bush and Cheney were right. Growth in office? Oh, never mind.
So definitely do not release the interrogation memos suggesting American lives were saved from waterboarding. That would be like saying American lives were saved in World War II by Truman's use of the atomic bomb.
Best to let things settle. And move people's minds to something different - like health care and, for the Supreme Court, an Hispanic woman from the Bronx.
And leave town.