Could Hillary recite logistic details for how to "get Bin Laden" in advance?
Last edited Wed Apr 6, 2016, 09:16 PM - Edit history (1)
Full credit where credit is due. When the experts came back to President Obama and his advisors, including Secretary Clinton, with a detailed plan on how to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden in his Pakistan compound, Hillary supported that approach, and it worked. That is called a specific judgment call and in that instance she made the right one. The decision to make targeting Osama Bin Laden a top national security priority of the United States was of a different order. It was a policy directive approved by two American Presidents, first Bush and then Obama. No offense to either man but frankly it was a no brainer, most policy decisions are not such obvious calls.
It appears less obvious to some though whether the United States needs to break up some banks that have become too big to fail. If either the current or a future president determines that mega banks pose too great a risk to our economy in their current form, breaking them up will become a policy directive that will set some actions in motion.
In the case of Bin Laden, the objective of eliminating the threat he posed was tasked by President Obama to experts in the appropriate arms of government. Those experts in turn assessed the means at their disposal to accomplish that goal. When the time was right, specific plan options were presented to Obama and his security team for review. The choice was made, the deed was done.
Hillary Clinton has many skills but she didn't know in advance exactly how the United States would actually get Bin Laden until specific plans were prepared and presented to Obama for review and approval. She is not, for example, a Special Forces planner. The United States government is pretty darn large and it employs thousands of specialists in virtually all fields. Our President doesn't do their jobs for them, he or she does his or her own; assess threats, set policy, engage policy experts to develop plans, review plans and then finally approve one.
Bernie Sanders has a better grasp now on specific methods to employ to break up too large to fail banks than Secretary Clinton did then on how to catch Bin Laden when she became Secretary of State. The Senator's level of understanding is made clear in this piece from the Roosevelt Institute:
"Let’s Dispel Once and for All With This Fiction that Sanders Doesn’t Know How to Break Up Banks
Bernie Sanders gave some fairly normal answers on financial reform to the New York Daily News editorial board. Someone sent it to me, and as I read it I thought “yes, these are answers I’d expect for how Sanders approaches financial reform.”
You wouldn’t know that from the coverage of it...
...Sanders has a clear path on how he wants to break up the banks which he described. Breaking up the banks doesn’t require, or even benefit from, describing the specifics on how the banks would end up, neither for his plans or the baby steps Dodd-Frank has already taken."
There's much more at the link:
http://rooseveltinstitute.org/sanders-ending-tbtf/
The first job of a President and top administration officials is to recognize what is in the interests of the American people, and then set policies consistent with that recognition. Beyond that they must employ the best experts possible to develop policy implementations options, and finally they need the wisdom and judgement required to choose the best plan available from those options ultimately presented to them. And that is exactly what President Sanders will do regarding the American banking industry.
Until we have a President willing to break up too big to fail banks, the rest is academic.
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