Bad enough for foreign policy elder statesman Leslie H. Gelb to condemn President Sharpton, uh, Obama for failing to attend the unity march in Paris that drew millions of people and dozens of world leaders in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the executions of police, the murders of hostages at a kosher deli. Even worse that Gelb is urging Obama to dump his inner circle and replace them, at least partially, with ... Republicans.
Six years into the Obama regime and it just might happen yet ... change we can believe in. Meanwhile, the world is on high alert. What we've gotten so far for change has come at a dear cost, and we're not done paying.
Gelb's liberal credentials are so finely burnished that it will be all but impossible for Obama and his sycophants to ignore Gelb's screed, which ends with his dire warning that "our very survival" is imperiled.
After earning his doctorate at Harvard, Gelb worked at the Pentagon and was appointed by then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to head up the project that resulted in the Pentagon Papers, later leaked to the New York Times. Following a stint at the left-leaning Brookings Institution, Gelb spent several years as a diplomatic correspondent for the Times before serving in Jimmy Carter's State Department.
Gelb returned to the Times, working his way up to op-ed page editor and was part of a team that won the Pulitzer in 1986 for a series on the Strategic Defense Initiative. He is probably best known for his decade-long stint as president of the Council on Foreign Relations, which publishes Foreign Affairs magazine, one of the most influential American periodicals of the last century.
In other words, when Gelb speaks, people notice, especially those on the left. He occupies a comparable place in the foreign policy establishment once held by George Kennan, whose anonymous 1947 essay in Foreign Affairs urging containment of the Soviet Union became bipartisan American policy for the next three decades. And what Gelb posted yesterday at The Daily Beast surely must have stung at the White House.
In a post titled "This is Obama's Last Foreign Policy Chance," Gelb wrote that the failure of Obama or Joe Biden to represent the US at the Paris unity march was not just "profoundly disturbing" and a "horrendous gaffe." Worse, "it demonstrated beyond argument that the Obama team lacks the basic instincts and judgment necessary to conduct U.S. national security policy in the next two years. It's simply too dangerous to let Mr. Obama continue as is," Gelb warned, with the US and our allies face what could be "one of the most dangerous periods since the height of the Cold War."
Before getting to the heart of his post, Gelb stated that he knew he might sound paranoid --
Before I continue, I have to tell you that I've never made such extreme and far-reaching proposals in all my years in this business. I've never proposed such a drastic overhaul. But if you think hard about how Mr. Obama and his team handled this weekend in Paris, I think you'll see that I'm not enjoying a foreign policy neurological breakdown.
After labeling it an "absolute no-brainer" for Obama or Biden to have attended the rally and condemning the "inexplicable and utter failure" of their staff to recommend this, Gelb put it on the table -- it's time for Obama to dump National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, chief speech writer and adviser Ben Rhodes, and "foreign policy guru without portfolio" Valerie Jarrett, the Obamas' Rasputin. (My words, not Gelb's).
Who should replace them? Gelb doesn't hesitate to reach across the aisle --
First-rate former top officials and proven diplomats Thomas Pickering, Winston Lord, and Frank Wisner; Republicans with sterling records like Robert Zoellick, Rich Armitage, Robert Kimmett, and Richard Burt (emphasis added); or a rising young Democrat of proven ability and of demonstrated Cabinet-level quality, Michele Flournoy. Any one of them would make a huge difference from Day 1 in a top role.
While praising State Department No. 2 Anthony Blinken as "quite good" and urging that he stay, Gelb implied without stating outright that Secretary of State John Kerry should seek other employment, since he's been described "even by the faithful in this administration as quixotic." Gelb made numerous other appointment recommendations and urged Obama to create a "genuine working relationship" with Bob Corker and John McCain, "two new senatorial power brokers."
Moreover, Obama needs regular consultation with "the usual wise men" -- Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and James Baker. Three of the four were top advisers to Republican presidents; the exception, Brzezinski, Carter's national security adviser, was loathed by the left as too hawkish.
As if all of that weren't enough to make his point, Gelb concluded with this sobering assessment --
The world's challenges to America today are not mere distractions from domestic priorities. They are gut challenges to our national security in the Middle East, with Russia and China, and with the terrorist threat inside and outside our borders. The terrorism and cyber warfare challenges in particular imperil our very survival. (emphasis added, and again).
Mr. Obama will not be a lesser man but a greater man if he recognizes what's at stake and accepts the help he must have to ensure our survival.
What a distance from Reagan's prescription for ending the Cold War -- we win, they lose -- to mulling what must be done to ensure American "survival." That we've gotten to this point is hardly surprising to Obama's conservative critics. They've known all along the folly of elevating a paper-thin resume to the presidency for the sake of expiating racial guilt.
