A Weapon with a Worker on Both Ends

It was Lenin who said that "a bayonet is a weapon with a worker on both ends." The idea is that appeals to patriotism and war are distractions from the more important task of smashing the capitalist system and establishing socialism.

The danger of Barack Obama is not that he will act openly on such leftist slogans, but that he has been so steeped in leftist dogma for so long he will accept the left's attitudes implicitly and automatically, without even realizing it.

A good example is Obama's reported selection of Leon Panetta—a Democratic Party functionary with zero background in intelligence or foreign policy—as the new director of the CIA. Panetta was reportedly chosen precisely because of his total lack of experience.

A widely held view among intelligence officials was that Obama's team had decided to automatically disqualify any candidate who might have been seen as tainted by association with the controversial interrogation and detention policies of the Bush presidency—essentially anyone who held a management job in the past eight years.

But aren't we in the middle of a war?

Certainly, says incoming Vice President Joe Biden, who tells a group of congressmen that Obama's economic stimulus is a "war" and who "likened the country's economic crisis to the attacks of 9/11." I agree. It's a war, all right—a war fought by our government against private enterprise, with effects more economically devastating than the September 11 attacks, judging from the recent performance of the stock market.

Obama's appointment of Panetta is a statement of contempt for the very idea that the War on Terrorism is important. It is an indication that Obama intends to ignore radical Islam's war against the West so that he can focus instead on his vast expansion of the role of government at home.

After all, a bayonet is a weapon with a worker at both ends.

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