A Bear of Very Little Brain

In this brief article Rick Moran at American Thinker reports on the press conference last week of Richard Danzig. Now if you don't know who he is, you just need to know that he is a top person in Obama's campaign and if the Democrats win in November, Mr. Danzig will probably be the next head of National Security. In the press conference Mr. Danzig gave his views on which author he considers most important to read regarding our current national security situation. Those of you who have some common sense may find his choice to be a bit, well, strange.

"Winnie the Pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security. He spelt out how American troops, spies and anti-terrorist officials could learn key lessons by understanding the desire of terrorists to emulate superheroes like Luke Skywalker, and the lust for violence of violent football fans. . . ."

Mr Danzig spelt out the need to change by reading a paragraph from chapter one of the children's classic, which says: "Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump on the back of his head behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming down stairs. But sometimes he thinks there really is another way if only he could stop bumping a minute and think about it."

Now I have to say that I find this very disturbing. The reason is, of course, that it reveals in a blatant way just how unprepared and unserious these people are for the positions that they want. The President and his advisors are responsible for protecting the country from the bad guys out there. And today there is no shortage of bad guys to worry about. But here is a top Obama insider who thinks that telegraphing this kind of childish idiocy is going to help us somehow. Mr. Danzig of course did not say just how using this particular book would make us safer.

Mr. Danzig could have mentioned any number of good current books that have addressed just this subject. Authors such as Lawrence Wright, Mark Steyn, Daniel Pipes and Bernard Lewis come immediately to mind. And one could name many others. The last few years have seen scores of book written by serious authors from across the political spectrum that deal with the issue of national security and the situation of the world today. But apparently the people in the Obama campaign just had too much trouble with all of the big words in these books to find them interesting or useful. No, instead we get Richard Danzig bumping his head down the stairs trying to thing of something else and failing to do so.

Perhaps he should ask his fairy godmother for advice.