Obama Administration Labels AIG Executives ‘Enemy Combatants’

Far be it from me to suggest that AIG executives who’ve received millions in bonuses need defending.

But there’s something about the united front of Obama and the Congressional Democrats against bonus payments, raises, and profits that strikes me as--to steal a phrase from the now forgotten Israel-Hamas war of a few months back--disproportional. Israel made half this much fuss trying to get their captured soldier back from Hamas and the UN called it genocide.

All I'm saying is a lot of innocent American civilians are going to get clobbered.

"Cramming down"mortgages, calling for vitiation of private contracts, and using the tax code to punish enemies of an outraged populace are really powerful weapons the liberals don't have enough character to lay down after this is over.

Listen to Chuck Schumer:

"My colleagues and I are sending a letter to [AIG CEO Edward] Liddy informing him that he can go right ahead and tell the employees that are scheduled to get bonuses that they should voluntarily return them," Sen. Charles Schumer said on the Senate floor. "Because if they don't, we plan to tax virtually all of [the money] ... so it is returned to its rightful owners, the taxpayers."

Taxation as class warfare. What a great idea! I can’t imagine where something like this would ever be used against me and my interests! How 'bout you?

Then here is President Obama:

"[AIG] is a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed," Obama told politicians and reporters in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, where he and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner were unveiling a package to aid the nation's small businesses.

Obama said he will attempt to block bonuses for AIG, payments he described as an "outrage."

. . . .The president said he has asked Geithner to "pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole."

Obama said he would work with Congress to change the laws so that such a situation cannot happen again.

Then there’s Barney Frank:

“Clearly not enough was done in the beginning to put conditions on A.I.G.,” Mr. Frank said in an interview on NBC’s “Today” show. While he said he wanted to review whether A.I.G. was contractually obligated to pay out the bonuses, as it contended, he also questioned whether the recipients of the money should remain employed.

“These people may have a right to their bonuses, they don’t have a right to their jobs forever,” Mr. Frank said, charging that the bonuses amounted to rewards for incompetence. And he added: “These bonuses are going to people who screwed this up enormously.”

When Frank, who, trust me, believes he has a right to his job forever, talks about screw-ups, we'd all better listen, since he practically wrote the book. Between them he and Chris Dodd brought down the American economy.

Now just imagine if Obama brought this kind of rhetoric, focus, and “let’s try anything” determination to his efforts to push back the growing jihadist threats against the United States. Let's say instead of releasing jihadists, negotiating with Iran, and fretting with his Attorney General for hours over Khalid Sheik Mohammed's Fourth Amendment rights, he instead ordered his cabinet and the Joint Chiefs to "pursue every single legal avenue to" protect this country from the our global jihadist enemies.

Yeah, I can’t imagine it either.