To understand US military and security policy under President Obama start with immigration and take a look at the website for the “National ICE Council”, the union representing 7,000+ employees of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. Currently, it’s all about their opposition to the immigration reform bill – with links to articles on far right Breitbart and Daily Caller sites. Here’s something from their site.
Chris Crane, president of the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council 118, made a number of stunning revelations during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday — and he’s begging Congress for help. The ICE union boss argued that agents are no longer allowed to arrest illegal aliens solely for illegal entry or expired visas and morale is at an all-time low.
Most Americans would be shocked to find out that immigration agents are regularly “prohibited from enforcing the two most fundamental sections of United States immigration law,” he said. Instead, the administration has ordered that only illegals charged or convicted of “very serious criminal offenses” may be arrested or charged by ICE agents and officers.
[…]
Even more shocking, Crane said ICE agents or officers who witness a violation of immigration law are prohibited from making arrests and even from asking questions “under the threat of disciplinary action.”
And here is Mr. Crane on hate radio
This is huge. ICE Union president Chris Crane was invited on the Mark Levin Show tonight to explain how the Obama administration is cooking the books on immigration enforcement. What he said was pretty shocking.
And the union representing the people who handle immigration paperwork is out at Fox news with the same message. So what we see is that the immigration police and bureaucrats, the people who actually execute policy are political enemies of the Administration and are openly trying to defeat their policies. And that union has allies in Congress and in the multibillion dollar private prison industry GW Bush created by outsourcing:
Over the past decade, revenues for the industry giants — Corrections Corporation of America and The GEO Group — have skyrocketed, thanks in large part to a federal program introduced under President George W. Bush in 2005 dubbed Operation Streamline, which brought federal criminal charges against people who cross the border illegally.
So when President Obama’s director of ICE sets policies, he depends on right wing republican unfireable “civil servants” and multibillion dollar out-source Beltway bandits supported by both GOP Congressmen and the GOP media to implement those policies. And they often do not. It’s not that all ICE employees are mobilized Republican operatives, but many are – and they work within a self-reinforcing network.
This same triangle of GOP leaning government employees, out sourcers (often run by former GOP government officials), and GOP Congressmen is all over the government – with additional support from GOP media and the Federalist judiciary. This is especially true in military and “security” agencies. GW Bush’s national security czar, Mike McConnell is Vice-President of Booz-Allen Hamilton which runs much of the NSA and other parts of the Security agencies. Michael Hayden who was appointed under pressure by the weak Bill Clinton and who masterminded much of the outsourcing effort is now a partner at Michael Chertoff’s company that outsources much of the department of Homeland Security operations. And it’s like that through much of the government.
Now consider the complexity of changing policies at these agencies. The UK House of Commons recently had a debate (boycotted by most members) about how the UK could have gotten involved in such a catastrophic screw up as Bush’s war against Iraq and the disastrous occupation that followed. MP Rory Stewart, who worked for the UK Foreign Office in the occupation got to this point and see my bold:
We believe that somehow it is all the fault of Blair and Bush—this is the myth that has entered the national consciousness. My experience as someone inside the system is that we have to look much more deeply at ourselves. We need to look at the Foreign Office, the military, the intelligence services and Parliament. These people, Blair and Bush, do not operate in a vacuum; they operate in a culture that did not challenge and shape the debate sufficiently. It is not realistic for Blair or Bush to know deeply about these situations and it is simply a constitutional convention, of course, that the people who make the decision are the Blairs and the Bushes. However, if we look at what got us trapped on the ground in Iraq—at why, for example, [former PM Brown] found it difficult to get out of Iraq or why President Obama found it difficult to say no to the surge—it is because these people are part of a much bigger system.
While many of the “left” critics of the administration will call this analysis an excuse, that only reveals how little they understand about the actual operation of government. When the Obama administration tries to set a policy direction in, for example, national security, it cannot rely on the machinery of government to do its bidding. Instead it must push, cajole, beg, threaten, and negotiate with varying tactics and varying success depending on the agencies involved. That’s why the Obama Administration’s absolutely essential vigilance in prosecuting leaks is confounding to the “left”. Their shallow view of government operations has no room for the possibility of hostile bureaucrat actively pursuing a Republican project by divulging government secrets. This despite the Republican history of doing exactly that – back from candidate Nixon’s interference with Vietnam peace talks. To some extent all administrations have trouble moving the bureaucracy, but the sclerosis of the old New Deal bureaucracy and the success of the Reagan, Bush Sr. , Bush Jr. administrations in putting their stamp on the government (with an assist from Bill Clinton’s feckless regime), put additional constraints on the Obama administration.
To me, the Obama administration’s biggest weakness has been its inability to put enough people into place in the bureaucracy, control the HR process, reduce dependence on contracting, and reform the procurement process – that is to put its own stamp on the inner workings of the machinery of government. The clear successes, like reviving the Civil Rights division at the DOJ and strong reaction to leaks are really important, but too few. I don’t think that the Harvard School of Government from which they have drawn too many appointees stresses the importance of boring stuff like DOD procurement – even though procurement has more effect on policy than 10000 policy papers. On the other hand, I know this is an enormously difficult project hampered immeasurably by the disgraceful unwillingness of Democratic Senators to push through appointments (I’m looking at you, Carl Levin, you old fool).
krebscycle 
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