Login | Register

80 online
CHAT NOW

Click Here to Remove All Ads

OpEdNews Op Eds 10/17/2013 at 4:49 PM EDT

Could Obama Nomination of Jeh Johnson to Dept of Homeland Security Presage Intent to End the War on Terror?

By Rob Kall (Page 1 of 1 pages) 13 comments

Would you like to know how many people have read this article? Or how reputable the author is? Simply sign up for a Advocate premium membership and you'll automatically see this data on every article. Plus a lot more, too.

Editor-in-Chief

Become a Fan
(298 fans)

Jeh Johnson, (pronounced JAY) nominee for head of Department of Homeland Security
(Image by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) Details DMCA

Jeh Johnson, (pronounced JAY) nominee for head of Department of Homeland Security by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

President Obama has announced that he's nominating Jeh Johnson to fill the role of head of the Department of Homeland Security since it was left vacant in September by Janet Napolitano.

Frankly, I was expecting someone really bad to be appointed. There may be a ray of hope with this nomination. Obama may have selected Johnson, who served as the top lawyer-- ie., General Counsel, for the Pentagon, during his first term in office-- as the person who may be able to transition the US from a war on terror to a law enforcement effort against individuals. His pentagon connections may enable him to get the generals at the Pentagon to allow their hands to be pried off of the terrorism trigger (thank you former NRA spokesman Charlton Heston for the words.)

Johnson's Wikipedia page reports:

"...at the Oxford Union in England in November 2012, shortly before his resignation, Johnson delivered a widely noted address entitled "The conflict against al Qaeda and its affiliates: how will it end?"in which he predicted a "tipping point" at which the U.S. government's efforts against al Qaeda should no longer be considered an armed conflict, but a more traditional law enforcement effort against individual terrorists. Johnson stated:

""War' must be regarded as a finite, extraordinary and unnatural state of affairs. War permits one man -- if he is a "privileged belligerent," consistent with the laws of war -- to kill another. War violates the natural order of things, in which children bury their parents; in war parents bury their children. In its 12th year, we must not accept the current conflict, and all that it entails, as the "new normal.' Peace must be regarded as the norm toward which the human race continually strives."

From a lefty/progressive standpoint, Johnson is far from perfect. He's helped Obama refine his legal position on the use of drones-- not good. But he also played a key role in ending the ban on gays and on the "Don't ask, Don't Tell," policy in the military.

This is still breaking news and I'm justing letting my inner optimist find a ray of hope. Meanwhile, please consider this an open thread and add your observations, research and comments on this news.

3 2 2
Rate It | View Ratings

Rob Kall Social Media Pages:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect, connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune 500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful people on his Bottom Up Radio Show, and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization (more...)

Related Topic(s): Dept Of Homeland Security; Murder By Drone, Add Tags
Add to My Group(s)

Go To Commenting

The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

Contact Author

Contact Editor

View Authors' Articles

OpEdNews ~~depends upon~~ can't survive without your help.

If you value this article and the work of OpEdNews, please either Donate or Purchase a premium membership.

STAY IN THE KNOW
If you've enjoyed this, sign up for our daily or weekly newsletter to get lots of great progressive content.

To View Comments or Join the Conversation:

Congress Switchboard: 202-224-3121

To remove advertising from OpEdNews, please become a premium member.

"Putting real power into the hands of voters and consumers, has made bottom-up approaches massively disruptive for politics and brands. It's the present and future of politics and business. Rob Kall's book Bottom-Up pulls together the wisdom and experience of some of the leading thinkers who have brought the bottom-up revolution to full bloom."

Joe Trippi, pioneering Internet campaign manager of Howard Dean, digital campaign consultant

Ad info: click here

Top Content
in the Last 2 Days
(by Page Views)

Go To Top 50 Most Popular

Classics of Liberal Thinking

Progressive Radio Links