After only a year on the job, the nation’s top cybersecurity guru quit “amid a concerted campaign by the technology industry and some lawmakers to persuade the Bush administration to give him more authority and money for protection programs.”
But it seems Amit Yoran and George Bush were never made to get along.
Both were born to a life of privilege, but while Bush chose to party and had no interest – until even just a couple of years ago – in foreign policy, Amit never had an interest in things like drugs and was focused from early on on foreign affairs.
While President Bush chose the typical rich boy Ivy League route by going to Yale, Amit chose to serve his country by going to West Point.
While President Bush did as much as possible to avoid having to serve in the military – fleeing to the Texas Air National Guard, and even fleeing AWOL from there – Amit fought to overcome scholastic and physical challenges to fight his way into West Point.
While George Bush was handed businesses by his daddy’s friends and one by one ran them into the ground, Amit started a company on his own and quickly grew it into a massive success.
And while President Bush is a newcomer to “conservative” values and political ideas, only coming to them after 40-plus years of being an unambitious, uninterested alcoholic – and even then only embracing the dishonest, fully-flawed Rush Limbaugh version of conservatism – Amit has always been a moderate socially and conservative politically, and his conservative politics are based on solid ideals and a belief in certain policies that has been borne over years of active consideration and experience.
So in the end the question is not, “Will Amit Yoran make a good chief of cybersecurity for the Department of Homeland Security?”
He will, and, not being a Bush-brand Republican but a true, morally sound moderate, he can be trusted not to abuse his position or attack in the way the hateful, paranoid Ashcroft does.
Yoran’s days were numbered from the day he took the job.