In the event of a Republican takeover of one or both houses of Congress on November 2nd, it won't be long before the Tea Party Movement and the G.O.P. will be involved in one or more train wrecks, some of which could be pretty dramatic. These train wrecks will arise from fundamental differences in philosophy and will occur over a period of time that could begin sooner rather than later. Upending Republican establishmentarians during primaries was relatively easy; winning general elections where competitive ideas are at issue could be a bit harder. Governing will be much harder still, particularly when you take into account the differences between Tea Party rhetoric and American political reality.
The first obstacle newly elected members of the movement will face is the institutional nature of Congress. Tea Party freshmen in both the House and Senate will be at the bottom of Congressional seniority lists and thus not immediately in line for leadership roles as committee chairpersons. Thus they will be in the position of having to sell their policy proposals to the existing leadership. That leadership may be more amenable to the ideas of the newcomers given the fact that several veteran Republican lawmakers are no longer around thanks to the Tea Party. Conversely the G.O.P. leaders may let Congress work the way it always has thereby attenuating the influence of the Tea Party. In the Senate in particular the likely Republican winners are veteran politicians who will come to the office with considerable experience. According to political observer David Herszenhorn: "Insurgent challengers may be grabbing all the headlines in midterm elections this year, but most of the Republicans who are best positioned to snap up Senate seats currently held by Democrats are veteran politicians - and most of them have already served in Congress. Based on their experience, the 2010 class of Senate Republican freshman could well prove to be relatively pragmatic and wise to the ways of legislative deal making - almost certainly more so than the Tea Party-backed firebrands like Sharron Angle in Nevada and Rand Paul in Kentucky, who have built their campaigns around ideological demands and an end to business as usual." In all of the discussions surrounding this election, few have pointed out the difference between those candidates who come out of, or are closely aligned with the Tea Party Movement and those who have received the movement's support solely because of their Republican affiliation. This second group will not necessarily move in lock step with the hard-core ideologues of the Tea Party seeing as they are not beholden to the movement in any meaningful way. Therein lay the seeds of intra-party conflict and controversy.
The next challenge facing newly elected members of the Tea Party Movement will be the reconciliation of their penchant for spending cuts and ending earmarks versus what can be achieved in the realm of the possible. These desires will butt up against the fact that cutting government spending during a severe economic downturn could only make things worse and many Republicans favor an ending of the G.O.P.'s moratorium on the use of earmarks. There's a reason that the G.O.P's leadership has been mum on the political talk show circuit when it comes to detailing the particulars of spending cuts and the reason is that they don't have a viable plan. Even as late in the game as this morning, Haley Barbour, appearing on "Meet the Press" was unable or unwilling to fill in the blanks when asked how a Republican controlled Congress will reduce the size of government. Tom Brokaw, appearing on this same show pointed out that many Republican candidates have made rash promises on the campaign trail that can't be kept or will be nearly impossible to keep given the current political situation. Again we see the future of conflict as already being baked into the cake, so to speak.
I read "A Pledge to America" and it is full of general statements regarding spending cuts, but for the scope of its discussion, it lays out few policy specifics. The "Pledge" is equal parts indictment, rallying cry and Act of Contrition, but what it isn't is a blueprint for reducing government. I can't help but wonder why the G.O.P. trotted out the "Pledge" when they have Congressman Paul Ryan's (R-WI) "A Roadmap For America's Future" which is a well reasoned analysis full of specific proposed cuts. Again to Herszenhorn: "while polls show that the Republicans' message is succeeding politically, Republican candidates and party leaders are offering few specifics about how they would tackle the nation's $13.7 trillion debt, and budget analysts said the party was glossing over the difficulty of carrying out its ideas, especially when sharp spending cuts could impede an already weak economic recovery...(both) parties share blame for the current fiscal situation, but federal budget statistics show that Republican policies over the last decade, and the cost of the two wars, added far more to the deficit than initiatives approved by the Democratic Congress since 2006...Calculations by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and other independent fiscal experts show that the $1.1 trillion cost over the next 10 years of the Medicare prescription drug program, which the Republican-controlled Congress adopted in 2003, by itself would add more to the deficit than the combined costs of the bailout, the stimulus and the health care law." Moreover, most Republicans are calling for the permanent extension of all Bush-era tax cuts and that would add $700 billion more to the deficit over the next 10 years.
The "Pledge" has come in for scathing criticism on the right as well as the left. Janet Hook and Naftali Bendavid of the Wall Street Journal made the following observations: "The new policy manifesto released by House Republicans Thursday is laced with ideas and rhetoric designed to appeal to the surging tea-party movement. But it left some conservatives disappointed with its omissions and complaining that the plan had limited sweep... Yet the new agenda was silent on some of the most sought-after goals on the tea-party wish list, such as a balanced budget constitutional amendment and a ban on special-interest appropriations called earmarks." Many conservatives look to what is now happening in the United Kingdom as a model of inspiration for cut backs here. But that program involves a significant reduction in defense spending; something that would have to be included here as well as those outlays constitutes 58% of discretionary federal spending. With a large portion of federal spending being committed to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and paying off interest on Treasury Bonds, the amount of money subject to discretionary spending reduction is only one third of all outlays. There is a growing minority within the G.O.P. on Capitol Hill who are making the case that the projected debt is too big to handle through spending cuts alone. According to Saxby Chambliss (R-GA): "Everything has got to be on the table for discussion... "there are a lot of things people are going to have to be educated about, on the spending side as well as the revenue side. They're thinking we can come in and eliminate earmarks and everybody's going to be happy on the spending side. Gee, that just scratches the surface." Is Senator Chambliss tacitly acknowledging that tax cuts will have to expire or even that tax increases may be needed to deal with the deficit? The "Pledge" is notoriously silent on the subject of earmarks and seeing as they are a major source of spending, this is sure to give rise to a rift within the new Republican caucus on Capitol Hill. It doesn't take a soothsayer or a professional handicapper to see that the G.O.P. and the Tea Party Movement are on a collision course with regard to spending and the practical ability to reign in that spending given the current economic situation and the present composition of federal government outlays. Thus there is little reason to believe that the Republican rhetoric of the campaign trail will carryover to policies that actually achieve what that rhetoric has promised. Therein lies the root of yet another G.O.P. - Tea Party collision.
Newly elected Tea Party Movement lawmakers may find themselves running into some strong headwinds in the form of those special interests that have invested heavily in this election on behalf of conservative causes. While it is now likely that in the final analysis Democrats may end up spending more money than their opposition, there is an unprecedented amount of money flowing to the Republican side from outside sources as a result of the Citizens United ruling. According to OpenSecrets.org the 2010 midterms have seen a whooping 186.7 million dollars flowing into Republican coffers vice 88.6 million for the Democrats. Likewise an article on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and business donations shows the tide running against the Democrats among these groups at a rate of almost two to one. Ostensibly one would say what difference does it make where all this money is coming from if the Democrats are actually spending more? But within the confines of this argument, what matters is that this tidal wave of money spent by outside interests is being spent for a reason, to influence the election's outcome and thereafter to buy influence with the winners. Washington lobbyists are already courting the potential new Congressional chairmen and in the process could effectively be
outmaneuvering the Tea Party activists in the game of power and influence. Thus the many questions that beg to be asked: Won't all of this money muscle out the grassroots crowd and how will the Tea Party activists compete for attention with the lobbyists who are already prowling the halls of Congress and the bars and restaurants of downtown Washington? Is the movement about to get mugged on K Street? Are the rank and file Tea Party patriots in the process of "taking their country back" just to have it taken away in turn by the wealthy interests who have spent all of this money to influence the outcome of the 2010 elections? Surely this money was not spent because it was burning a hole in someone's pocket. Does anyone believe that these special interests were in the mood to do the activists a favor on November 2nd? Will the rank and file Tea Partier unwittingly deliver "his country" as a gift to a new class of plutocrats that will have no use for him except for his vote during the next election cycle and his attendance at rallies? Don't look now but we may be about to witness the greatest political hustle since the evangelicals came out in force for George W. Bush only to get nothing of substance in the bargain.
Finally, the Tea Party Movement will continue to run up against the fact that many of its essential beliefs are divorced from reality and therein lay the seeds of train wrecks to come. First and foremost is one of its core ideas, that Americans are over taxed. The fact is that taxes are as low as they have been in sixty years; lower than they were when Ronald Reagan was President. As Senator Chambliss implied above, increased taxes may be inevitable if people are serious about reducing the deficit. The Tea Party waxes nostalgic for the Reagan era, yet unemployment was higher when the "Gipper" went into his first midterm election than it is now and his approval rating was roughly the same as Obama's. The movement preaches fiscal restraint while refusing to consider reductions in defense spending where wasteful spending is well documented and widespread. This will lead to calls for a reduction in social programs during the worst economic downturn since the 1930s and that will only create resistance on the left and reluctance on the part of practical Republican officeholders on the right. The Tea Partiers clamor, "keep your hands off my Medicare" but underplay how to reign in the program's cost increases. They rail against TARP, blaming Obama for its inception all the while ignoring the fact that many of the very Republicans running for re-election are the ones who originally put the bailout in place. How will they address the fact that TARP's costs will be less than originally anticipated? Even conservative observer Ross Douthat admits that for all its shortcomings TARP was a necessary evil at the time of its inception. On the issue of repealing health care reform there is now no clear consensus to do so, according to the latest CBS poll, yet repeal is a major Tea Party goal.
The continued Tea Party fixation with Obama as a Socialist, Fascist or both at the same time reveals a lack of understanding of what actually comprises these two somewhat similar yet fundamentally different schools of political thought. If it's not that, then what else could it be other than a deliberate attempt to misinform the public for partisan ends. It goes without saying that this is something that can only contribute to further gridlock. This fact stands in direct contrast to what the public wants. The latest polling by both Bloomberg and the New York Times / CBS News reveals an electorate that wants compromise not confrontation. Yet with the arrival of Tea Party backed lawmakers the stage is now set for a political environment more favorable to confrontation than to compromise. Attempts to fix the blame on President Obama for the current economic situation are likely to fail as well as "nearly 60 percent of Americans were optimistic about Mr. Obama's next two years in office and nearly 70 percent said the economic slump is temporary. Half said the economy was where they expected it would be at this point, and less than 10 percent blamed the current administration for the state of the economy, leaving the onus on former President George W. Bush and Wall Street." In the final analysis, the 2010 election is shaping up to be something of an anomaly. On the one hand you have widespread voter dissatisfaction with the status quo while at the same time the party likely to gain seats has a favorability rating below the party that will be turned out of office. Thus for the Republicans this victory will be a political windfall rather than an endorsement of the party and its platform. The G.O.P. will find itself in an inopportune marriage of convenience with the Tea Party Movement which in the long haul may turn out to the G.O.P.'s detriment as the public grows weary of the gridlock and political train wrecks that are sure to come. Rather than being on the cusp of a Republican revival or a "return to our core values" we are more likely on the verge of an environment of political chaos which is just what we don't need at this point in time and that chaos may well come back to haunt the Republican Party and hobble its chances in the 2012 election and beyond. Ladies and Gentlemen, fasten your seat belts.
On Wednesday, to the surprise of some spectators in the courtroom, a U.S. federal judge did the right thing: he followed the law.
Judge Lewis Kaplan had a clear choice before him: he could exclude the testimony of a government witness discovered via abusive CIA interrogation of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, or he could allow the government to introduce that testimony, in blatant violation of U.S. law. Ghailani, transferred from Guantanamo Bay to New York last year, is now on trial for allegedly assisting in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa.
In a U.S. federal court, testimony derived from a coercive interrogation is not admissible. A similar rule applies in the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay. Although judges there have more leeway, most military judges are equally principled and take the ban seriously. Torture-derived evidence is inadmissible for two reasons: to prevent U.S. authorities from engaging in torture, and because such evidence is inherently unreliable. International treaties similarly ban its use.
The government knew, of course, that this would be a problem, and it surely has plenty of other evidence against Ghailani or it wouldn't have transferred him to civilian court in the first place. After Judge Kaplan's ruling, Attorney General Eric Holder expressed his continued confidence in the case. Notably, four of his alleged co-conspirators in the bombings were tried and sentenced to life in prison back in 2001 - without the use of this particular government witness. Evidence introduced in that trial pointed to Ghailani as well.
Still, since Wednesday, commentators such as Liz Cheney and Jack Goldsmith have seized on Judge Kaplan's ruling to lament not the fact that Ghailani was thrown in a CIA black site for two years and likely tortured (the government refuses to address Ghailani's treatment in this trial but concedes he was "coerced"), but the fact that the judge has excluded the evidence that his interrogators squeezed out of him - or to claim the administration should never have given Ghailani a trial at all.
"If the American people needed any further proof that this Administration's policy of treating terrorism like a law enforcement matter is irresponsible and reckless, they received it today," announced Cheney after the ruling. Goldsmith, the Harvard Professor and former head of the Office of Legal Counsel Under President Bush, now writing on the new Lawfare blog, wonders "why the government is bothering to try Ghailani." Why not simply imprison him indefinitely?
Coming from Goldsmith, this is particularly disappointing. When he was at OLC, he had the courage to criticize his colleagues John Yoo and Jay Bybee for their twisted legal analysis that allowed them to institutionalize torture as U.S. policy. Now, rather than recalling that error as the source of the problem in Ghailani's trial today, he's criticizing the Obama administration for applying the rule of law at all.
Technically, Goldsmith may be right: the administration could just declare Ghailani an al Qaeda member and ongoing threat and hold him in military detention forever. That's the unfortunate consequence of the "war against al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces," which has no logical end. But as a matter of principle and policy, imprisoning people indefinitely without trial would be a disgrace, along the lines of what Goldsmith's colleagues at OLC sanctioned.
If there's anything the United States stands for -- or used to stand for -- it's that we don't throw people in prison without proof they've done something wrong.
Principle aside, it's just bad strategy. As General Petraeus has acknowledged, winning the war against al Qaeda and the Taliban is as much about winning over the local populations where they live as it is about U.S. military prowess. Throwing Muslims in prison for decades without charge or trial is hardly a good strategy. If, as national security experts tell us, al Qaeda's strategy is to present the U.S. war against terror as a war against Islam, indefinite detention of suspected Islamic insurgents without trial hands al Qaeda its most effective propaganda campaign on a silver platter.
Cheney and Goldsmith may be right that excluding a witness derived by torture will make the government's case against Ghailani more difficult. But in the end, a fair trial for a suspected terrorist in a respected federal court will do far more to defeat al Qaeda and its associates -- and to bolster the image of the United States in the world -- than will foregoing justice altogether.
When Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was first transferred to New York from Guantanamo Bay last year, House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio called it "the first step in the Democrats' plan to import terrorists into America."
More than a year later, Ghailani remains the only detainee from Guantanamo Bay to be brought to the United States. He's scheduled to go on trial starting this week in lower Manhattan. Jury selection begins Monday.
Ghailani is a Tanzanian accused of helping to bomb two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998 that killed 224 people. Like the September 11, 2001 attacks, those bombings have been attributed to Osama bin Laden.
In hundreds of legal charges filed with the federal court in New York, Ghailani is accused of having scouted out the American embassy in Tanzania before it was bombed, assembled bomb materials and escorted the suicide bomber to the site. After the bombings, prosecutors say he fled to Afghanistan and rose up the ranks of al Qaeda, forging documents for the group and working as a cook and a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden.
When he was captured in Pakistan in 2004, U.S. authorities deemed Ghailani a "high-value" detainee and sent him to a secret CIA prison for interrogation, where Ghailani claims he was tortured. Indeed, a variety of so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques," including waterboarding, were authorized for use by CIA interrogators on high-value detainees.
Ghailani was transferred to Guantanamo Bay in 2006. Last year, more than ten years after the embassy bombings, he was transferred to the New York prison. The same prison has safely held such notorious criminals as John Gotti and the blind terror leader Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman.
Critics of Ghailani's transfer warned that his prosecution could be derailed by his abuse in prison and the long delay in bringing him to trial. But the federal judge hearing the case, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, has denied the defense lawyers' requests to dismiss the trial on those grounds.
Last week, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani insisted that it would be safer to try Ghailani in a military commission in Guantanamo Bay than in New York City.
Ghailani has already appeared in court for pretrial hearings, however, without incident. New York City police have said that while they will provide some extra security for the trial, the proceedings will not require any of the elaborate and costly measures that New York City officials had warned would be necessary for a trial of the 9/11 plotters. After receiving complaints from local business groups about the potential disruption that trial might cause, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly announced that he would take a range of extraordinary security measures, including a flood of uniformed police officers, checkpoints and thousands of interlocking metal barriers. Mayor Bloomberg estimated the cost at $200 million a year, and the Obama administration soon backed away from the plan.
Despite the huge costs and inconvenience predicted for the 9-11 plotters' trial, no such estimates have been made for the trials of any of those accused of carrying out al Qaeda's U.S. embassy bombing attacks.
Four other men have already been tried and convicted in the same New York courthouse for their roles in the U.S. embassy attacks. All were sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Opposition is mounting to the "Burn a Koran Day" scheduled for September 11th in Florida. President Obama today condemned the event, urging Pastor Terry Jones to cancel. General David Petraeus said it could harm our troops, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called it unrepresentative of Americans. Attorney General Eric Holder called it "idiotic and dangerous," and the Vatican has called the planned demonstration "outrageous and grave."
Condemning this event is a start, but it's critical that we don't lose sight of the big picture. There have been too many incidents of vandalism and anti-Muslim activity in recent days all over the country.
We need our leaders to speak out against ALL of the anti-Muslim rhetoric that is pervading our political discourse. Former President George W. Bush and members of his administration spoke out for tolerance and freedom of religion during his presidency.
They could make a difference by speaking out now. Will they?
Human Rights First launched an open letter to former President Bush last week. Here's what we-and over 9,000 of our supporters-have to ask of the former president:
Dear President Bush,
During your presidency, you stood up repeatedly against bigotry and hate and urged all Americans to do the same.
In 2002, you said, "America rejects bigotry. We reject every act of hatred against people of Arab background or Muslim faith. America values and welcomes peaceful people of all faiths-Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, and many others. Every faith is practiced and protected here, because we are one country."
Thank you for your leadership and your principled opposition to bigotry.
Right now, there's a dangerous wave of intolerance sweeping the country. It began with the debate over the "Ground Zero Mosque," but it is no longer only about an Islamic center in Manhattan. There are anti-mosque rallies taking place around the country, reports of arson and gun shots at a mosque in Tennessee, the Internet is filled with bigoted speech, and a church in Florida is planning a Koran burning on September 11th.
To stem this tide, people must speak out in favor of the American values of tolerance, diversity, and religious freedom. Your words will have added weight.
Please lend your voice to the defense of American values.
Before Bush took office, the CBO projections were for a decade of rising surpluses. The reality: Not so much.
Putting Bush's record together with the latest projections for the future under Obama doesn't make things look exactly cheery, but it makes a mockery of attempts to blame Obama:
One thing I've recently observed is the degree to which America self-corrects when selecting its leaders. It's very interesting to compare successive presidents; the new president nearly always lacks the weakness the previous president had. Though of course he comes with his own flaws.
I'll start with Jimmy Carter. Carter was known for being honest and a bit naive, in stark contrast to his predecessor Richard Nixon.
Carter, however, had a negative reputation for being an obsessive micromanager. He was replaced by Ronald Reagan - who was famous for leaving the details (and sometimes the whole plan itself) to his aides.
Reagan and the elder Bush were criticized as too old for the job. So along came Bill Clinton and Al Gore, the youngest presidential team in history, as the next presidential group.
Of course, Bill Clinton is remembered for his sexual indiscretion and the Monica Lewinsky affair. His replacement - George W. Bush - was widely characterized as morally upright and religious.
He was also characterized as stupid. Which is a criticism nobody would level at his successor Barack Obama - one of the most intellectual persons who has ever graced the high office.
Try as they will, Conservatives have not really been able to make a good argument that Obama, by moving away from the failed foreign policies of the Bush Administration, has in reality made America less safe. Instead they have responded with a series of knee jerk reactions aimed at the obstruction and rejection of anything and everything that Obama has either done or proposed. Conservatives have fallen back on the now hackneyed idea that they alone are the ones who can keep America safe and that the Democrats in general and liberals in particular will, or deliberately want to, weaken America. In his last book "A Time to Fight" James Webb, decorated Vietnam veteran; former Reagan era SECNAV; Republican turned Democrat; and now Senator from Virginia, devoted an entire chapter to explaining how such an argument by Republicans was no longer tenable or one that they can legitimately promote. Obama has in reality kept in place much of the prior Administration's policies and procedures that are embodied in the Patriot Act, the wiretapping law and the continued operation of Guantanamo. To date the Obama Administration has recaptured an American merchant ship from Somali Pirates and, in concert with federal and local authorities, uncovered a possible terror ring based in New York and Denver.
Anyone who has followed closely the events surrounding the War in Iraq knows that it is not, and was not, the central front in the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Rather, it is the trans Afghanistan-Pakistan border where the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks are and it is here that they continue to operate putting together attacks on London, Madrid, etc. It is from this region that they continue to attack our troops in Afghanistan and beyond that have destabilized large parts of Pakistan. Thus the point has already been proven. The central front in the G.W.O.T. is where the enemy is and not where Bush, Cheney, Coulter, Limbaugh, Malkin, O'Reilly or any other Conservative defines it to be. The ironic thing is that Bush's invasion of Afghanistan was the only brilliant move of his eight years in office. He then went on to drop the ball by invading Iraq and leaving the enemy alone, allowing Al Qaeda to regroup and become as dangerous as they were on 9/10/01. There have been volumes written to the point that the invasion of Iraq did nothing to make America safer. The conclusion of the 9/11 Commission Report states that Iraq had played no part in the attacks of 9/11 and Bush himself would later admit so publicly and on national television. Seeing as it is generally agreed that Iraq was never a factor in the 9/11 attacks, and that Al Qaeda remains open for business on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, there is not much more to say in disproving Conservative claims that the actions of the present Administration, as currently carried out in Iraq, will necessarily jeopardize American security interests. If America is attacked by a resurgent Al Qaeda would that be the fault of the Obama Administration or a result of George Bush's failure to consolidate his initial victory in Afghanistan? Had we spent 800 billion dollars in Afghanistan instead of Iraq what threat if any would we now face? While it is true that Obama has taken ownership of the trans AFPAK conflict, its also true that he inherited from the Bush Administration a set of circumstances there, which are fraught with difficult and dangerous choices, none of which are clear-cut or that guarantee American success.
Many Conservatives will go to the grave insisting that invading Iraq was the right thing to do because they fail to see that their ideas as to what makes America either safe or a great nation may not in fact be always and everywhere valid. There are those on the right who continue to try to make the case that we could have eventually won in Vietnam because we never lost a major combat action against the Communists. They will insist on this very narrow historical fact while at the same time being blind to, or ignoring the reality that Communism in Indochina, at that time, was a vehicle for the achievement of nationalist aims. In their myopic focus on combat capabilities they will continue to ignore the fact that successive South Vietnamese governments were too corrupt to act as a foundation for democracy. They will insist that "American Exceptionalism" would triumph over a people that first took up arms against a foreign invader a thousand years before William the Conqueror left Normandy to invade England in 1066.
If America is attacked again, it won't automatically be the fault of the Barack Obama. What if the attacker was motivated to strike because of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo or the loss of a family member during the occupation of Iraq? What if that attacker was moved to action as a result of the policies of the Bush Administration rather than Barack Obama's decision to reduce troop levels in Iraq? Would that attack be attributed to the current administration or the last? Conservatives have made a big deal about saying that during the Bush years we were not attacked again, but as Richard Wolfe of Newsweek pointed out, terror attacks skyrocketed worldwide after we invaded Iraq. What about those American service personnel that were killed or wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan at the hands of those motivated to action by the invasion of Iraq, don't they count as Americans that have been attacked? More to the point, this country was attacked when the Republicans controlled the Presidency, Congress, and the majority of statehouses. As David Sanger points out in his latest book, "The Inheritance": "The plan for dealing with al Qaeda had been sitting on Condoleezza Rice's desk on the morning of September 11, waiting for discussion." In the final analysis it is almost impossible for Conservatives to make the argument that their policies have made us safer seeing as, according to the Center for International and Strategic Studies, the number of people recruited into Islamic terror organizations soared exponentially after the invasion of Iraq thereby dramatically increasing the number of our potential enemies. Conservatives like Ann Coulter would claim that Bush created "a flytrap for Islamic crazies in Iraq", whereby they could be dispatched with by American forces. It would be more accurate to say that we created a trap of our own within which our troops were needlessly put in harms way for the sake of some misconceived NeoConservative pipe dream. Is it cheaper for a radicalized Muslim to scrape together the cost of a one way ticket to the United States, procure a passport and visa and then forage about this country in search of a terror cell or is it economically and in practical terms more effective to come up with bus fare to Syria and then walk across the border and join in an ongoing insurgency where one could even be paid to carry out attacks against Americans?
We were susceptible to an attack on 9/11 because, among other things, we never thought this sort of thing could happen. We became infinitely safer just by paying attention to security threats thereafter. If we get hit again it may very well be the case that we did so because we did not take the time and spend the money to "harden" critical strategic components of our infrastructure like rail systems, water and power supplies, ports and most importantly chemical plants. Have the failed policies of the Bush era created an opportunity for someone radicalized and now prone to action as a result of those policies to actually carry out an attack on America? If, in the words of Homeland Security expert Stephen Flynn, had we spent billions on infrastructure defense instead of wasting those resources in the Iraq misadventure, we would be infinitely safer. Who then would we legitimately blame for another attack on America, Barack Obama or George Bush and the NeoConservative claque that led us into the Iraq misadventure in the first place?
Yesterday, Sonia Sotomayor became the first Latina and the third woman ever nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court. She is currently a federal judge on New York's 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. Born to Puerto Rican immigrant parents and raised by her mother in the housing projects of the South Bronx, Sotomayor went on to attend college at Princeton and law school at Yale. George H.W. Bush appointed her to the U.S. District Court in 1991 and Bill Clinton "promoted" her to the 2nd Circuit in 1998.
Let me start with the obvious, that yes, if Pelosi knew there were war crimes being committed by the administration, and failed to try to stop it, even at risk of prison time for violating secrecy laws, then that deserves condemnation, loss of her Speaker's gavel and perhaps even prosecution. I certainly think her and the other members of Congress who were at all briefed on these activities should be part of any investigation that takes place. That said, let's not get carried away and equate people who merely know about a crime, and those who actively plan and execute that crime. Morally there is a significant difference there.
However her predicament highlights a lesser feature of multiple Bush Administration intelligence scandals that needs more attention: Bush's penchant for only having the Gang-Of-Eight briefed, rather than the full Intelligence Committees of the House and Senate. This decision was quite deliberate, and legally it is highly consequential in so far as it eviscerates Congress' ability to conduct meaningful oversight or legislative check on the Executive branch.
Barack Obama still enjoys a comfortably high approval rating and the higher it stays the more political power he is likely to wield. You can get stuff done even if your numbers decline but it gets harder. George W. Bush's plans for Social Security "reform" were dead on arrival, in part, because he had long since used up his political capital. Here are Obama's numbers from Pollster.com:
Obama's approval rating shows a slow steady decline. This is not unexpected. First, there's almost always a high-starting honeymoon period folowed by a decline. Second, he has pursued a very aggressive agenda and the more you try to change the more enemies you can expect to make. But given the times, most Americans remain hungry for change and I would attribute most of his small decline to the former.
When considering these approval numbers the questions arises: how does this compare to past Presidents? That part is ahead.
I wrote earlier today about an AP story on President Obama's press conference with the sole focus on his use of a teleprompter for his opening remarks. Since that time I have uncovered shocking evidence that prior Presidents read from a script as well. Here's George Bush:
Notice how he keeps looking down? So too President Clinton:
Even the great Ronald Reagan, master of memorizing lines, keeps looking down at his script:
Instead of looking down at his script, President Obama prefers to keep his head up and look at a prompter. For that he deserves mocking.
This week, President Obama made headlines by reversing George W. Bush's executive order barring researchers who receive federal funds from researching all but a handful of stem cell lines created before 2001.
"Promoting science isn't just about providing resources, it is also about protecting free and open inquiry," Obama wrote. "It is about letting scientists like those here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it's inconvenient especially when it's inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology."
Alberto Gonzalez is disturbed over Eric Holder's unambiguous confirmation hearing statement: "Waterboarding is torture." NPR interviewed Gonzalez and you can find a summary at The Swamp. I've annotated it here with notes from inside Alberto's head:
Gonzales, in an interview airing on National Public Radio's Tell Me More today, voiced his concern about "Making a blanket pronouncement like that.'' He noted "the effect it may have... on the morale and the dedication of intelligence officials and lawyers throughout the administration."
Voice Inside Alberto's Head (VIAH): It's hurting my morale. Plus, I can't get a job as it is.
"My reaction was very similar to General Mukasey's reaction, which was concern about making a pronouncement like that,'' Gonzales said, pointing to the "concern that would arise in the minds of intelligence officials and lawyers at the department, who all acted in good faith, working as hard as they can under very difficult circumstances, to give advice and make decisions to protect our country...
VIAH: It was those intelligence officers and lawyers I worked with who wanted to do all those bad things, not me.
"I don't know whether or not, in making that statement, Mr. Holder had access to all of the opinions, all of the underlying documentation supporting the opinions'' that the Justice Department had issued on the question, he said - noting also "the threat that existed at the time these opinions were offered, and the opinions of the intelligence officials about their belief in a particular detainee having very important, valuable intelligence information that might save American lives.''
VIAH: There was a ticking time bomb you see, and we had "opinions" that torture was okay. W had opinions, Rummy had opinions. John Yoo had some really great opinions.
On the question of prosecuting officers who employed any of the "extreme tactics'' that the Bush administration has acknowledged, without admitting to any "torture'' of detainees: "I don't think that there's going to be a prosecution, quite frankly.'' Gonzales said. "Because again, these activities.... They were authorized, they were supported by legal opinions at the Department of Justice.''
VIAH. Duh! You people are so stupid. We said we could torture people, don't you get that? We gave ourselves the authority so we had the authority. I could poke you in the eyes right now because I still have the authority to do that. John Yoo said so.
How Atrocity Compounds and Multiplies; The Case of Maher Arar and Omar Khadr
The decision to suspend all ongoing MCA terrorism trials at Guantanamo has one slight unfortunate side-effect; the trial of accused 15 year old Canadian grenade-thrower Omar Khadr was actually starting to reveal some very interesting and important things in testimony (though of course stopping the trials was the right thing to do).
One surprising revelation was a purported link between Khadr and another Canadian who got mangled in the Bush Administration war on terrorism, the Syrian born Maher Arar. Arar, on his way back to Canada in September 2002 was detained by US authorities at JFK airport while changing flights. He was subsequently sent, not to Canada, his country of residence and citizenship, but to Syria, which was known to employ torture. The Syrians, eager to cooperate with America, tortured and interrogated Arar for a year before returning him to Canada, having found no evidence he was a terrorist. A subsequent Canadian inquiry would also clear Arar of any connection to terrorism and the Canadian government paid him $10M in compensation for Canada's role in Arar's illegal rendition to Syria. The US government did not cooperate in this Inquiry and has refused to clear Arar to the end of the Bush Administration.
In prosecution testimony on Monday, FBI Special Agent Robert Fuller claimed that during interrogations of Khadr in Afghanistan back in October 2002, Khadr claimed to know Arar, identified him by name from a photograph and claimed he had seen him in Al Qaeda safe houses in Afghanistan during September-October of 2001. This appeared to re-implicate Arar and vindicate at least his detention by US authorities. Then came Tuesday, and the cross-examination of Fuller.
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