Excellent. This op-ed really gets it down. Obama has (so far) consistently failed to turn the page on the Fear mindset of the Bush years. From Salon.com
* * *
In the shadow of Cheney
Obama could spring America from the dank culture of fear spread by Cheney and Bush. So what's holding him back?
By Gary Kamiya
May 28, 2009 | Last week, Dick Cheney and Barack Obama carried on a bizarre, disembodied and deeply dissatisfying debate about national security. In a major speech on May 21, Obama denounced torture, defended his plan to close Guantánamo and blasted the Bush administration's approach to fighting terrorism, saying it "failed to rely on our legal traditions and time-tested institutions [and] failed to use our values as a compass." One minute later, Cheney -- who had been blasting Obama's national security for weeks -- took to the airwaves to warn that Obama's rejection of torture and his plan to shut down the military prison at Guantánamo were "unwise in the extreme." Accusing Obama of "recklessness wrapped in righteousness," the former vice-president said Obama had made the country less safe.
For the large majority of Obama's supporters who utterly reject the Bush administration's approach to fighting terrorism, the president's speech was disillusioning. Despite his soaring rhetoric about "upholding our most cherished values," Obama proposed eviscerating those values by continuing the Bush policies of military tribunals and indefinite detention. Coming on the heels of the Senate's humiliating 90-6 vote to keep Guantánamo open and forbid transferring any of its inmates to U.S. prisons, Obama's speech was a dispiriting confirmation that the country's leadership is still locked into the same fearful "war on terror" mind-set.
The sad thing is that Obama could have chosen a different path. Yet he clung to establishment positions that his supporters have long rejected. His decisive victory in November proved that America is ready to turn the page on the entire Bush era, from its economic policies to its "war on terror." For an exhausted and disillusioned country, Obama represents hope, and embracing hope means sloughing off fear. Like Cheney, who spent much of his time hiding in an underground bunker, Americans spent the Bush years cowering in a metaphorical cave, terrified that the terrorists were coming to get them. Bush's hyper-aggressive foreign policy, his trashing of civil and legal rights and U.N. conventions, were simply the other face of a craven and debilitating fear.
The terrorist attacks on 9/11 were a dreadful trauma. But that trauma took place almost eight years ago, and a natural and salutary forgetfulness has occurred. One of the virtues of this still-green republic has always been its capacity to quickly recover from setbacks, to refuse to dwell on the past, to constantly remake itself. Of all the American virtues, elasticity is perhaps the most important. In a process as natural as the blossoming of flowers in the spring, Americans are ready to reclaim their courage. And they expect and want their young president to lead them forward.
Obama has tried to lead America out of the shadows of the Bush years. He has projected a calm optimism, a reasoned determination, that is a breath of fresh air after the puerile, bullying bravado of George W. Bush and the dark, croaking counsel of his evil courtier Cheney. And he has said inspiring things about the importance of defending our laws, rights and traditions, even in the face of terrorist threats. But because Obama has failed to directly reject the irrational boogeymen his predecessors whipped up, and because he has continued many of their policies, he has not been able to spring us from their dank culture of fear.
The Guantánamo debacle, in which Senate Democrats voted overwhelmingly to reject funds to close it, is just one painful result of Obama's unwillingness to challenge the culture of fear. The Senate was spooked by polls showing that Americans, their paranoia aroused by talk radio demagogues and Fox News hacks, were afraid that terrorists would end up in their backyards. Obama was rightfully criticized for failing to come up with a coherent plan for what to do with the Guantánamo detainees.
But that was not Obama's real problem. His real problem was his failure to forthrightly say that while terrorism remains a threat, its danger has been greatly overblown. Obama needed to tell Americans the truth, which is that no open society can ever be absolutely free from terrorist attacks, and that a society that allows its irrational fear of such attacks to cause it to jettison its laws, freedoms and most cherished traditions has already lost to the terrorists. He needed to say that while we will never forget 9/11, always honor the memory of its victims, and never let our guard down, we cannot allow one attack, no matter how horrific and spectacular, to determine the nature and future of our country. He needed to draw a line in the sand, and tell Americans that while he will do everything in his power to protect them, only fools dream of eternal, perfect safety. In short, he needed to seize the terrorism shibboleth root and branch and pull it out of the ground.
This would not have been easy. Politicians do not generally choose to ask their constituents to accept risks of any kind. Denying death may be mentally unhealthy, but it is de rigueur in politics. And even though the Republican Party is going through a meltdown so grotesque that it makes Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" look like an inspiring tale of personal growth, Democrats continue to be terrified that the right will paint them as "soft on national security."
Above all, there is the very nature of terrorism, which is, well, terrifying. Because it is random, indiscriminate, driven by hatred, and seemingly pointless, terrorism taps into primordial human fears in a way that no other form of violence does. It is a monster that inhabits our collective id. Since 9/11, the word "terrorism" has been a totem, a quasi-religious myth, a nightmarish archetype that occupies the same place in our national imagination that "hell" did for the people of the Middle Ages. "Terrorism" blurs the boundaries of political and personal fear: It represents at once a thoroughly human evil to be hated and fought against, and the impersonal, fatalistic face of death itself. Terrorism is fate with a hideous face, like the White Whale that Ahab hates and tries to kill in Melville's "Moby-Dick." (Indeed, the Bush administration's unwinnable, endless, self-defeating "war on terror" is more than a little reminiscent of Ahab's obsessive quest -- which ends, it is well to remember, with the destruction of his ship and all of its crew save the narrator Ishmael.)
Because terrorism in our national imagination is simultaneously villain and nemesis, human and inhuman, the "war" against terrorism slips into becoming a war not just against fanatical jihadis but against our own death, against the very idea of death. As we accept this, repression of reality and the infantile fantasy of perfect safety -- in other words, cowardice -- become the driving forces of our lives.
This craven position dishonors a country whose troops fought at Valley Forge and Shiloh and Belleau Wood and Guadalcanal and Hue and Fallujah. It is not worthy of the mighty nation whose diverse people came together 60 years ago to help defeat the most dangerous tyrant in the history of humankind. But it is not an easy one for a politician to oppose. Indeed, the cadaverous Cheney, who has now fully embraced his role as the horrifying shadow of our national soul, is essentially accusing Obama of leading America toward death.
Once the argument is framed in these terms, Obama cannot win. By tacitly accepting Cheney's terms -- by shamefully proposing that we detain suspected terrorists indefinitely without real trials, or by refusing to release photographs of Americans torturing people in their control -- Obama has enabled and encouraged our diffuse national cowardice. The American people will continue to cling to irrational positions, like refusing to put convicted terrorists in supermax penitentiaries from which no one has ever escaped, until Obama puts the threat of terrorism in its correct perspective, removes it from the realm of metaphysics and nightmares and returns it to earth, as the ugly but manageable tactic that it is. The only way for Obama to break out of Cheney's trap is to reject the suppositions it is based on.
Cheney's death-obsessed vision found its ultimate expression in his notorious "1 percent doctrine." As revealed in Ron Suskind's eponymous book, the doctrine held that the U.S. should treat an even 1 percent chance of a terrorist attack as if it were a certainty. This doctrine was directly responsible for America's calamitous behavior in the last eight years. It led to policies and actions -- torture, targeted assassinations, indiscriminate aerial bombing, detention without trial, denial of habeas rights -- that only enrage previously neutral people, increase the number of potential terrorists and threaten our national security.
Which is exactly what al-Qaida and their ilk want. A few fanatical jihadis hiding in caves cannot fatally damage the United States: Only the United States can fatally damage the United States. Under the fearful reign of Bush and Cheney, America went a long way toward becoming a country its own citizens would not recognize. As his May 21 speech showed, Obama clearly realizes that many of the policies pursued by his predecessors are irrational, inhumane, unjust and self-defeating. But he has not repudiated their fundamental error, their misapprehension of the actual threat posed by Islamist terrorists.
Which is why Obama's left hand has consistently undone what his right hand has done. He is by nature a difference-splitter, a position that has its virtues. But some differences cannot be split. Either we are locked in an endless, self-defeating war on terror or we are not. Either our laws, traditions and freedoms are more important than an infantile dream of perfect, eternal safety, or they are not. Either we are clear-sighted enough to realize that different kinds of enemies require different responses and that treating a handful of jihadis as if they were the second coming of Nazi Germany is foolish, or we are not. Either we live in the land of the free or we do not.
In 1933, when the nation was in the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his first inaugural address. That towering president said, "This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."
FDR's words gave heart to Americans facing a crisis and a threat far worse than any posed by terrorists today. The country has a new president, and it wants a new direction. It is waiting for him to sound his trumpet.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Sotomayor for SCOTUS
Obama has made his first nomination to the Supreme Court, an hispanic woman named Sonia Sotomayor. There's been LOTS of chatter about it, of course. This piece by Joan Walsh on Salon.com is my fav so far.
* * *
Buchanan on Sotomayor: "Not that intelligent"
Let's take a moment to acknowledge the history made when President Obama chose 2nd Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court. The Latina standout from the Bronx, beloved daughter of a widow who worked two jobs to put her children through the best schools, is a woman who also happened to graduate Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude from Princeton; who ran the Yale Law Journal; who worked as a prosecutor and a civil litigator before being appointed to the federal bench. She has more judicial experience than any of her other eight would-be colleagues did when they joined the court.
In short: She's got an American dream story, she makes women and Latinos proud, and she's also supremely qualified. It doesn't get any better than that for Democrats.
And it can only get worse for Republicans if they're going to hit Sotomayor the way MSNBC political analyst Pat Buchanan did debating me on "Hardball" today. (Actually, Mike Huckabee may have sunk lower than Buchanan. Earth to Mike: Calling Sotomayor "Maria" is not going to win you Latino votes in 2012.)
On "Hardball" (video below) Buchanan tossed me some weak softballs about Sotomayor. It was the same handful of charges that make up the key, easily refuted GOP talking points: that she claimed in a speech that appellate judges make policy (she did not); that she voted to discriminate against white men in the New Haven firefighter case (she merely upheld a lower court's ruling); that she said her gender and race would influence her court rulings, improperly, according to Buchanan (I'll deal with that one later). Amazingly, Buchanan's final shot was the widely derided and debunked Jeffrey Rosen piece in the New Republic that let anonymous sources trash Sotomayor, mostly to call her "domineering and dumb," in the words of Rebecca Traister. "She is not that intelligent," Buchanan insisted, a ridiculous assertion given her educational and professional accomplishments.
Unbelievably, Buchanan compared Sotomayor to Harriet Miers, President Bush's personal attorney who was, in fact, not at all qualified to be a Supreme Court justice. Ever notice it's the Republicans whose "affirmative action" picks aren't qualified (as in Miers and Clarence Thomas)? Watch it all here:
Where do I begin? First of all, if Republicans are going to be tin-eared enough to attack Sotomayor on her intelligence and qualifications, they are going to wind up an even tinier minority party than they are now. Acting as though Obama had to lower his standards to appoint the first Hispanic justice is offensive to more than just Hispanics; it exposes a profound prejudice and lack of knowledge about the vast talent pool in our country. Certainly Sotomayor will face tough questions on her judicial philosophy from liberals and conservatives, and she should, but to insinuate she's merely an affirmative action pick is wrong and repellent.
The irony is that Sotomayor is more centrist than some of Obama's other possible appointees. She disappointed abortion rights advocates by failing to strike down the Bush administration's global gag rule, which prohibited organizations that received U.S. family planning funds from counseling abortion. She's been criticized for upholding a school's decision to discipline a student for differing with school officials on her private Live Journal account. The American Bar Association termed her a "moderate," not a liberal. Glenn Greenwald, while praising the choice of Sotomayor, has already noted that Diane Wood might have been a more reassuring pick to those concerned about Obama's assertion of executive powers; Sotomayor hasn't left a record in such cases.
I happen to think that at her confirmation hearings, she might want to explain and elaborate on one much-criticized sound bite. Taking issue with the famous notion frequently attributed to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- that a wise old man and a wise old woman would reach the same conclusion when deciding cases -- she said instead: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." Even I might quibble with the use of the term "better conclusion"; certainly Justice Harry Blackmun's work on abortion rights is as important to women as the many decisions of Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. We'll see what Sotomayor has to say about that quote, and her philosophy about diversity, during her confirmation hearings, I'm sure. But it would be silly to deny the possibility that a court made up of individuals with diverse backgrounds may well draw different conclusions than one made up of nine white men.
I find the reliance on old racial and gender stereotypes, when it comes to debating the Sotomayor pick, extremely depressing. Buchanan also said she's known as a "bully" on the bench, and I never got to ask him and Chris Matthews: Why is it that strong women are so often called bullies and ballbreakers, while strong, opinionated men are often called, simply, Justice Scalia. But this time, I don't think it will work. If Pat Buchanan and other right-wing pundits want to savage the pride of the Bronx's Cardinal Spellman High School, I'm sure Democrats will say "bring it on."
-- Joan Walsh
* * *
Buchanan on Sotomayor: "Not that intelligent"
Let's take a moment to acknowledge the history made when President Obama chose 2nd Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court. The Latina standout from the Bronx, beloved daughter of a widow who worked two jobs to put her children through the best schools, is a woman who also happened to graduate Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude from Princeton; who ran the Yale Law Journal; who worked as a prosecutor and a civil litigator before being appointed to the federal bench. She has more judicial experience than any of her other eight would-be colleagues did when they joined the court.
In short: She's got an American dream story, she makes women and Latinos proud, and she's also supremely qualified. It doesn't get any better than that for Democrats.
And it can only get worse for Republicans if they're going to hit Sotomayor the way MSNBC political analyst Pat Buchanan did debating me on "Hardball" today. (Actually, Mike Huckabee may have sunk lower than Buchanan. Earth to Mike: Calling Sotomayor "Maria" is not going to win you Latino votes in 2012.)
On "Hardball" (video below) Buchanan tossed me some weak softballs about Sotomayor. It was the same handful of charges that make up the key, easily refuted GOP talking points: that she claimed in a speech that appellate judges make policy (she did not); that she voted to discriminate against white men in the New Haven firefighter case (she merely upheld a lower court's ruling); that she said her gender and race would influence her court rulings, improperly, according to Buchanan (I'll deal with that one later). Amazingly, Buchanan's final shot was the widely derided and debunked Jeffrey Rosen piece in the New Republic that let anonymous sources trash Sotomayor, mostly to call her "domineering and dumb," in the words of Rebecca Traister. "She is not that intelligent," Buchanan insisted, a ridiculous assertion given her educational and professional accomplishments.
Unbelievably, Buchanan compared Sotomayor to Harriet Miers, President Bush's personal attorney who was, in fact, not at all qualified to be a Supreme Court justice. Ever notice it's the Republicans whose "affirmative action" picks aren't qualified (as in Miers and Clarence Thomas)? Watch it all here:
Where do I begin? First of all, if Republicans are going to be tin-eared enough to attack Sotomayor on her intelligence and qualifications, they are going to wind up an even tinier minority party than they are now. Acting as though Obama had to lower his standards to appoint the first Hispanic justice is offensive to more than just Hispanics; it exposes a profound prejudice and lack of knowledge about the vast talent pool in our country. Certainly Sotomayor will face tough questions on her judicial philosophy from liberals and conservatives, and she should, but to insinuate she's merely an affirmative action pick is wrong and repellent.
The irony is that Sotomayor is more centrist than some of Obama's other possible appointees. She disappointed abortion rights advocates by failing to strike down the Bush administration's global gag rule, which prohibited organizations that received U.S. family planning funds from counseling abortion. She's been criticized for upholding a school's decision to discipline a student for differing with school officials on her private Live Journal account. The American Bar Association termed her a "moderate," not a liberal. Glenn Greenwald, while praising the choice of Sotomayor, has already noted that Diane Wood might have been a more reassuring pick to those concerned about Obama's assertion of executive powers; Sotomayor hasn't left a record in such cases.
I happen to think that at her confirmation hearings, she might want to explain and elaborate on one much-criticized sound bite. Taking issue with the famous notion frequently attributed to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- that a wise old man and a wise old woman would reach the same conclusion when deciding cases -- she said instead: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." Even I might quibble with the use of the term "better conclusion"; certainly Justice Harry Blackmun's work on abortion rights is as important to women as the many decisions of Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. We'll see what Sotomayor has to say about that quote, and her philosophy about diversity, during her confirmation hearings, I'm sure. But it would be silly to deny the possibility that a court made up of individuals with diverse backgrounds may well draw different conclusions than one made up of nine white men.
I find the reliance on old racial and gender stereotypes, when it comes to debating the Sotomayor pick, extremely depressing. Buchanan also said she's known as a "bully" on the bench, and I never got to ask him and Chris Matthews: Why is it that strong women are so often called bullies and ballbreakers, while strong, opinionated men are often called, simply, Justice Scalia. But this time, I don't think it will work. If Pat Buchanan and other right-wing pundits want to savage the pride of the Bronx's Cardinal Spellman High School, I'm sure Democrats will say "bring it on."
-- Joan Walsh
Friday, May 22, 2009
The Repubs love Pelosi (not)
Lots of noise has been going on lately ever since Speaker Pelosi (D, San Francisco) made the charge that the CIA lied to her and to Congress about the fact that they were torturing. This firestorm is a typicall 'look over here' plot by the Republicans to dsitract from the fact that it was they who ordered and approved the torture. It pisses me off to watch them try to change the debate, but in a the letters of response to a Salon.com article, I found this hilarious and oh-so-true summation:
"A quick summary
Reports: CIA flagrantly broke the Geneva convention, tortured 100+ detainees to death.
Republicans: Look over there! A Democrat said something bad about the CIA!
Media: Ooh, shiny!"
This is something I've been pissed about since, well, forever, and have posted many blogs on. It's frustrating to see this furvor over what Pelosi knew and when she knew it and yet absolutely no indignation in the MSM over the fact that WE TORTURED PEOPLE--to death!!! And why? So that the Bush administration could make a case for war in Iraq.
Pelosi's responses to questions these days seem to be 'let's investigate' but so far no investigations are happening. It's all still theatre.
"A quick summary
Reports: CIA flagrantly broke the Geneva convention, tortured 100+ detainees to death.
Republicans: Look over there! A Democrat said something bad about the CIA!
Media: Ooh, shiny!"
This is something I've been pissed about since, well, forever, and have posted many blogs on. It's frustrating to see this furvor over what Pelosi knew and when she knew it and yet absolutely no indignation in the MSM over the fact that WE TORTURED PEOPLE--to death!!! And why? So that the Bush administration could make a case for war in Iraq.
Pelosi's responses to questions these days seem to be 'let's investigate' but so far no investigations are happening. It's all still theatre.
More Cheney refutations
Found this on Yahoo's news...
* * *
Cheney's speech contained omissions, misstatements
By Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel, McClatchy Newspapers Jonathan S. Landay And Warren P. Strobel, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Thu May 21, 7:10 pm ET
WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Dick Cheney's defense Thursday of the Bush administration's policies for interrogating suspected terrorists contained omissions, exaggerations and misstatements.
In his address to the American Enterprise Institute , a conservative policy organization in Washington , Cheney said that the techniques the Bush administration approved, including waterboarding — simulated drowning that's considered a form of torture — forced nakedness and sleep deprivation, were "legal" and produced information that "prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people."
He quoted the Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair , as saying that the information gave U.S. officials a "deeper understanding of the al Qaida organization that was attacking this country."
In a statement April 21 , however, Blair said the information "was valuable in some instances" but that "there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is that these techniques hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."
A top-secret 2004 CIA inspector general's investigation found no conclusive proof that information gained from aggressive interrogations helped thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to one of four top-secret Bush-era memos that the Justice Department released last month.
FBI Director Mueller Robert Muller told Vanity Fair magazine in December that he didn't think that the techniques disrupted any attacks.
— Cheney said that President Barack Obama's decision to release the four top-secret Bush administration memos on the interrogation techniques was "flatly contrary" to U.S. national security, and would help al Qaida train terrorists in how to resist U.S. interrogations.
However, Blair, who oversees all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, said in his statement that he recommended the release of the memos, "strongly supported" Obama's decision to prohibit using the controversial methods and that "we do not need these techniques to keep America safe."
— Cheney said that the Bush administration "moved decisively against the terrorists in their hideouts and their sanctuaries, and committed to using every asset to take down their networks."
The former vice president didn't point out that Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenant, Ayman al Zawahri , remain at large nearly eight years after 9-11 and that the Bush administration began diverting U.S. forces, intelligence assets, time and money to planning an invasion of Iraq before it finished the war in Afghanistan against al Qaida and the Taliban .
There are now 49,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan fighting to contain the bloodiest surge in Taliban violence since the 2001 U.S.-led intervention, and Islamic extremists also have launched their most concerted attack yet on neighboring, nuclear-armed Pakistan .
— Cheney denied that there was any connection between the Bush administration's interrogation policies and the abuse of detainee at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, which he blamed on "a few sadistic guards . . . in violation of American law, military regulations and simple decency."
However, a bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report in December traced the abuses at Abu Ghraib to the approval of the techniques by senior Bush administration officials, including former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld .
"The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own," said the report issued by Sens. Carl Levin , D- Mich. , and John McCain , R- Ariz. "The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality and authorized their use against detainees."
— Cheney said that "only detainees of the highest intelligence value" were subjected to the harsh interrogation techniques, and he cited Khalid Sheikh Mohammad , the alleged mastermind of the 9-11 attacks.
He didn't mention Abu Zubaydah, the first senior al Qaida operative to be captured after 9-11. Former FBI special agent Ali Soufan told a Senate subcommittee last week that his interrogation of Zubaydah using traditional methods elicited crucial information, including Mohammed's alleged role in 9-11.
The decision to use the harsh interrogation methods "was one of the worst and most harmful decisions made in our efforts against al Qaida ," Soufan said. Former State Department official Philip Zelikow , who in 2005 was then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's point man in an internal fight to overhaul the Bush administration's detention policies, joined Soufan in his criticism.
— Cheney said that "the key to any strategy is accurate intelligence," but the Bush administration ignored warnings from experts in the CIA , the Defense Intelligence Agency , the State Department , the Department of Energy and other agencies, and used false or exaggerated intelligence supplied by Iraqi exile groups and others to help make its case for the 2003 invasion.
Cheney made no mention of al Qaida operative Ali Mohamed al Fakheri , who's known as Ibn Sheikh al Libi , whom the Bush administration secretly turned over to Egypt for interrogation in January 2002 . While allegedly being tortured by Egyptian authorities, Libi provided false information about Iraq's links with al Qaida , which the Bush administration used despite doubts expressed by the DIA.
A state-run Libyan newspaper said Libi committed suicide recently in a Libyan jail.
— Cheney accused Obama of "the selective release" of documents on Bush administration detainee policies, charging that Obama withheld records that Cheney claimed prove that information gained from the harsh interrogation methods prevented terrorist attacks.
"I've formally asked that (the information) be declassified so the American people can see the intelligence we obtained," Cheney said. "Last week, that request was formally rejected."
However, the decision to withhold the documents was announced by the CIA , which said that it was obliged to do so by a 2003 executive order issued by former President George W. Bush prohibiting the release of materials that are the subject of lawsuits.
— Cheney said that only "ruthless enemies of this country" were detained by U.S. operatives overseas and taken to secret U.S. prisons.
A 2008 McClatchy investigation, however, found that the vast majority of Guantanamo detainees captured in 2001 and 2002 in Afghanistan and Pakistan were innocent citizens or low-level fighters of little intelligence value who were turned over to American officials for money or because of personal or political rivalries.
In addition, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Oct. 5, 2005 , that the Bush administration had admitted to her that it had mistakenly abducted a German citizen, Khaled Masri , from Macedonia in January 2004 .
Masri reportedly was flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan , where he allegedly was abused while being interrogated. He was released in May 2004 and dumped on a remote road in Albania .
In January 2007 , the German government issued arrest warrants for 13 alleged CIA operatives on charges of kidnapping Masri.
— Cheney slammed Obama's decision to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and criticized his effort to persuade other countries to accept some of the detainees.
The effort to shut down the facility, however, began during Bush's second term, promoted by Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates .
"One of the things that would help a lot is, in the discussions that we have with the states of which they (detainees) are nationals, if we could get some of those countries to take them back," Rice said in a Dec. 12, 2007 , interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. "So we need help in closing Guantanamo ."
— Cheney said that, in assessing the security environment after 9-11, the Bush team had to take into account "dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists."
Cheney didn't explicitly repeat the contention he made repeatedly in office: that Saddam cooperated with al Qaida , a linkage that U.S. intelligence officials and numerous official inquiries have rebutted repeatedly.
The late Iraqi dictator's association with terrorists vacillated and was mostly aimed at quashing opponents and critics at home and abroad.
The last State Department report on international terrorism to be released before 9-11 said that Saddam's regime "has not attempted an anti-Western terrorist attack since its failed plot to assassinate former President ( George H.W.) Bush in 1993 in Kuwait ."
A Pentagon study released last year, based on a review of 600,000 Iraqi documents captured after the U.S.-led invasion, concluded that while Saddam supported militant Palestinian groups — the late terrorist Abu Nidal found refuge in Baghdad , at least until Saddam had him killed — the Iraqi security services had no "direct operational link" with al Qaida .
* * *
Cheney's speech contained omissions, misstatements
By Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel, McClatchy Newspapers Jonathan S. Landay And Warren P. Strobel, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Thu May 21, 7:10 pm ET
WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Dick Cheney's defense Thursday of the Bush administration's policies for interrogating suspected terrorists contained omissions, exaggerations and misstatements.
In his address to the American Enterprise Institute , a conservative policy organization in Washington , Cheney said that the techniques the Bush administration approved, including waterboarding — simulated drowning that's considered a form of torture — forced nakedness and sleep deprivation, were "legal" and produced information that "prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people."
He quoted the Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair , as saying that the information gave U.S. officials a "deeper understanding of the al Qaida organization that was attacking this country."
In a statement April 21 , however, Blair said the information "was valuable in some instances" but that "there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is that these techniques hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."
A top-secret 2004 CIA inspector general's investigation found no conclusive proof that information gained from aggressive interrogations helped thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to one of four top-secret Bush-era memos that the Justice Department released last month.
FBI Director Mueller Robert Muller told Vanity Fair magazine in December that he didn't think that the techniques disrupted any attacks.
— Cheney said that President Barack Obama's decision to release the four top-secret Bush administration memos on the interrogation techniques was "flatly contrary" to U.S. national security, and would help al Qaida train terrorists in how to resist U.S. interrogations.
However, Blair, who oversees all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, said in his statement that he recommended the release of the memos, "strongly supported" Obama's decision to prohibit using the controversial methods and that "we do not need these techniques to keep America safe."
— Cheney said that the Bush administration "moved decisively against the terrorists in their hideouts and their sanctuaries, and committed to using every asset to take down their networks."
The former vice president didn't point out that Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenant, Ayman al Zawahri , remain at large nearly eight years after 9-11 and that the Bush administration began diverting U.S. forces, intelligence assets, time and money to planning an invasion of Iraq before it finished the war in Afghanistan against al Qaida and the Taliban .
There are now 49,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan fighting to contain the bloodiest surge in Taliban violence since the 2001 U.S.-led intervention, and Islamic extremists also have launched their most concerted attack yet on neighboring, nuclear-armed Pakistan .
— Cheney denied that there was any connection between the Bush administration's interrogation policies and the abuse of detainee at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, which he blamed on "a few sadistic guards . . . in violation of American law, military regulations and simple decency."
However, a bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report in December traced the abuses at Abu Ghraib to the approval of the techniques by senior Bush administration officials, including former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld .
"The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own," said the report issued by Sens. Carl Levin , D- Mich. , and John McCain , R- Ariz. "The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality and authorized their use against detainees."
— Cheney said that "only detainees of the highest intelligence value" were subjected to the harsh interrogation techniques, and he cited Khalid Sheikh Mohammad , the alleged mastermind of the 9-11 attacks.
He didn't mention Abu Zubaydah, the first senior al Qaida operative to be captured after 9-11. Former FBI special agent Ali Soufan told a Senate subcommittee last week that his interrogation of Zubaydah using traditional methods elicited crucial information, including Mohammed's alleged role in 9-11.
The decision to use the harsh interrogation methods "was one of the worst and most harmful decisions made in our efforts against al Qaida ," Soufan said. Former State Department official Philip Zelikow , who in 2005 was then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's point man in an internal fight to overhaul the Bush administration's detention policies, joined Soufan in his criticism.
— Cheney said that "the key to any strategy is accurate intelligence," but the Bush administration ignored warnings from experts in the CIA , the Defense Intelligence Agency , the State Department , the Department of Energy and other agencies, and used false or exaggerated intelligence supplied by Iraqi exile groups and others to help make its case for the 2003 invasion.
Cheney made no mention of al Qaida operative Ali Mohamed al Fakheri , who's known as Ibn Sheikh al Libi , whom the Bush administration secretly turned over to Egypt for interrogation in January 2002 . While allegedly being tortured by Egyptian authorities, Libi provided false information about Iraq's links with al Qaida , which the Bush administration used despite doubts expressed by the DIA.
A state-run Libyan newspaper said Libi committed suicide recently in a Libyan jail.
— Cheney accused Obama of "the selective release" of documents on Bush administration detainee policies, charging that Obama withheld records that Cheney claimed prove that information gained from the harsh interrogation methods prevented terrorist attacks.
"I've formally asked that (the information) be declassified so the American people can see the intelligence we obtained," Cheney said. "Last week, that request was formally rejected."
However, the decision to withhold the documents was announced by the CIA , which said that it was obliged to do so by a 2003 executive order issued by former President George W. Bush prohibiting the release of materials that are the subject of lawsuits.
— Cheney said that only "ruthless enemies of this country" were detained by U.S. operatives overseas and taken to secret U.S. prisons.
A 2008 McClatchy investigation, however, found that the vast majority of Guantanamo detainees captured in 2001 and 2002 in Afghanistan and Pakistan were innocent citizens or low-level fighters of little intelligence value who were turned over to American officials for money or because of personal or political rivalries.
In addition, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Oct. 5, 2005 , that the Bush administration had admitted to her that it had mistakenly abducted a German citizen, Khaled Masri , from Macedonia in January 2004 .
Masri reportedly was flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan , where he allegedly was abused while being interrogated. He was released in May 2004 and dumped on a remote road in Albania .
In January 2007 , the German government issued arrest warrants for 13 alleged CIA operatives on charges of kidnapping Masri.
— Cheney slammed Obama's decision to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and criticized his effort to persuade other countries to accept some of the detainees.
The effort to shut down the facility, however, began during Bush's second term, promoted by Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates .
"One of the things that would help a lot is, in the discussions that we have with the states of which they (detainees) are nationals, if we could get some of those countries to take them back," Rice said in a Dec. 12, 2007 , interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. "So we need help in closing Guantanamo ."
— Cheney said that, in assessing the security environment after 9-11, the Bush team had to take into account "dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists."
Cheney didn't explicitly repeat the contention he made repeatedly in office: that Saddam cooperated with al Qaida , a linkage that U.S. intelligence officials and numerous official inquiries have rebutted repeatedly.
The late Iraqi dictator's association with terrorists vacillated and was mostly aimed at quashing opponents and critics at home and abroad.
The last State Department report on international terrorism to be released before 9-11 said that Saddam's regime "has not attempted an anti-Western terrorist attack since its failed plot to assassinate former President ( George H.W.) Bush in 1993 in Kuwait ."
A Pentagon study released last year, based on a review of 600,000 Iraqi documents captured after the U.S.-led invasion, concluded that while Saddam supported militant Palestinian groups — the late terrorist Abu Nidal found refuge in Baghdad , at least until Saddam had him killed — the Iraqi security services had no "direct operational link" with al Qaida .
A 'Countdown' moment for the blog
Normally I'm not big on Keith Olberman, he's a bit too RARR!!! for my tastes. But he does hold a special place in my heart for being one of the few MSM folks to call for Bush's head on a platter.
Obama gave a big speech this week about the same old BS -- keeping America safe, war on terror, etc., etc. former VP Cheney hit back with a speech of his own. Here is Olberman's commentary. Pretty good stuff...
* * *
Countdown: Special Comment on Dick Cheney's Speech--In the Name of God, Go!
By Keith Olbermann
Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment about Mr. Cheney's speech.
Neurotic...
Paranoid...
False to fact and false to reason...
Forever self-rationalizing...
His inner rage at his own impotence and failure dripping from every word...
And as irrational, as separated from the real world, as dishonest, as insane, as any terrorist...
The former Vice President has today humiliated himself beyond redemption.
The delusional claims he has made this day could be proved by documentation and first-hand testimony to be the literal truth, and still he himself would be wrong, because the America he sought to impose upon the world and upon its own citizens, the dark hateful place of Dick Cheney's own soul, the place he to this hour defends and to this day prefers, is a repudiation of all that our ancestors, all that for which our brave troops of 200 years ago and two minutes ago, have sacrificed and fought.
I do have to congratulate you, Sir. No man living or dead could have passed the buck more often than you did in 35 minutes this morning.
It's not your fault we water-boarded people, you said.
It isn't torture, you said, even though it is based on 111 years of American military prosecutions.
It was in the Constitution that you could do it, even if our laws told you, you could not.It was in the language of the 2001 military authorization you force-fed the Congress that you could do it, even if our international treaties told you, you could not.
It produced invaluable information, you said, even though the first-hand witnesses, the interrogators of these beasts, said the information preceded the torture and ended when it began.
It was authorized, you said, by careful legal opinion, even though the legal opinions were dictated by you and your cronies, and, oh by the way, the torture began before the legal opinions were even written.
It was authorized, you said, and you imply even if it really wasn't, it was done to "only detainees of the highest intelligence value."
It was more necessary, you said, because of the revelation of another program by the real villains, the New York Times, even though that revelation was possible because the program was detailed on the front page of the website of a defense department sub-contractor.
It was all the fault of your predecessors, you said, who tried to treat terror as a "law enforcement problem," before you came to office and rode to the rescue... after you totally ignored terrorism for the first 20 percent of your first term and the worst attack on this nation in its history unfolded on **your** watch."
9/11 caused everyone to take a **serious second look at threats that had been gathering for awhile," you said today, "and enemies whose plans were getting bolder and more sophisticated."
Gee, thanks for being motivated, by the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans, to go so far as to "take a serious second look." And thank you, Sir, for admitting, obviously inadvertently, that you did not take a serious **first** look in the seven months and 23 days between your inauguration and 9/11.
For that attack, Sir, you are culpable, morally, ethically. At best you were guilty of malfeasance and eternally-lasting stupidity. At worst, Sir, in the deaths of 9/11, you are negligent.
The circular logic, and the self-righteous sophistry, falls from a copy of Mr. Cheney's speech like bugs from a book on a moldy shelf. He still believes in "dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists." He still assumes everyone we captured is guilty without charge or trial, but that to prosecute law-breaking by government officials is "to have an incoming administration criminalize the policy decisions of its predecessors."
And most sleazy of all, while calling the CIA torturers "honorable," he insists the grunts at Abu Ghraib were "a few sadistic prison guards (who) abused inmates in violation of American law, military regulations, and simple decency" even though -- and maybe he doesn't know we know this -- even though there is documentary proof that those guards were acting on orders originating in the office of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.
It is, in short, madness. Madness, Sir. Mr. Cheney, your speech was almost entirely about you...There are only five or six other people even mentioned, and only two quoted at any length.And why would you have quoted, as you did, the man who said this" I know that this program saved lives. I know we've disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us."
As you know, Sir, you are quoting former CIA Director George Tenet.That would be the George Tenet who told Congress, on February 11th, 2003, quote:"Iraq is harboring senior members of a terrorist network led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a close associate of al Qaeda."
Mr. Tenet then went into elaborate detail about the Iraq/Al-Qaeda connection.None of it was true.This is your source.As he was your boss's source."
George, how confident are you?" President Bush asked Tenet about Saddam Hussein's Weapons of Mass Destruction, just before the Iraq war, according to Bob Woodward's book "Plan Of Attack."
"Don't worry," Tenet answered. "It's a slam-dunk."That is your independent authority on how well torture worked.Next time you see him, Mr. Cheney, you might as well ask Mr. Tenet if he thinks he is Napoleon.
I don't want to know who you think you are:"...those are the basic facts on enhanced interrogations," you concluded. "And to call this a program of torture is to libel the dedicated professionals who saved American lives, and to cast terrorists and murderers as innocent victims."
You saved no one, Sir.
If the classified documents you seek released really did detail plots other than those manufactured by drowning men in order to get it to stop, or if they truly did note plans beyond the laughable ones you and President Bush already revealed -- hijackers without passports targeting a building whose name Mr. Bush couldn't remember, clowns who thought they could destroy airports by dropping matches in fuel pipelines 30 miles away, men who planned to attack a military base dressed as Pizza delivery boys forgetting that every man there was armed, and today: the four would-be Synagogue bombers, one of whom turns out to keep bottles of urine in his apartment, and to be on schizophrenia medicine--
If those documents contained anything of value... you would have leaked them already! As you leaked those revenge fantasies of the Library Tower and the J-F-K Bomber, and the Fort Dix Six. "When they (terrorists) see the American government caught up in arguments about interrogations, or whether foreign terrorists have constitutional rights, they don't stand back in awe of our legal system and wonder whether they had misjudged us all along."
Instead the terrorists see just what they were hoping for - our unity gone, our resolve shaken, our leaders distracted. In short, they see weakness and opportunity."
The weakness the terrorists see, Sir, is the weakness of blind rage replacing essential cold logic.
The weakness the terrorists see, Sir, is the weakness of judgment suspended, in favor of self-fulfilling prophecy.The weakness the terrorists see, Sir, is the weakness of moral force supplanted by violence and revenge fantasies.The weakness the terrorists see, Sir, is the weakness... of Dick Cheney.
And yet, still, ceaselessly, indefatigably, you moralize and lie to us. "I might add," someone said today, "that people who consistently distort the truth in this way are in no position to lecture anyone about 'values.'"
Very apt.The quote is from your speech...Your speech, which was at essence, about your fantasy that you and Mr. Bush were not negligent...
About your pig-headed certainty first that these attacks were impossible, then that they were a good excuse for a war you had already planned in Iraq, and finally that they were to be imminently repeated and only you knew whence the next threat would next come.
You saved no one, Mr. Cheney.
All you did... was help kill Americans.
You were negligent before 9/11.
Your response to your complicity by omission on 9/11, was panic, and shame, and insanity, and lying this country into a war that did nothing but kill 4,299 more of us.We will take no further instruction from you, Sir.
Let me again quote Oliver Cromwell to you, Mr. Cheney:
You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!
Obama gave a big speech this week about the same old BS -- keeping America safe, war on terror, etc., etc. former VP Cheney hit back with a speech of his own. Here is Olberman's commentary. Pretty good stuff...
* * *
Countdown: Special Comment on Dick Cheney's Speech--In the Name of God, Go!
By Keith Olbermann
Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment about Mr. Cheney's speech.
Neurotic...
Paranoid...
False to fact and false to reason...
Forever self-rationalizing...
His inner rage at his own impotence and failure dripping from every word...
And as irrational, as separated from the real world, as dishonest, as insane, as any terrorist...
The former Vice President has today humiliated himself beyond redemption.
The delusional claims he has made this day could be proved by documentation and first-hand testimony to be the literal truth, and still he himself would be wrong, because the America he sought to impose upon the world and upon its own citizens, the dark hateful place of Dick Cheney's own soul, the place he to this hour defends and to this day prefers, is a repudiation of all that our ancestors, all that for which our brave troops of 200 years ago and two minutes ago, have sacrificed and fought.
I do have to congratulate you, Sir. No man living or dead could have passed the buck more often than you did in 35 minutes this morning.
It's not your fault we water-boarded people, you said.
It isn't torture, you said, even though it is based on 111 years of American military prosecutions.
It was in the Constitution that you could do it, even if our laws told you, you could not.It was in the language of the 2001 military authorization you force-fed the Congress that you could do it, even if our international treaties told you, you could not.
It produced invaluable information, you said, even though the first-hand witnesses, the interrogators of these beasts, said the information preceded the torture and ended when it began.
It was authorized, you said, by careful legal opinion, even though the legal opinions were dictated by you and your cronies, and, oh by the way, the torture began before the legal opinions were even written.
It was authorized, you said, and you imply even if it really wasn't, it was done to "only detainees of the highest intelligence value."
It was more necessary, you said, because of the revelation of another program by the real villains, the New York Times, even though that revelation was possible because the program was detailed on the front page of the website of a defense department sub-contractor.
It was all the fault of your predecessors, you said, who tried to treat terror as a "law enforcement problem," before you came to office and rode to the rescue... after you totally ignored terrorism for the first 20 percent of your first term and the worst attack on this nation in its history unfolded on **your** watch."
9/11 caused everyone to take a **serious second look at threats that had been gathering for awhile," you said today, "and enemies whose plans were getting bolder and more sophisticated."
Gee, thanks for being motivated, by the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans, to go so far as to "take a serious second look." And thank you, Sir, for admitting, obviously inadvertently, that you did not take a serious **first** look in the seven months and 23 days between your inauguration and 9/11.
For that attack, Sir, you are culpable, morally, ethically. At best you were guilty of malfeasance and eternally-lasting stupidity. At worst, Sir, in the deaths of 9/11, you are negligent.
The circular logic, and the self-righteous sophistry, falls from a copy of Mr. Cheney's speech like bugs from a book on a moldy shelf. He still believes in "dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists." He still assumes everyone we captured is guilty without charge or trial, but that to prosecute law-breaking by government officials is "to have an incoming administration criminalize the policy decisions of its predecessors."
And most sleazy of all, while calling the CIA torturers "honorable," he insists the grunts at Abu Ghraib were "a few sadistic prison guards (who) abused inmates in violation of American law, military regulations, and simple decency" even though -- and maybe he doesn't know we know this -- even though there is documentary proof that those guards were acting on orders originating in the office of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.
It is, in short, madness. Madness, Sir. Mr. Cheney, your speech was almost entirely about you...There are only five or six other people even mentioned, and only two quoted at any length.And why would you have quoted, as you did, the man who said this" I know that this program saved lives. I know we've disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us."
As you know, Sir, you are quoting former CIA Director George Tenet.That would be the George Tenet who told Congress, on February 11th, 2003, quote:"Iraq is harboring senior members of a terrorist network led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a close associate of al Qaeda."
Mr. Tenet then went into elaborate detail about the Iraq/Al-Qaeda connection.None of it was true.This is your source.As he was your boss's source."
George, how confident are you?" President Bush asked Tenet about Saddam Hussein's Weapons of Mass Destruction, just before the Iraq war, according to Bob Woodward's book "Plan Of Attack."
"Don't worry," Tenet answered. "It's a slam-dunk."That is your independent authority on how well torture worked.Next time you see him, Mr. Cheney, you might as well ask Mr. Tenet if he thinks he is Napoleon.
I don't want to know who you think you are:"...those are the basic facts on enhanced interrogations," you concluded. "And to call this a program of torture is to libel the dedicated professionals who saved American lives, and to cast terrorists and murderers as innocent victims."
You saved no one, Sir.
If the classified documents you seek released really did detail plots other than those manufactured by drowning men in order to get it to stop, or if they truly did note plans beyond the laughable ones you and President Bush already revealed -- hijackers without passports targeting a building whose name Mr. Bush couldn't remember, clowns who thought they could destroy airports by dropping matches in fuel pipelines 30 miles away, men who planned to attack a military base dressed as Pizza delivery boys forgetting that every man there was armed, and today: the four would-be Synagogue bombers, one of whom turns out to keep bottles of urine in his apartment, and to be on schizophrenia medicine--
If those documents contained anything of value... you would have leaked them already! As you leaked those revenge fantasies of the Library Tower and the J-F-K Bomber, and the Fort Dix Six. "When they (terrorists) see the American government caught up in arguments about interrogations, or whether foreign terrorists have constitutional rights, they don't stand back in awe of our legal system and wonder whether they had misjudged us all along."
Instead the terrorists see just what they were hoping for - our unity gone, our resolve shaken, our leaders distracted. In short, they see weakness and opportunity."
The weakness the terrorists see, Sir, is the weakness of blind rage replacing essential cold logic.
The weakness the terrorists see, Sir, is the weakness of judgment suspended, in favor of self-fulfilling prophecy.The weakness the terrorists see, Sir, is the weakness of moral force supplanted by violence and revenge fantasies.The weakness the terrorists see, Sir, is the weakness... of Dick Cheney.
And yet, still, ceaselessly, indefatigably, you moralize and lie to us. "I might add," someone said today, "that people who consistently distort the truth in this way are in no position to lecture anyone about 'values.'"
Very apt.The quote is from your speech...Your speech, which was at essence, about your fantasy that you and Mr. Bush were not negligent...
About your pig-headed certainty first that these attacks were impossible, then that they were a good excuse for a war you had already planned in Iraq, and finally that they were to be imminently repeated and only you knew whence the next threat would next come.
You saved no one, Mr. Cheney.
All you did... was help kill Americans.
You were negligent before 9/11.
Your response to your complicity by omission on 9/11, was panic, and shame, and insanity, and lying this country into a war that did nothing but kill 4,299 more of us.We will take no further instruction from you, Sir.
Let me again quote Oliver Cromwell to you, Mr. Cheney:
You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Republican Insider deconstructions the party
I was very impressed with this article. Dude really nails it. (Emphasis is mine) From the Huffington Post...
* * *
Republican Disaster -- The Evangelical/Zionist Anatomy of Meltdown
by Frank Schaeffer
I was a Republican insider. For instance, the late Jack Kemp was a friend who I often advised on "connecting" with the Religious Right, until I left the Republican Party and the evangelical subculture and slammed the door behind me. During my last call with Jack he hung up on me. (I was backing McCain in 2000 and he was for W.) I want you to understand this context of my "insider's" comments here because they are going to strike you as shocking. So please let me recap some personal history.
My parents and I were the guests of the Reagans, Fords and Bush's in the White House and/or in other private meetings. Jack Kemp was so good a friend that he once interrupted a speech at a fund-raising banquet in Washington that I'd walked into late and walked from the podium to the back of the hall shook my hand introduced me to the assembled Republican leaders, then walked back to the podium and continued his speech. He did this because -- in those days -- I was an important link to the (then) powerful evangelical movement.
I was often in Jack's house with Jack and his wife Joanne who, at that time, was conducting a weekly Bible study group with other congressional wives called the "Schaeffer group," based on my father's books. In those days -- the 1970s and early 80s -- as both a staunch Republican and pro-life leader and the son of the famous evangelist, I was right in the middle of the Republican machine.
Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom -- in the 1970s my family was an integral part of bringing the Republican Party under the sway of the emerging Religious Right, particularly because of our support of the antiabortion movement. It was my father who talked Jerry Falwell into "taking a stand" on the "moral issues" of the day, which then morphed into the Moral Majority. Back in the 70s and early 80s Dad and I both appeared on the 700 Club many times, I preached from Jerry Falwell's pulpit and was the keynote speaker at the Religious Broadcasters and Christian Booksellers Association annual events several years running.
There came a day in 1985 (my dad had died in 1984) that I began to take another look at my commitment to the both the far right of Republican Party and the Religious Right. I came to realize that I was in bed with a group of people who were profoundly anti-American. They were professional haters. They wrapped themselves in the flag and "loved America," but it was an America in their imaginations only and cast in their image: white, middle-class, straight, born-again, homophobic and tinged with racism, not to mention misogyny.
The America most Americans lived in; diverse, open, tolerant and multi-ethnic was the America that the right would hardly even acknowledge. They "loved" an America that didn't exist, and hated the real country we live in. (I go into this in detail in two books; Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All -- or Almost All -- of It Back and also in my forthcoming Patience With God: Faith For People Who Don't Like Religion -- Or Atheism where I lay out an alternative to some very bad choices between the extremes.)
So what went wrong with the Republican Party? Believe me, it's all about religion!
Two religions (in the broadest sense of the term) have destroyed the Republican Party: evangelical Christianity and Christian/Jewish Zionism. Evangelical Christianity created the Religious Right which forever linked the Republican Party to the antiabortion, anti-sex education, anti-evolution and anti-gay crusades. And both Christian and Jewish Zionism linked the Republican Party to what became the neoconservative movement with its roots in such publications as Commentary magazine and their shrill Israel-can-do-no-wrong anti-Arab agenda. (I knew the late editor of Commentary Norman Podhoretz quite well, and we met several times to build alliances between evangelicals and the far American Zionist far right. When it came to Arabs, I believe he was a real racist.)
I would not call Zionism per se a religion, but I'm talking about secular goals pursued with religious fervor. I would call Zionism, American-style a politicized version of a religion. I also argue that the neo-con side got traction when religious Jews became Zionists and when religious Christians (evangelicals) hopped aboard to hasten the "Rapture." And I'd like to point out that American Zionists ally themselves with the Israeli hardliners, but that opinion in Israel is much more diverse and often tolerant than that, as is opinion among Jewish Americans, who do not by and large accept the AIPAC point of view uncritically.
The result of the Republican Party being taken over by these religious groups was that we got George W. Bush. His idea of governance was a hands-off, all-government-is-bad-government neglect, combined with an unnecessary war in Iraq inspired by a form of Zionism that sees all Arabs as a threat, Islam as evil, America as an exceptional place duty-bound "by God" to keep the world safe for evangelical Christian "values," on the one hand, and militant Christian and Jewish Zionism on the other. It is a poisonous blend. (It's not just Zionism, or a form of Zionism, that makes Americans hate Arabs. Anti-Arab, anti-Muslim images in America go way back and some right wing evangelicals and Jews merely tap into that racism.)
Evangelical/Christian Zionism has been bad for the State of Israel too. It has helped put that country into a permanent defensive crouch in which there is now perhaps no way out from destruction that comes to all people who see everyone else (from the EU to the UN to the Arabs and Iran) as a threat. The building of the illegal West Bank settlements and turning the Gaza Strip into what amounts to a concentration camp, combined with demographic reality will doom the State of Israel if a two state peace agreement is not reached and reached fast. But Christian Zionists have done all they can to undermine peace in the name of fulfilling "biblical prophecy" as have the far right of the Jewish Zionists, people like my old friend Norman Podhoretz.
With "friends" like the Christian Zionists -- exemplified by the Reverend John Hagee and many others who "support" Israel while eagerly waiting for the "return of Christ" and the destruction of all "unbelieving Jews" -- Israel needs no enemies. Given that the hard-line American Christian Zionists encouraged the Republican Party to become the party of permanent war to keep the State of Israel "safe" they have actually helped set the stage for its destruction. And therefore the Republicans also opened the door to our national economic ruin as well. The two are linked; eternal war and ruin, because our permanent wars (thinly veiled excuses to "keep Israel safe") are never paid for by increased taxes or a draft. (Disclosure: my son served in the Marines and was deployed.)
But attitudes are changing: The results of a new Zogby poll are interesting. They suggest that Obama would have strong support for a US diplomatic effort to forge an Israel-Palestine deal, even if it means tough pressure on Israel. According to the poll, when asked if the United States should "get tough" with Israel in order to back up its call for an end to settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, fully 50 percent of Americans said yes, with just 19 percent saying "do nothing," and 32 percent not sure.
Asked whether the interests of Israel and the US are identical, only 28 percent of Obama voters agreed, while 59 percent disagreed. Among McCain voters, it was the reverse: 78 percent of McCain voters said US and Israel interests were identical (!) and 15 percent said they are not.
So what did the Republicans become? They are the party of unnecessary wars both actual and cultural and the party of the rich -- those who never serve in the military, just put up flags to "support the troops." The actual war in Iraq was (as everyone knew with a wink and a nod, but few dared say) really about our commitment to Christian and Jewish Zionism as it was "understood" by the born-again fool Bush. The culture war is also an unnecessary and unmitigated war that pitted the "real America" (in other words white mostly uneducated, lower-middle-class evangelical/Catholic working Americans) against everyone else.
If you're not a gay-hating, "pro-life," born-again evangelical and/or an ardent Israel-can-do-no-wrong-all-Arabs-are-evil-Jesus-is-coming-back-soon evangelical on the one hand or a neoconservative I-never-met-a-war-I-didn't-like "intellectual" on the other hand, these days you're probably not a Republican. Throw in a college degree or the habit of getting information from any source other than right wing blogs, radio "personalities" like Rush Limbaugh or "authors" like Ann Coulter and you won't be voting Republican again in this lifetime.
What's caused the Republican Party's real meltdown? It's that it has ceased to exist as a political party and is instead a dwindling weirdly eclectic collection of uneducated rubes led by a few fearful angry far right thinkers who talk in media sound bites geared to the types of people who watch Fox News. Jack Kemp was not part of this horrible little "party." He was a smart compassionate man. There used to be more Republicans like Kemp. Today the Republican core constituency is the national village idiot.
With the election of President Obama America has turned the page on the village idiots. We now have a president who is a religious believer himself, who supports Israel (as I do, by the way), but who well understands -- and articulates beautifully as he just did at Notre Dame talking about abortion -- the fact that authentic faith should be a unifying force instead of a divisive one. That's bad news for religious nuts, be they Christians or Jews. That's good news for America and the world, and maybe for our overstretched military too.
The choice for America has always been between inclusive pluralism and exclusion. The kind of religion and Evangelical/Zionist/neoconservative cabal used to take over the interests of the Republican Party is just too small for this big diverse, tolerant and open country of ours. So the Republicans have a choice: become an American political party again serving American interests or continue to serve the narrowly defined religious interests of two angry and fearful Jewish/Evangelical minorities who are themselves bastardized offshoots of their Christian and Jewish traditions.
Frank Schaeffer is a writer. He is author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back and also author of the forthcoming Patience With God: Faith For People Who Don't Like Religion (Or Atheism).
* * *
Republican Disaster -- The Evangelical/Zionist Anatomy of Meltdown
by Frank Schaeffer
I was a Republican insider. For instance, the late Jack Kemp was a friend who I often advised on "connecting" with the Religious Right, until I left the Republican Party and the evangelical subculture and slammed the door behind me. During my last call with Jack he hung up on me. (I was backing McCain in 2000 and he was for W.) I want you to understand this context of my "insider's" comments here because they are going to strike you as shocking. So please let me recap some personal history.
My parents and I were the guests of the Reagans, Fords and Bush's in the White House and/or in other private meetings. Jack Kemp was so good a friend that he once interrupted a speech at a fund-raising banquet in Washington that I'd walked into late and walked from the podium to the back of the hall shook my hand introduced me to the assembled Republican leaders, then walked back to the podium and continued his speech. He did this because -- in those days -- I was an important link to the (then) powerful evangelical movement.
I was often in Jack's house with Jack and his wife Joanne who, at that time, was conducting a weekly Bible study group with other congressional wives called the "Schaeffer group," based on my father's books. In those days -- the 1970s and early 80s -- as both a staunch Republican and pro-life leader and the son of the famous evangelist, I was right in the middle of the Republican machine.
Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom -- in the 1970s my family was an integral part of bringing the Republican Party under the sway of the emerging Religious Right, particularly because of our support of the antiabortion movement. It was my father who talked Jerry Falwell into "taking a stand" on the "moral issues" of the day, which then morphed into the Moral Majority. Back in the 70s and early 80s Dad and I both appeared on the 700 Club many times, I preached from Jerry Falwell's pulpit and was the keynote speaker at the Religious Broadcasters and Christian Booksellers Association annual events several years running.
There came a day in 1985 (my dad had died in 1984) that I began to take another look at my commitment to the both the far right of Republican Party and the Religious Right. I came to realize that I was in bed with a group of people who were profoundly anti-American. They were professional haters. They wrapped themselves in the flag and "loved America," but it was an America in their imaginations only and cast in their image: white, middle-class, straight, born-again, homophobic and tinged with racism, not to mention misogyny.
The America most Americans lived in; diverse, open, tolerant and multi-ethnic was the America that the right would hardly even acknowledge. They "loved" an America that didn't exist, and hated the real country we live in. (I go into this in detail in two books; Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All -- or Almost All -- of It Back and also in my forthcoming Patience With God: Faith For People Who Don't Like Religion -- Or Atheism where I lay out an alternative to some very bad choices between the extremes.)
So what went wrong with the Republican Party? Believe me, it's all about religion!
Two religions (in the broadest sense of the term) have destroyed the Republican Party: evangelical Christianity and Christian/Jewish Zionism. Evangelical Christianity created the Religious Right which forever linked the Republican Party to the antiabortion, anti-sex education, anti-evolution and anti-gay crusades. And both Christian and Jewish Zionism linked the Republican Party to what became the neoconservative movement with its roots in such publications as Commentary magazine and their shrill Israel-can-do-no-wrong anti-Arab agenda. (I knew the late editor of Commentary Norman Podhoretz quite well, and we met several times to build alliances between evangelicals and the far American Zionist far right. When it came to Arabs, I believe he was a real racist.)
I would not call Zionism per se a religion, but I'm talking about secular goals pursued with religious fervor. I would call Zionism, American-style a politicized version of a religion. I also argue that the neo-con side got traction when religious Jews became Zionists and when religious Christians (evangelicals) hopped aboard to hasten the "Rapture." And I'd like to point out that American Zionists ally themselves with the Israeli hardliners, but that opinion in Israel is much more diverse and often tolerant than that, as is opinion among Jewish Americans, who do not by and large accept the AIPAC point of view uncritically.
The result of the Republican Party being taken over by these religious groups was that we got George W. Bush. His idea of governance was a hands-off, all-government-is-bad-government neglect, combined with an unnecessary war in Iraq inspired by a form of Zionism that sees all Arabs as a threat, Islam as evil, America as an exceptional place duty-bound "by God" to keep the world safe for evangelical Christian "values," on the one hand, and militant Christian and Jewish Zionism on the other. It is a poisonous blend. (It's not just Zionism, or a form of Zionism, that makes Americans hate Arabs. Anti-Arab, anti-Muslim images in America go way back and some right wing evangelicals and Jews merely tap into that racism.)
Evangelical/Christian Zionism has been bad for the State of Israel too. It has helped put that country into a permanent defensive crouch in which there is now perhaps no way out from destruction that comes to all people who see everyone else (from the EU to the UN to the Arabs and Iran) as a threat. The building of the illegal West Bank settlements and turning the Gaza Strip into what amounts to a concentration camp, combined with demographic reality will doom the State of Israel if a two state peace agreement is not reached and reached fast. But Christian Zionists have done all they can to undermine peace in the name of fulfilling "biblical prophecy" as have the far right of the Jewish Zionists, people like my old friend Norman Podhoretz.
With "friends" like the Christian Zionists -- exemplified by the Reverend John Hagee and many others who "support" Israel while eagerly waiting for the "return of Christ" and the destruction of all "unbelieving Jews" -- Israel needs no enemies. Given that the hard-line American Christian Zionists encouraged the Republican Party to become the party of permanent war to keep the State of Israel "safe" they have actually helped set the stage for its destruction. And therefore the Republicans also opened the door to our national economic ruin as well. The two are linked; eternal war and ruin, because our permanent wars (thinly veiled excuses to "keep Israel safe") are never paid for by increased taxes or a draft. (Disclosure: my son served in the Marines and was deployed.)
But attitudes are changing: The results of a new Zogby poll are interesting. They suggest that Obama would have strong support for a US diplomatic effort to forge an Israel-Palestine deal, even if it means tough pressure on Israel. According to the poll, when asked if the United States should "get tough" with Israel in order to back up its call for an end to settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, fully 50 percent of Americans said yes, with just 19 percent saying "do nothing," and 32 percent not sure.
Asked whether the interests of Israel and the US are identical, only 28 percent of Obama voters agreed, while 59 percent disagreed. Among McCain voters, it was the reverse: 78 percent of McCain voters said US and Israel interests were identical (!) and 15 percent said they are not.
So what did the Republicans become? They are the party of unnecessary wars both actual and cultural and the party of the rich -- those who never serve in the military, just put up flags to "support the troops." The actual war in Iraq was (as everyone knew with a wink and a nod, but few dared say) really about our commitment to Christian and Jewish Zionism as it was "understood" by the born-again fool Bush. The culture war is also an unnecessary and unmitigated war that pitted the "real America" (in other words white mostly uneducated, lower-middle-class evangelical/Catholic working Americans) against everyone else.
If you're not a gay-hating, "pro-life," born-again evangelical and/or an ardent Israel-can-do-no-wrong-all-Arabs-are-evil-Jesus-is-coming-back-soon evangelical on the one hand or a neoconservative I-never-met-a-war-I-didn't-like "intellectual" on the other hand, these days you're probably not a Republican. Throw in a college degree or the habit of getting information from any source other than right wing blogs, radio "personalities" like Rush Limbaugh or "authors" like Ann Coulter and you won't be voting Republican again in this lifetime.
What's caused the Republican Party's real meltdown? It's that it has ceased to exist as a political party and is instead a dwindling weirdly eclectic collection of uneducated rubes led by a few fearful angry far right thinkers who talk in media sound bites geared to the types of people who watch Fox News. Jack Kemp was not part of this horrible little "party." He was a smart compassionate man. There used to be more Republicans like Kemp. Today the Republican core constituency is the national village idiot.
With the election of President Obama America has turned the page on the village idiots. We now have a president who is a religious believer himself, who supports Israel (as I do, by the way), but who well understands -- and articulates beautifully as he just did at Notre Dame talking about abortion -- the fact that authentic faith should be a unifying force instead of a divisive one. That's bad news for religious nuts, be they Christians or Jews. That's good news for America and the world, and maybe for our overstretched military too.
The choice for America has always been between inclusive pluralism and exclusion. The kind of religion and Evangelical/Zionist/neoconservative cabal used to take over the interests of the Republican Party is just too small for this big diverse, tolerant and open country of ours. So the Republicans have a choice: become an American political party again serving American interests or continue to serve the narrowly defined religious interests of two angry and fearful Jewish/Evangelical minorities who are themselves bastardized offshoots of their Christian and Jewish traditions.
Frank Schaeffer is a writer. He is author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back and also author of the forthcoming Patience With God: Faith For People Who Don't Like Religion (Or Atheism).
Friday, May 1, 2009
Yes, we should look in the mirror
There are still calls for investigations into the Bush years and what happened there. Will we look at the specters in the shadows? Will we have the courage to confront that which we'd rather not see? I'm not sure, it remains to be seen how, if, etc. but here'a good op-ed on the subject.
* * *
America's necessary dark night of the soul
We need to investigate the Bush years, even if it means tearing the country -- and ourselves -- apart.
By Gary Kamiya
(from Salon.com)
May 1, 2009 | So it has finally come, our strange, anesthetized and vaguely dreaded day of national reckoning.
Almost eight years ago, a terrorist attack destroyed two towers in America's greatest city and killed almost 3,000 people. A year and a half later, still half-dazed by that trauma, America sleepwalked into the weirdest war in our history, a pointless, ruinous conflict fomented by ignorant ideologues, launched on false premises, justified by bogus evidence -- and supported by the majority of the American people, both political parties and most of the media. Under cover of that war, President George W. Bush and his top officials created a separate prison system not governed by U.S. laws, ordered the torture of detainees, sent others off to be tortured abroad, illegally wiretapped Americans, and in general ignored and flouted the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law.
In full knowledge of all of that, the American people narrowly reelected George W. Bush president. Two years ago they turned decisively against Bush's party and his war, throwing Republicans out of Congress en masse. And five months ago, staring into an economic abyss, they elected Barack Obama. Obama's opposition to the Iraq war from the beginning is almost certainly why he was able to defeat his formidable rival Hillary Clinton.
Now, ready or not, America faces the summing-up. The clamor for a truth commission to look into the lies, excesses and illegal acts committed during the Bush years has forced the country to decide not just whether it wants to investigate and possibly prosecute former officials, but whether it wants to look into the mirror -- whether it wants to investigate itself. For the painful truth is that for a long time, a majority of Americans implicitly or explicitly supported most of Bush's policies and actions. As Garrison Keillor noted in these pages, "I think the American electorate knew whom they reelected in 2004. Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney did not run on a human-rights platform. They ran as rough men who would guard our sleep. So go talk to the voters of Ohio about war crimes."
Those opposed to reopening the book on the Bush years argue that doing so would tear the country apart. They're right -- but they forget that the country is already torn apart. The gulf between Democrats and Republicans has never been wider. The Republican Party, the home of those who still defend the Bush years, has become a reactionary and increasingly marginal movement that is in fealty to crude demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and whose hysterical denunciations of Obama sound more and more unhinged.
What this means is that those Americans who would be truly outraged by an investigation are already outraged. It could not make them any angrier or more bitter than they already are. And even if it did, how much difference would that make? The GOP base already regards Democrats as terrorist-coddling communists. Are they going to all join militias?
But what about the moderate Republicans, independents and hawkish Democrats who once supported Bush? Millions of Americans at one time supported the Iraq war, Guantánamo, illegal wiretapping and torture, because they believed that those things would keep America safe. Now, no longer afraid of another terror attack, and perhaps belatedly recognizing that Bush's illegal, excessive policies established dangerous precedents, they have changed their mind. How would these people react to an investigation of those Bush officials who planned and authorized the very deeds that they themselves supported?
Of course, there is no way to know for sure. But it seems likely that an investigation of the Bush years -- whether a truth commission headed by blue-chip figures like Lee Hamilton and Sandra Day O'Connor, as Nicholas Kristof and others have proposed, or a Justice Department probe -- would be precisely the painful but illuminating thing needed to wake Americans out of their fear-induced torpor, confront them with what was done in their name, and force them to take their responsibilities as citizens more seriously. Rather than cause a paralyzing cognitive dissonance, it would break through the cognitive dissonance that already exists.
That a swing voter changed allegiances and voted for Obama instead of McCain in 2008 does not necessarily indicate that he or she has come to terms with what the Bush administration did, or his or her own ambivalent and confused feelings about supporting it. And anything that shines a light on that unexamined tangle is good for both that individual and for civil society.
An investigation of the Bush years would not assign the ultimate blame to the citizenry: In a vast representative democracy like the U.S., the people cannot be held directly responsible for the illegal or immoral actions planned, authorized and carried out by government officials, even if they elected those officials. Those Americans who signed off on war and tacitly approved torture because they were afraid of terrorism must bear some responsibility for their hot-blooded reactions, but such reactions are to be expected. The reason we have laws and representatives and accountability is that they act as a check on mere impulse, on vigilante justice, the untrammeled thirst for vengeance. Because it would recognize this, the investigation would be psychologically tolerable to the American people. But at the same time, it would force citizens to examine their own conscience, their own attitudes, their own emotions and where those emotions led. And by calling for appropriate justice for those officials who, in cold blood, lied about war, created secret prisons, trashed the Constitution, and tortured, an investigation would make clear to every American that some lines can never be crossed.
The final argument against an investigation of Bush administration misdeeds is that the people, by voting for Obama, have already moved on. Obama won: That's all the self-insight we need. Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe this is true. The election of Obama did not signal any real national introspection, and his own reluctance to open up the Pandora's box of the past -- partly driven by the fact that many Democrats signed off on Bush's misdeeds -- has prevented any further national self-examination. Ever since 9/11 we have been living in a twilight country, one where it is not clear whether laws apply or not, a morally relativist place in which unembarrassed emotionalism has replaced adherence to ethical and legal principles. When one of the country's leading pundits, the New York Times' Thomas Friedman, can argue that the Bush administration torturers should suffer no legal consequences because "Al Qaeda truly was a unique enemy, and the post-9/11 era a deeply confounding war in a variety of ways," and that Americans "would have told the government (and still will) 'Do whatever it takes,'" he is basically saying that the inchoate fears and primal emotions of the people should override morality and law.
This widely shared attitude is like a dormant virus: It may appear to be harmless now, but it could come to life at any time.
This may be our great teachable moment, our one chance, Democrats and Republicans alike, to look clearly at our country and what it became under Bush. Already, people's attention is wandering, ennui is setting in, and a banal mood of easy acceptance is taking hold. If we don't act now, the chance may be lost. And then, the next time there is a terrorist attack, a cunning ideologue could once again lead America down the same primrose path.
Yes, you could call this victor's justice. But sometimes victor's justice is necessary -- and in this case, the victors will also be putting themselves in the dock, since so many of them were guilty, too. (The same thing is true of the establishment pundits who are now loudly insisting that it is time for us all to move on.) If we want to ensure that in the future duplicitous leaders do not trick us into wars, abrogate the Constitution, flout our laws and traditions, create secret prisons, and torture detainees, the only way is to look unflinchingly at what actually happened.
The talk about America being "torn apart" is overblown. But even if America has to go through a dark night of the soul to get where it needs to go, so be it. Nothing important in life is easy.
* * *
America's necessary dark night of the soul
We need to investigate the Bush years, even if it means tearing the country -- and ourselves -- apart.
By Gary Kamiya
(from Salon.com)
May 1, 2009 | So it has finally come, our strange, anesthetized and vaguely dreaded day of national reckoning.
Almost eight years ago, a terrorist attack destroyed two towers in America's greatest city and killed almost 3,000 people. A year and a half later, still half-dazed by that trauma, America sleepwalked into the weirdest war in our history, a pointless, ruinous conflict fomented by ignorant ideologues, launched on false premises, justified by bogus evidence -- and supported by the majority of the American people, both political parties and most of the media. Under cover of that war, President George W. Bush and his top officials created a separate prison system not governed by U.S. laws, ordered the torture of detainees, sent others off to be tortured abroad, illegally wiretapped Americans, and in general ignored and flouted the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law.
In full knowledge of all of that, the American people narrowly reelected George W. Bush president. Two years ago they turned decisively against Bush's party and his war, throwing Republicans out of Congress en masse. And five months ago, staring into an economic abyss, they elected Barack Obama. Obama's opposition to the Iraq war from the beginning is almost certainly why he was able to defeat his formidable rival Hillary Clinton.
Now, ready or not, America faces the summing-up. The clamor for a truth commission to look into the lies, excesses and illegal acts committed during the Bush years has forced the country to decide not just whether it wants to investigate and possibly prosecute former officials, but whether it wants to look into the mirror -- whether it wants to investigate itself. For the painful truth is that for a long time, a majority of Americans implicitly or explicitly supported most of Bush's policies and actions. As Garrison Keillor noted in these pages, "I think the American electorate knew whom they reelected in 2004. Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney did not run on a human-rights platform. They ran as rough men who would guard our sleep. So go talk to the voters of Ohio about war crimes."
Those opposed to reopening the book on the Bush years argue that doing so would tear the country apart. They're right -- but they forget that the country is already torn apart. The gulf between Democrats and Republicans has never been wider. The Republican Party, the home of those who still defend the Bush years, has become a reactionary and increasingly marginal movement that is in fealty to crude demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and whose hysterical denunciations of Obama sound more and more unhinged.
What this means is that those Americans who would be truly outraged by an investigation are already outraged. It could not make them any angrier or more bitter than they already are. And even if it did, how much difference would that make? The GOP base already regards Democrats as terrorist-coddling communists. Are they going to all join militias?
But what about the moderate Republicans, independents and hawkish Democrats who once supported Bush? Millions of Americans at one time supported the Iraq war, Guantánamo, illegal wiretapping and torture, because they believed that those things would keep America safe. Now, no longer afraid of another terror attack, and perhaps belatedly recognizing that Bush's illegal, excessive policies established dangerous precedents, they have changed their mind. How would these people react to an investigation of those Bush officials who planned and authorized the very deeds that they themselves supported?
Of course, there is no way to know for sure. But it seems likely that an investigation of the Bush years -- whether a truth commission headed by blue-chip figures like Lee Hamilton and Sandra Day O'Connor, as Nicholas Kristof and others have proposed, or a Justice Department probe -- would be precisely the painful but illuminating thing needed to wake Americans out of their fear-induced torpor, confront them with what was done in their name, and force them to take their responsibilities as citizens more seriously. Rather than cause a paralyzing cognitive dissonance, it would break through the cognitive dissonance that already exists.
That a swing voter changed allegiances and voted for Obama instead of McCain in 2008 does not necessarily indicate that he or she has come to terms with what the Bush administration did, or his or her own ambivalent and confused feelings about supporting it. And anything that shines a light on that unexamined tangle is good for both that individual and for civil society.
An investigation of the Bush years would not assign the ultimate blame to the citizenry: In a vast representative democracy like the U.S., the people cannot be held directly responsible for the illegal or immoral actions planned, authorized and carried out by government officials, even if they elected those officials. Those Americans who signed off on war and tacitly approved torture because they were afraid of terrorism must bear some responsibility for their hot-blooded reactions, but such reactions are to be expected. The reason we have laws and representatives and accountability is that they act as a check on mere impulse, on vigilante justice, the untrammeled thirst for vengeance. Because it would recognize this, the investigation would be psychologically tolerable to the American people. But at the same time, it would force citizens to examine their own conscience, their own attitudes, their own emotions and where those emotions led. And by calling for appropriate justice for those officials who, in cold blood, lied about war, created secret prisons, trashed the Constitution, and tortured, an investigation would make clear to every American that some lines can never be crossed.
The final argument against an investigation of Bush administration misdeeds is that the people, by voting for Obama, have already moved on. Obama won: That's all the self-insight we need. Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe this is true. The election of Obama did not signal any real national introspection, and his own reluctance to open up the Pandora's box of the past -- partly driven by the fact that many Democrats signed off on Bush's misdeeds -- has prevented any further national self-examination. Ever since 9/11 we have been living in a twilight country, one where it is not clear whether laws apply or not, a morally relativist place in which unembarrassed emotionalism has replaced adherence to ethical and legal principles. When one of the country's leading pundits, the New York Times' Thomas Friedman, can argue that the Bush administration torturers should suffer no legal consequences because "Al Qaeda truly was a unique enemy, and the post-9/11 era a deeply confounding war in a variety of ways," and that Americans "would have told the government (and still will) 'Do whatever it takes,'" he is basically saying that the inchoate fears and primal emotions of the people should override morality and law.
This widely shared attitude is like a dormant virus: It may appear to be harmless now, but it could come to life at any time.
This may be our great teachable moment, our one chance, Democrats and Republicans alike, to look clearly at our country and what it became under Bush. Already, people's attention is wandering, ennui is setting in, and a banal mood of easy acceptance is taking hold. If we don't act now, the chance may be lost. And then, the next time there is a terrorist attack, a cunning ideologue could once again lead America down the same primrose path.
Yes, you could call this victor's justice. But sometimes victor's justice is necessary -- and in this case, the victors will also be putting themselves in the dock, since so many of them were guilty, too. (The same thing is true of the establishment pundits who are now loudly insisting that it is time for us all to move on.) If we want to ensure that in the future duplicitous leaders do not trick us into wars, abrogate the Constitution, flout our laws and traditions, create secret prisons, and torture detainees, the only way is to look unflinchingly at what actually happened.
The talk about America being "torn apart" is overblown. But even if America has to go through a dark night of the soul to get where it needs to go, so be it. Nothing important in life is easy.
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