Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 135

Professional Leftist Michael Hayden praises Obama's "continuity"

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, August 10, 2010:

During an interview with The Hill in his West Wing office, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs blasted liberal naysayers . . . . "I hear these people saying he's like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested," Gibbs said. "I mean, it's crazy."

Former Bush CIA Director and NSA Chief Michael Hayden, CNN's State of the Union, yesterday:

CANDY CROWLEY: You sound as though you believe President Obama is doing a good job on the terrorism front.

HAYDEN: There are some things that I disagree with, and I've disagreed with publicly.

CROWLEY: Such as?

HAYDEN: Making the CIA Office of Legal Counsel interrogation memos public, stopping the CIA interrogation program and not really replacing it with any other interrogation program, even to this date.

But, by and large, there's been a powerful continuity between the 43rd and the 44th president, and I think that simply reflects the reality that both President Obama and President Bush faced in terms of the threat and the tools that are available to them.

On Terrorism and civil liberties issues, Michael Hayden resides very close to the furthest-right pole even when compared to other Bush/Cheney officials.  He ran the NSA when Bush's illegal eavesdropping program was implemented (and was one of its principal defenders), and just last month defended Bush's torture program in a debate alongside torture apologist Marc Thiessen.  Indeed, in 2006, then-Senator Obama voted against Hayden's confirmation as CIA Director, citing his responsibility for the illegal NSA program.  

Yet here is Hayden praising Obama's Terrorism and national security policies on the ground that "there's been a powerful continuity between the 43rd and the 44th president."  As Digby put it in summarizing Hayden's comments:  "other than the fact that [Obama] blew the cover off the torture regime and refused to publicly endorse waterboarding and putting prisoners in coffins with poisonous bugs crawling all over them, he and Bush are two peas in a pod."  Hayden has lavished Obama with similar "praise" before, telling The New York Times in January that "[t]here is a continuum from the Bush administration, particularly as it changed in the second administration as circumstances changed, and the Obama administration," and -- in an article entitled "Obama uses Bush plan for terror war" -- told The Washington Times last month that "there is more continuity than divergence between the Bush and Obama administrations' approaches to the war on terror":

"You've got state secrets, targeted killings, indefinite detention, renditions, the opposition to extending the right of habeas corpus to prisoners at Bagram [in Afghanistan]," Mr. Hayden said, listing the continuities. "And although it is slightly different, Obama has been as aggressive as President Bush in defending prerogatives about who he has to inform in Congress for executive covert action."

The above-cited NYT article, written by Peter Baker, also quoted numerous other GOP and right-wing figures similarly praising Obama on the grounds of continuity:  

"The administration came in determined to undo a lot of the policies of the prior administration," Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the top Republican on the homeland-security committee, told me, "but in fact is finding that many of those policies were better-thought-out than they realized -- or that doing away with them is a far more complex task." . . . . James Jay Carafano, a homeland-security expert at the Heritage Foundation, was blunter. "I don't think it's even fair to call it Bush Lite," he said. "It's Bush.  It's really, really hard to find a difference that's meaningful and not atmospheric. You see a lot of straining on things trying to make things look repackaged, but they're really not that different" . . . A senior Obama adviser scoffed at the idea that Bush advisers see continuity . . . . [b]it is true that much of the Bush security architecture is almost certain to remain part of the national fabric for some time to come, thanks to Obama.

And The Washington Times article included this:  "Fran Townsend, a former homeland security adviser to Mr. Bush, said: 'On counterterrorism policy, they found they agree with much of what we did, but that fact is politically inconvenient to acknowledge'." 

One of the most common and vapid Beltway media clichés is that "if you're making the Left and Right angry at you, you must be doing something right."  But as this right-wing praise demonstrates, in these areas, Obama -- outside of a handful of the most crazed extremists who actually believe that he's in confederation with Muslims Terrorists -- hasn't made the Right angry at all.  Quite the opposite.  Bush adherents are as pleased as can be that Obama has largely continued -- even (as Bush OLC lawyer Jack Goldsmith argued) made stronger -- the Bush/Cheney architecture on Terrorism and civil liberties.  Contrary to Gibbs' claim that this view is found only among the drug-addled Professional Left, this is now an undeniable fact recognized by people across the political spectrum.  While those who have been highlighting these similarities from the start encountered substantial opposition and even intense anger from Democrats for quite some time, it's now more or less a political consensus that it's true; indeed, the only ones willing to deny it at this point are Obama officials themselves and their rapidly shrinking (though still quite vocal) band of rabidly loyal followers. 

So it's not progressive denialism on this issue that's so striking any longer, but rather progressive indifference.  The evidence is now too overwhelming to permit outright denialism, and often, even the hardest-core Obama boosters will pay lip service to the objection that Obama has continued Bush/Cheney policies in these areas (when The American Prospect's Mark Schmitt appeared in my comment section last week, he acknowledged that "throughout the Democratic base, there is dissatisfaction at various levels, and much of it is warranted (civil liberties)," while The New Republic's Jonathan Chait, in defending Obama from liberal critiques, wrote:  "I don't agree with Greenwald's positions on foreign policy and civil liberties, but he does have a valid beef with Obama in these areas").  So not only on the Right, but also in the most mainstream Democratic circles, it has become more or less indisputable that Obama, with a couple of isolated (and not unimportant) exceptions, has enthusiastically embraced the core Bush/Cheney approach to the War on Terror and civil liberties.

If Obama had said in 2007 or 2008 that he intended to do this -- if he had run on a Terrorism and civil liberties platform that would make the Michael Haydens and Fran Townsends of the world gush with praise -- the backlash among Democratic voters would have single-handedly killed his candidacy.  But now that he's actually doing that with the vast power he wields -- that he's been given -- the silence and indifference are deafening.  Why is that?

* * * * *

It would be one thing if War on Terror, civil liberties and executive power abuses were never much of a concern to Democratic voters, that it was just always an ancillary sideshow to more significant political matters.  But the opposite was true.  Throughout the Bush years, anger over the Bush/Cheney approach to civil liberties -- extending far, far beyond the torture issue, encompassing the full list Hayden reeled off -- was one of the driving forces of anti-Bush anger among Democratic voters.  It was a central article of progressive faith that Bush was tyrannical, was "shredding the Constitution," posed a radical threat to core governmental principles by virtue of these very policies.  So important were these issues that Obama, touting his status as a "constitutional law professor," made reversal of Bush/Cheney civil liberties and war policies a centerpiece of his campaign.  As Digby wrote:

Until the last weeks of the 2008 campaign, it was dominated by the differences in approach to war and foreign policy between Barack Obama and George W. Bush and many of my friends told me that the main reason they preferred Obama over all the other candidates was his bold stand in that arena.

I personally never heard any progressive or even Democrat object that these pervasive criticisms of Bush and Cheney were inaccurate or even hyperbolic or overblown, and that was true even as the most extreme policies (such as Article II lawbreaking claims and the torture regime) receded to the background during Bush's second term.  It may be true that civil liberties issues are now a secondary concern for mainstream Democrats, but if that's true, that is a brand new development (beginning around January 20, 2009).

Part of what explains this remarkable indifference are just basic political dynamics.  Standard partisan loyalty dictates that one criticize the other party for actions which one overlooks or even defends when done by one's own side.  Particularly now as an election approaches -- where the greatest threat to Democratic power is the so-called "enthusiasm gap," whereby Obama's 2008 voters are unmotivated to go to the polls -- no Democrat wants to hear anyone highlighting similarities between Obama and Bush (hence the constant attacks from the White House and their pundit-servants on those who keep voicing these objections).  Many Democrats have become so petrified of Republicans (as intended) that they believe even legitimate criticisms of Obama should be suppressed lest the Right be empowered (just like Republicans once argued that to criticize Bush was to help the Terrorists).  Many Democrats never believed or cared about their "shredding the Constitution" accusations against Bush, but just opportunistically viewed them as an effective club to beat Republicans over the head for partisan gain.  For some people, the financial and unemployment crisis have drowned out concern about all other issues.  And, as Digby notes, "democracy generally doesn't apply to warmaking" -- i.e., the military-industrial complex in America always reigns supreme no matter who is elected.

But I think there's a deeper root.  The first non-FISA post I ever wrote after I began blogging in November, 2005, that received substantial attention was this one from early February, 2006, entitled "Do Bush followers have an ideology?"  It argued that mainstream "conservatism" had ceased being about any specific political ideas and had instead transformed into a cult of personality around George W. Bush:  "'conservatism' is now a term used to describe personal loyalty to the leader (just as 'liberal' is used to describe disloyalty to that leader), and no longer refers to a set of beliefs about government."  Having re-read that post recently, it amazes me how much of it applies to our current political situation.

The principal example there was how conservatives -- who long claimed in general to believe in "limited government power" and in particular spent the 1990s sermonizing about Bill Clinton's civil liberties abuses and violations of the Constitution -- blindly endorsed the most radical expansions of executive power and civil liberties violations as soon as their Party took control of the Oval Office.  Many conservatives took precisely opposite positions on the very same issues (i.e., they spent the 1990s lamenting the insufficient constraints on government eavesdropping from the secret FISA court, then suddenly claimed that the FISA court was too restrictive when it turned out Bush was violating the FISA law).  In fact, many of the very same conservatives who led the way in loudly opposing greater government surveillance powers and immunity from investigation during the Clinton years -- such as John Ashcroft -- played a leading role in expanding those same powers during the Bush years far beyond what they had ever been before. 

The parallel is too obvious to require elaboration:  there is no shortage of Democrats and progressives who hurled all sorts of accusatory rhetoric at Bush and Cheney for -- as Hayden put it -- "state secrets, targeted killings, indefinite detention, renditions, the opposition to extending the right of habeas corpus to prisoners," etc., yet now either turn a blind eye to or actively defend Obama as he does exactly the same thing, and sometimes worse.  It's certainly true that there has been far more dissent to Obama's actions in these areas from prominent progressive commentators than there ever was conservative dissent to Bush, but the vast bulk of Democrats who screamed such bloody murder about these policies during the Bush years are steadfastly silent or, worse, even supportive now that Obama is doing them.  I can't think of anything more absurd than the claim that Democrats currently defending Obama's assassination program would be defending Bush if he asserted the same unchecked power; there'd be no rhetorical limit on the accusations they'd be hurling if it were Bush and Cheney asserting the power to order the CIA to assassinate American citizens without due process and far from any battlefield.

Civil liberties and a belief in the need to check government power is something many people care about only when the other party is in control.  They seem to believe that there are two kinds of leaders -- Good ones (their party) and Bad ones (the other party) -- and it's only when the latter wield power that safeguards and checks are necessary.  Good leaders, by definition, are entitled to trust and faith that they will wield power appropriately and for Good ends, thus rendering unnecessary things like accountability, transparency, oversight and even due process.  Of course, the core premise of our government from the start was that political power will be inevitably abused if it is exercised without constraints, that nothing is more irrational or destructive than placing blind faith in political leaders to exercise unchecked power magnanimously.  But the temptation to want to follow Leaders blindly -- to believe in their core Goodness and to thus vest them with unverified trust -- is almost as compelling a part of human nature as the abuse of power when exercised without checks and in the dark.

That's why self-anointed defenders of the Constitution are instantly transformed into authoritarians and back again every time there is a change of party control:  many people don't believe in these principles generally, but only when political leaders they dislike are in power.  The problem, though, is that endorsing civil liberties abuses because one's own Party is in power virtually ensures that those abuses will become permanent, available to future leaders from the other Party as well.  That was the argument which fell on deaf ears when made to cheering Bush supporters, and it's barely more effective now.

* * * * *

Just to underscore the "continuity" hailed by Michael Hayden, read the two-page introduction to this Brief filed on Friday by the ACLU and CCR on behalf of Anwar Awlaki [link fixed]; it's extraordinary how similar to the Bush years are the "justifications" for Obama's assertions of executive authority and claimed power to act free of judicial review.

More terrorism fear-mongering exposed as frivolous

(updated below)

TPM, November 17, 2009:

Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Cheney and founder of the Keep America Safe PAC, claimed on Fox News last night that holding terrorism trials in New York "endangers the United States" and brings the country "back to a pre-9/11 mentality" . . . .

She also hinted that civilian trials would lead to more terrorist attacks.

New York Times, today:

Not one, not two, but three terrorism cases weaved their way simultaneously this week through the federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan. . . .

The courthouse, on Pearl Street off Foley Square, has become "the cineplex of terrorism trials," said Karen J. Greenberg, executive director of the Center on Law and Security at New York University. Her words may have been mildly flippant, but her point could not have been more serious.

Here we have all these cases unfolding in the civic heart of New York -- people accused or convicted of loathsome deeds involving mass murder, whether planned or carried out. Not only have the proceedings been handled within the rule of law, but also New Yorkers went about their business without so much as a raised eyebrow.

The normality speaks volumes.

What's most striking is how we collectively never learn lessons.  These are the same people who ran around screaming for two years that we had to attack Iraq or else Saddam would get us all with his mad chemical scientists (Dr. Anthrax and Mrs. Germ) and nuclear clouds, yet they are still listened to whenever they unleash their newest Scary Villains.  Fear is a potent weapon.

Speaking of fear-mongering, The Guardian today has an article with this headline:  "Barack Obama accused of exaggerating terror threat for political gain."  It quotes numerous Pakistani and European officials as arguing that the Obama administration's travel advisory this week for Europe -- and its accompanying claim about ongoing plots aimed at Germany and France -- "was politically motivated and not based on credible new information."  In particular, these sources asserted that the alert "was an attempt to justify a recent escalation in US drone and helicopter attacks inside Pakistan"; was influenced by the imminent elections; and, most of all, that "President Obama was reacting to pressure to demonstrate that his Afghan war strategy and this year's troop surge, which are unpopular with the American public, were necessary." 

I wasn't particularly impressed with the reporting here:   Pakistani officials always downplay the Terrorism threat coming from their country and the European officials cited in this article are largely (though not exclusively) anonymous.  But then I saw this Associated Press article this morning:

NATO: terror threat in Europe justifies Afghan war

An al-Qaida-linked plot that triggered this week's U.S. terror alert for Europe underlines the need for the war in Afghanistan, a top NATO commander argued Friday.

U.S. Adm. James Stavridis, NATO's top commander in Europe, said terrorists using Afghanistan as a base are still trying to target Europe and that this threat justifies a war that has grown unpopular in many places. 

This doesn't at all prove that the terror alert was designed to justify the war by spreading fear, but military officials wasted no time seizing on the alert for that purpose.  That is essentially how America is governed:  constantly ensure that Americans are petrified of an always-changing, always-expanding cast of Horribles so that they submit to whatever policies -- wars -- are alleged to be devoted to eradicating those threats.  There isn't much attention paid to what happens to a citizenry that is kept in a constant state of increasing fear, but there should be, because the way that degrades a nation's character can't be overstated.

 

UPDATE:  Several important items relating to these issues:

(1) Here's an excellent 2-minute video of what is actually happening in New York as Terrorist trials proceed, in contrast to the swamp of fear-mongering to which we have been relentlessly subjected (h/t Daphne Eviatar):

 

(2) As I indicated, the media led the way in War on Terror fear-mongering with articles like the one from CNN linked above, touting the scary Iraqis Villains "Dr. Germ and Mrs. Anthrax."  But perhaps the nadir of that fear-mongering was the media's fixation on the Most Wanted Iraqis deck of playing cards, which they touted endlessly.  Today, Marc Lynch pointed me to something amazing that I had never seen before:  watch this YouTube video from an Al Jazeera documentary on the media's coverage of the Iraq War, beginning at the 4:50 mark, as the U.S. military introduces the playing deck and media figures become instantly desperate to get their own copies and then dutifully march forward to promote them.  It's really quite something.

 

(3) ProPublica's Dafna Linzer has a very worthwhile exposé on one of the detainees the Obama administration is attempting to indefinitely imprison without any charges (no trial or even military commission).  Using inadvertently disclosed information, she compellingly documents how dubious the case against him is.

 

(4) Chris Floyd has an important essay on several complex issues, including some discussed here.  Without endorsing all of it, I highly recommend it.

Opposition to the rule of law

As part of the multi-tiered justice system it created for War on Terror detainees -- whereby some are sent to real courts, some are placed before newly concocted military commissions, and others are just held indefinitely without any charges, all based on the unfettered discretion of the Government -- the Obama DOJ last June brought Ahmed Ghailani, accused of bombing two East African embassies in 1998, from Guantanamo to New York to stand trial in federal court.  Ghailani had been detained by the U.S. without any charges for the past six years, including two years in a secret CIA "black site" beyond the reach even of international human rights monitors.  At the time they brought him to the U.S. to stand trial, the Obama DOJ believed that the evidence against Ghailani was so overwhelming that a conviction would be close to certain, thus showcasing the efficacy of trying accused Terrorists in federal court.

But that plan just ran into a roadblock called "the rule of law."  Judge Lewis Kaplan of the Southern District of New York yesterday barred the testimony of the Government's key witness -- the individual who says he sold Ghailani the TNT used to blow up the embassies -- because the Government only learned of that witness as a result of torturing Ghailani.  Kaplan -- who previously rejected Ghailani's motion to have the indictment dismissed on the ground that his right to a speedy trial had been violated and that the torture he suffered compelled dismissal -- relied on centuries worth of clear legal precedent barring the Government from benefiting from information it obtains via coercion and abuse of the defendant.  In the 1935 case Brown v. Mississippi, the Supreme Court barred confessions made by black defendants that were beaten out of them by Mississippi sheriffs, explaining that the use of coerced statements has been "the curse of all countries" (emphasis added):

It was the chief iniquity, the crowning infamy of the Star Chamber, and the Inquisition, and other similar institutions. The Constitution recognized the evils that lay behind these practices and prohibited them in this country. . . . The duty of maintaining constitutional rights of a person on trial for his life rises above mere rules of procedure, and wherever the court is clearly satisfied that such violations exist, it will refuse to sanction such violations and will apply the corrective.

That, and countless other judicial precedents, is what Judge Kaplan applied to bar the Government from benefiting from its abusive treatment of Ghailani, explaining that the rule of law, if it is to be meaningful, must apply to everyone, even to the Scariest Terrorists (click on image to enlarge):

The Obama DOJ, as always, was eager to avoid any public airing of what was actually done to detainees, and thus did not contest, but rather conceded for purposes of the Motion, that Ghailani was abused during his detention at the CIA black site, arguing instead that (a) learning of the witness' name was too attenuated to the torture to warrant barring the witness, and (b) they had grounds for discovering the witness independent of the abuse.  Kaplan rejected both claims, and gave the Governemnt several days to re-work their trial strategy (or appeal) now that their key witness is banned.

All of this, needless to say, is being depicted from predictable corners as proof that Terrorists do not belong in real courts.  National Review's Andy McCarthy complained that "civilian due-process standards are crippling the government's case" and that "we are intentionally tying our hands behind our backs and running an unnecessarily high risk of acquittal in a case involving a war criminal."  Wisconsin Law Professor Ann Althouse thundered:  "I want to hear President Obama explain his decision and the judge's decision to the American people."  Politico announced that Judge Kaplan's ruling "could deal a major setback to those who favor civilian criminal trials for Guantanamo Bay prisoners, including those suspected in the September 11 attacks."  McCarthy lamented:  "the slam dunk has become a horse race, one the government could actually lose."

Consider the rationale driving these who object to real trials:  it's vital that the Government be able to use information that it obtained by torturing people.   It's equally vital that the Government be absolutely assured that it will obtain a conviction against anyone it accuses of being a Terrorist.  Because this is a "war," we can waive our usual rules of justice.  Any proceeding which imposes limits on the Government's ability to profit from its torture, or which introduces any uncertainty as to the verdict, is proven to be both inappropriate and dangerous.  We can and should simply imprison whomever we want in the War on Terror without the need for any charges, but if we do charge and try them, it should only be in newly invented tribunals (i.e., military commissions) where traditional due process is severely reduced and the rules are designed to ensure a guilty verdict, even it means allowing torture-obtained evidence. 

People who think this way, by definition, simply do not believe in the rule of law.  A system that guarantees guilty verdicts is not one that operates under the rule of law.  Those are called "show trials" -- at least they used to be when other countries did that.  And the demand that torture-obtained evidence be admissible not only removes one from adherence to the rule of law, but from the civilized world as well.  The whole point of a "justice system" is that there are rules that are well-established and which apply equally to everyone.  Although the requirement that the Government adhere to those rules will inevitably mean that some very, very bad people are acquitted -- including mass murderers, child rapists, and even Terrorists -- that's the price we've always been willing to pay to live under what we call "the rule of law" and a "justice system."  Those pointing to Judge Kaplan's ruling as proof that Terrorists should not be tried in a real court -- all because he applied centuries-old legal principles to the Government -- believe in none of that, by definition.

Then again, this whole spectacle of bringing Ghaliani to New York is quite like a show trial anyway.  The Obama DOJ only deigned to allow Ghaliani a trial because it was convinced it was guaranteed of a conviction; had it not been so convinced, they would have simply sent him to a military commission or held him without charges of any kind, as they're doing to multiple other detainees against whom they don't believe they can win in a real court.  Beyond that, the administration has already asserted what it calls "post-acquittal detention power":  namely, the power to continue imprisoning anyone as an "enemy combatant" under the law of war even if they charge that person with crimes and lose in court.   Indeed, Judge Kaplan -- seemingly eager to assure the public that he wasn't endangering them with his ruling -- cited this claimed power in his decision:

So even if Ghaliani is acquitted, it's almost certain that we'll just keep imprisoning him -- effectively forever -- without any charges at all.  The Obama administration deserves some credit for bringing him to trial in the first place, but it's very hard to know what the supposed benefit is -- or how it vindicates the rule of law -- if it is a classic "show trial":  if he's convicted, we'll all celebrate how Justice has been vindicated, but if he's acquitted on all charges, we'll just keep him in a cage forever anyway, under the theory the the President possesses "post-acquittal detention power."

Obama era justice

(updated below)

From The Washington Post today:

A Syrian man released from the prison at Guantanamo Bay last year sued the U.S. military Wednesday, saying that he was the victim of a "Kafkaesque nightmare" in which he was tortured by al-Qaeda after being accused of being U.S. spy, liberated, then tortured by the Americans, who held him for seven more years by mistake.

Abdul Rahim Abdul Razak al-Janko, 32, who has been resettled outside the United States, filed suit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, the court that ordered his release in June 2009. At the time, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon concluded that the U.S. government's case for holding Janko "defies common sense."

Janko was tortured by al-Qaeda and imprisoned by the Taliban for 18 months on suspicion of being a spy for the United States or Israel. Leon found no evidence that the Syrian was loyal to either group.

Janko "is the victim of a decade-long Kafkaesque nightmare from which he is just awakening," the suit says.

Janko says that he was urinated on by his American captors, slapped, threatened with loss of fingernails, and exposed to sleep deprivation, extreme cold and stress positions. . . .

Spokesmen for the Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment late Wednesday on the case, which had not been entered into the court's electronic database.

Fortunately, the Obama DOJ -- which fought unsuccessfully to keep Janko imprisoned at Guantanamo -- has been so consistent in its standards that one need not wait to hear from them to know how they will respond.  It's the same way they've responded in similar cases:  whatever was done to this person is a State Secret that no court can review; those who are responsible for the abuse do and should enjoy full legal immunity; and, besides, we should all be Looking Forward, Not Backward at "unnecessary battles" like this one.  I don't know why Janko can't just accept that what was done to him is a big secret that cannot possibly be compensated without jeopardizing American National Security and, more important, realize that he should just get on with his life and the Glorious Future and stop asking us all to Look Backward to what was done to him (all the way back to the ancient past of 2004 and 2007 and 2009).  That's the only just thing to do. 

Note this similarity as well:  Janko was, as the Court found, first "not only imprisoned, but tortured by Al Qaeda into making a false 'confession'" that he was an American spy, and then, lawlessly imprisoned for 18 months by the Taliban as a spy, only thereafter to be abducted and lawlessly detained by the U.S. for seven years, where he was also tortured.  All that, despite no evidence whatsoever that he was loyal to Al Qaeda and plenty of evidence that he was not (namely, the fact that they detained and tortured him as an American spy).  Cases such as this one really underscore how wise it is to vest the President with the power to decide -- on his own, with no review or oversight -- who is and is not a Terrorist worthy of death.

 

UPDATE:  The always-thorough Andy Worthington last June wrote an excellent narrative on the heinous plight of Janko, which is well worth reading (h/t harpie).  That the Obama DOJ's tactics virtually ensure he will receive no accountability or justice is horrifying, though par for the course by now.

Times Square bomber: Cause and effect in the War on Terror

Faisal Shahzad was sentenced by a federal judge to life in prison yesterday for his attempted bombing of Times Square, a crime for which he previously pleaded guilty.  Aside from proving yet again how uniquely effective our real judicial system is (as opposed to military commissions or lawless detention) in convicting and punishing Terrorists (see this NYT Editorial on that issue this morning), this episode sheds substantial light on what I wrote about on Monday:  namely, how our actions in the Muslim world -- ostensibly undertaken to combat Terrorism -- do more than anything else to spur Terrorism and ensure its permanent continuation.

Ever since Shahzad was apprehended, the media storyline has been one of faux bafflement:  why would a naturalized Pakistani-American citizen with an M.B.A. and such a nice, middle-class life in the U.S. possibly turn into such a vicious Terrorist Monster?  But from the start, the evidence answering that question has been both clear and overwhelming.  The New York Times examined a decade's worth of emails and other private communications as Shahzad became radicalized against the U.S., in which he railed with increasing fury against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, drone attacks in Pakistan, Israeli violence against Palestinians and Muslims generally, Guantanamo and torture, and asked: "Can you tell me a way to save the oppressed? And a way to fight back when rockets are fired at us and Muslim blood flows?"  When he pleaded guilty in June, this is what he told the baffled and angry Judge about why he did what he did: 

If the United States does not get out of Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries controlled by Muslims, he said, "we will be attacking U.S.," adding that Americans "only care about their people, but they don't care about the people elsewhere in the world when they die" . . . .

As soon as he was taken into custody May 3 at John F. Kennedy International Airport, onboard a flight to Dubai, the Pakistani-born Shahzad told agents that he was motivated by opposition to U.S. policy in the Muslim world, officials said.

"One of the first things he said was, 'How would you feel if people attacked the United States? You are attacking a sovereign Pakistan'," said one law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the interrogation reports are not public.

And then yesterday, at his sentencing, this is what he said when asked if he still wanted to plead guilty:

"Yes," said Shahzad, and then said he wanted to plead guilty and 100 times more," because he wanted the U.S. to know it will continue to suffer attacks if it does not leave Iraq and Afghanistan and stop drone strikes in Pakistan.

Calm, but clearly angry, and standing the whole time . . . . Shahzad said the judge needed to understand his role. "I consider myself a Muslim soldier," he said. When [Judge] Cedarbaum asked whether he considered the people in Times Square to be innocent, he said they had elected the U.S. government.

"Even children?" said Cedarbaum.

"When the drones [in Pakistan] hit, they don't see children," answered Shahzad. He then said, "I am part of the answer to the U.S. killing the Muslim people."

Shahzad is far from unusual.  In fact, virtually every perpetrator of an attempted anti-U.S. Terrorist attack -- beginning with 9/11 and even before -- has cited similar rationale for why they are willing and eager, even at the cost of their own lives, to attack the U.S.:  because the U.S., through its own actions and its enabling of Israel, constantly brings violence, invasions, bombings, occupations, child-killing sanctions, overthrows, foreign control, and widespread death to their part of the world, and has been doing so for many decades.  Obviously, religious fanaticism plays a role in causing people to be willing to give up their own lives, but so constant and consistent is this claimed rationale from Terrorists -- we're doing this in retaliation for U.S. actions in the Muslim world -- that it should no longer be questioned or doubted what principally motivates these attacks.

It's one thing for Americans to argue that we have the right to engage in these actions, that we are justified in doing them, or that we somehow are doing Good Things for Muslims with our bombs and drones even though these primitive ingrates don't realize it.  But it's another thing entirely to act shocked, surprised or confused when our endless (and still-escalating) stream of bombings, invasions, occupations, and other means of control in their part of the world end up provoking a desire to retaliate and return the favor.  It's not just expected that our actions will produce these reactions, but inevitable.  It's the most basic part of human nature there is.  John Cole put it this way yesterday:

When you bomb people and kill their family, friends, and neighbors, burn down their homes and burn down their businesses and kill their livestock, spewing unexploded ordnance and munitions in fields where they work and their children play, it pisses them off. Many of them even get pissed off enough to fight back against the people they think are responsible for the bombing. They probably even form lifelong grudges when they find their mother and children in thousands of bloody pieces in their former homes.

Again, this is not rocket surgery. If they were not sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda before, after you bomb the shit out of them, they will be.  

As always, the issue is not justification -- it is inherently unjust to deliberately target civilians with violence -- but causation.  Look at what happened to Americans and what we did in response to a single, one-day attack on 9/11.  Imagine the fury and craving for vengeance and violence that would be unleashed in the U.S. if we were being invaded, occupied, bombed, tortured, disappeared, and indefinitely, lawlessly detained by a foreign Muslim power on U.S. soil for a full decade or more. 

The very idea that we're going to spend an entire decade dropping a constant stream of bombs and other munitions on and in multiple Muslim countries and otherwise interfere in their governments -- and then expect that nobody will try to attack us back -- evinces such a child-like sense of imperial entitlement that it's hard to put into words.  And yet this is exactly the mindset that pervades our discussions of Terrorism:  why would anyone possibly want to do something as heinous and senseless as placing a bomb in the United States?  I just don't understand it.  What kind of an irrational fanatic and monster would even think of something like that?  Of course, the people who say such things rarely apply the same language to our own political leaders who are engaging in far, far more widespread violence over there and still crave more of it.

This is the cause-and-effect that, in general, is so rarely discussed or acknowledged.  Yesterday, Andrew Sullivan responded to some of the points I raised about Obama's assassination program, and in doing so, again explained why he favors assassinations as part of a global war against "a theocratic military organization of horrifying methods":

[T]here are groups and individuals out there trying to kill as many Westerners, and fellow Muslims, as they can, and to do so with no qualms and with as much damage as possible. This is not a chimera. Attacks have continued every year since 9/11 and before. The perpetrators of 9/11 remain at large. New bases in Yemen and Somalia and Iraq and Pakistan and Afghanistan exist.

I wonder why "attacks have continued every year since 9/11" and why there are "new bases" springing up all over the world?  Might anything we've been doing "since 9/11" -- or before -- have caused that?  Indeed, what this mentality calls for -- an always-escalating global war aimed at Muslims -- is perfectly designed (even if unintentionally) to ensure that Terrorist attacks on the U.S. not only continue but escalate forever.  In an excellent response to Sullivan's defense of assassinations, The New Yorker's Amy Davidson makes clear the breadth and depth of the destruction which this mentality spawns:

Sullivan thinks that there is a sprawling international battlefield in the war on terror on which al-Awlaki can be said to be a soldier. But we are not at war with Yemen -- not yet. Or are we just talking about a metaphorical, or figurative, battlefield? What are this battlefield's boundaries -- does it have any? If our fight against Al Qaeda is truly global, can the President order an American citizen assassinated without due process in London, or, for that matter, in Brooklyn? 

It's true that we're not legally at war with Yemen, but we most certainly are at war in Yemen, just as we are in Afghanistan, and in Pakistan, and in Iraq, and in Somalia, while we threaten Iran and arm and otherwise enable Israel in its acts of wars over the past several years in Lebanon, Gaza, and Syria.  What do we think and expect the people in that part of the world to do in the face of this always-escalating global aggression and violence?  What would we do -- what do we do -- in the face of it when a mere sliver of it is brought to our soil?  And consider the implications of those who think we must bomb whatever locations where Terrorists are found in order to "disrupt" their training:  a never-ending expansion of our War on Terror to all new places in the Muslim world.  Does anyone rational believe that this will do anything other than exacerbate the threat which Americans face?

In fact, consider what would likely happen if we did succeed in assassinating the Wikipedia-condemned, Evil Al Qaeda Monster, Anwar Awlaki.  I've devoted little attention to this question because I don't believe the President has the authority to order due-process-free CIA assassinations of American citizens even if good outcomes can be achieved.  But it's hard to imagine a good outcome from this action.

Whatever else Awlaki is, he's a highly popular Islamic cleric to whom huge numbers of Muslims listen.  If the U.S. were to kill him in a drone attack as he sleeps, it would eliminate Awlaki, but it is painfully obvious that: (a) someone would quickly take his place (does Awalki radicalize Muslim youth, or do they listen to him because they're already radicalized?); (b) his anti-American sermons (preserved forever on the Internet) would almost certainly be even more influential and popular if he were "martyred" by the U.S.; and, most important, (c) killing him would inspire large numbers of his devout, youthful adherents to want to attack Americans in retaliation.  Indeed, Awlaki himself was long considered a moderate imam in the U.S., but -- as The New York Times' Scott Shane explained at a recent, superb panel discussion on Awlaki -- he was radicalized by perceived U.S. persecution of Muslims in the wake of 9/11.  Killing Muslims we don't like from the sky can eliminate those specific targets, but -- as even the DOD has recognized since 2004 -- those actions are precisely what spawn more and more Terrorism.  It's certainly true that even a total cessation of U.S. violence in the Muslim world would not eliminate all Terrorists, but our behavior clearly, on balance, spawns more Terrorism and more threats to Americans' security.

Our national foreign policy seems boiled down to this premise:  we must and will continue to bomb, invade and control Muslim countries until they stop wanting to attack and bomb us or, at least, are unable to continue to do so.  Obviously, though, if we continue to engage in that behavior, that day will never come, given that this behavior is precisely what fuels most of it.  Just ask them and they'll be more than happy to explain it, as Faisal Shahzad has spent months attempting to do.

Truth about the public option momentarily emerges, quickly scampers back into hiding

(updated below)

As I've noted before, the column of mine which produced the greatest level of hate mail and anger in the last year -- both in terms of intensity and quantity -- was this one from August, 2009, when I compiled the evidence strongly suggesting that the White House, despite Obama's multiple statements to the contrary, had secretly bargained away the public option with corporate interests early in the negotiation process and therefore did not intend to push for its inclusion in the final bill.  That produced so much anger because it contradicted the central Democratic orthodoxy at the time that Obama -- as he claimed in public -- was trying as hard as he could to have a public option in the health care bill, but . . .  gosh darn it, he was unfortunately stymied by his inability to get 60 votes for it, despite his best efforts (the fact that the health care bill ultimately passed via reconciliation, whereby the public option would have needed only 50 votes, was a separate issue).

Illustrative of the backlash was this post from The New Republic's Jonathan Chait:

I don't agree with Greenwald's positions on foreign policy and civil liberties, but he does have a valid beef with Obama in these areas. But when he insists that Obama secretly opposed the public option and has never wanted more stimulus, in the face of overwhelming evidence that the administration pushed the Senate as far left as it would go on those bills, he is revealing himself as a fanatic.

At the time Chait wrote that, there was already ample evidence that the White House had, in fact, secretly negotiated away the public option early on in the process, including confirmation from a New York Times reporter of the existence of such a deal, as well the fact that Russ Feingold said as clearly as he could that the reason there was no public option in the final bill was because the White House never pushed for it, because the final bill -- without the public option -- was the "legislation that the president wanted in the first place."

But now, definitive evidence has emerged that this is exactly what happened:  a new book by Tom Daschle.  As Igor Volsky of ThinkProgress expertly documents -- both by citing to Daschle's book and by interviewing him -- the White House had negotiated away the public option very early in the process (July, 2009), even though Obama and the administration spent months after that assuring their supporters that they were doing everything they could do have a public option in the bill:

In his book, Daschle reveals that after the Senate Finance Committee and the White House convinced hospitals to to accept $155 billion in payment reductions over ten years on July 8, the hospitals and Democrats operated under two "working assumptions." "One was that the Senate would aim for health coverage of at least 94 percent of Americans," Daschle writes. "The other was that it would contain no public health plan," which would have reimbursed hospitals at a lower rate than private insurers.

I asked Daschle if the White House had taken the option off the table in July 2009 and if all future efforts to resuscitate the provision were destined to fail:

DASCHLE: I don't think it was taken off the table completely. It was taken off the table as a result of the understanding that people had with the hospital association, with the insurance (AHIP), and others. I mean I think that part of the whole effort was based on a premise. That premise was, you had to have the stakeholders in the room and at the table. Lessons learned in past efforts is that without the stakeholders' active support rather than active opposition, it's almost impossible to get this job done. They wanted to keep those stakeholders in the room and this was the price some thought they had to pay. Now, it's debatable about whether all of these assertions and promises are accurate, but that was the calculation. I think there is probably a good deal of truth to it. You look at past efforts and the doctors and the hospitals, and the insurance companies all opposed health care reform. This time, in various degrees of enthusiasm, they supported it. And if I had to point out some of the key differences between then and now, it would be the most important examples of the difference.

[VOLSKY]:  Despite being "taken off the table" as a result of the "understanding," the White House continued to publicly deny claims that it was backing away from the provision even as it tried to focus on other aspects of the bill. "Nothing has changed," said Linda Douglass, then communications director for the White House Office of Health Reform in August of 2009 and many times thereafter. "The president has always said that what is essential is that health insurance reform must lower costs, ensure that there are affordable options for all Americans and it must increase choice and competition in the health insurance market. He believes the public option is the best way to achieve those goals."

What Daschle said here -- in his interview with Volsky and, apparently, in his new book -- is crystal clear, and is consistent with what has long been clear:  despite its stream of public statements to the contrary, the Obama White House made no efforts to have a public option in the bill because their secret, early agreement with "stakeholders" was that no public option (and thus no real mechanism of competition with private industry) would be created. 

One can reasonably argue that entering into secret, backroom deals to please industry interests was a "pragmatic" thing to do, notwithstanding how often Obama railed against exactly such transactions during his campaign (remember the I'll-put-all-health-care-negotiations-on-C-SPAN pledge?).  One can also argue that the public option would never have gotten 60 votes even if Obama and the White House had pushed for it.  But one cannot argue that the White House did push for it, or even that they wanted it, since it was part of their deal with industry and its lobbyists from the start that it would not be in the final bill.

Quite amusingly and predictably, this ThinkProgress post was up for a very short period of time when Daschle suddenly emailed them a "clarification," which said this (see the Update):

"In describing some of the challenges to passage of the public option in the health reform bill, I did not mean to suggest in any way that the President was not committed to it. The President fought for the public option just as he did for affordable health care for all Americans. The public option was dropped only when it was no longer viable in Congress, not as a result of any deal cut by the White House. While I was disappointed that the public option was not included in the final legislation, the Affordable Care Act remains a tremendous achievement for the President and the nation."

But that directly contradicts what Daschle told Volsky (the Public Option "was taken off the table as a result of the understanding that people had with the hospital association, with the insurance (AHIP), and others"), as well as what, apparently, is in his own book.  As soon as the ThinkProgress item was up, a controversy begun to erupt, for obvious reasons.  We'll never know what prompted Daschle to issue this "clarification" -- Daschle is, let's recall, exactly what Matt Taibbi so memorably described him as being -- but it's painfully clear that the actual truth about what happened with the public option finally emerged quite clearly, albeit for a few short moments.  Is Daschle going to retract his not-yet-released book, too?

 

UPDATE:  David Dayen has an excellent post on this matter.

How pervasive is Democratic dissatisfaction?

I understand that some people who hold themselves out as "journalists" are going to be Party loyalists and apparatchiks whose overarching goal is to dutifully serve Party officials.  Still, just for the sake of credibility and efficacy if nothing else, one would think that the smarter ones would at least bind themselves to some minimal notions of reality.  The American Prospect's Executive Editor Mark Schmitt apparently has no concerns of that sort.  In a Bloggingheads discussion yesterday with National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru, who asked him about the prospect of a 2012 primary challenge, Schmitt said this:

I think there's a lot of attention -- y'know, there's too much attention on the dissatisfied Democratic base, um, y'know, represented, by y'know, really by a couple of blogs [chuckling], frankly. 

It'd be great news for the Democratic Party and the Obama White House if Schmitt's claim were true.  The White House itself certainly doesn't appear to share Schmitt's views, given how repeatedly and petulantly Obama officials have complained about this dissatisfaction:  a very strange thing to be concerned with if it were confined to just "a couple of blogs."  Nor do pollsters appear to view the world through the sunny, pro-Democratic mentality expressed by Schmitt, as it is a virtual consensus among them that the greatest threat to Democratic power is the so-called "enthusiasm gap."

But judge for yourself:  just examine the recent evidence on this question to see if Schmitt's claim -- "the dissatisfied Democratic base [is] represented really by a couple of blogs" -- bears any relationship whatsoever to reality:

New York Times, September 17, 2010:

Labor leaders, alarmed at a possible Republican takeover of one or both houses of Congress, promise to devote a record amount of money and manpower to helping Democrats stave off disaster. But political analysts, and union leaders themselves, say that their efforts may not be enough because union members, like other important parts of the Democratic base, are not feeling particularly enthusiastic about the party -- a reality that, in turn, further dampens the Democrats' chances of holding onto their Congressional majorities. . . .

Patricia Elizondo, president of the 2,000-member Milwaukee local of the International Association of Machinists, fears just that.

"People have been unemployed for two years, and they're unhappy that the health care bill was not as good as they expected," she said. "Two years ago, I had many members going door-to-door to campaign. Now they're saying, 'Why should I?  We supported that candidate, but he didn't follow through'."

Los Angeles Times, September 11, 2010:

[Obama] energized a coalition -- made up of blacks, women, Latinos, young voters and large numbers of suburbanites -- that some believed would keep Democrats in power for years to come.

A scant 20 months later, the Obama coalition is frayed and frazzled.

A majority of those who voted for Obama still approve of the job he is doing. But that number is eroding.

Surprisingly, support for the president among Latinos, young people and women has dropped as much as it has among groups that were considered less likely to stick with the president, such as white males, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. . . .

Some who threw their lot in with Obama expressed a sense of being let down by the man who promised change and pledged to transform the country.  Some attributed that to their own lofty expectations and, perhaps, their naivete.  Others pointed to what they saw as his lack of focus on the still-faltering economy.

And some suggested they were simply hoodwinked by a smooth-talking politician.

New York Times, September 29, 2010:

Democratic donors like George Soros, the bête noire of the right, and his fellow billionaire Peter B. Lewis, who each gave more than $20 million to Democratic-oriented groups in the 2004 election, appear to be holding back so far.

"Mr. Soros believes that he can be most effective by funding groups that promote progressive policy outcomes in areas such as health care, the environment and foreign policy," said an adviser, Michael Vachon. "So he has opted to fund those activities."

The absence of these Democratic megadonors is contributing to a huge disparity in spending between pro-Republican and pro-Democratic groups. . . .

The attention of Mr. Lewis, chairman of Progressive Insurance, also appears to be elsewhere this year. Jennifer Frutchy, who advises Mr. Lewis on his philanthropy, said he was focused at the moment on "building progressive infrastructure and marijuana reform."

"That's just where his head is right now," Ms. Frutchy said [GG:  note the distinction they are drawing between (a) donating to Democrats and (b) advancing progressive causes]. . . .

For donors, there is certainly an element of fatigue from giving cycle after cycle, as well as an economic squeeze brought on by the recession, the operatives said. But some more ideological donors are also upset that the Obama administration has not been more aggressive in pushing a liberal agenda.

Markos Moulitsas, Daily Kos, yesterday:

 GALLUP:

"Hispanic voters' support for Democratic candidates waned in August and September. As a result, Hispanics in September favored Democrats by a 13-point margin (51% to 38%), compared with 32-point margins in June and July."

That's the price Democrats are paying for failing to address key immigration issues. . . . Obama and the Democrats look weak, disengaged, and aloof on the number one issue facing a key constituency in the Democratic electoral coalition. It hasn't just been bad policy, but disastrous electoral strategy as well.

It's true that the same Gallup poll shows Obama's approval ratings at 79% among Democrats and 75% among liberals.  But "approval ratings" -- where one has a dichotomized choice (yes/no) -- say nothing about enthusiasm levels or willingness to take action in support of someone.  More important, the fact that 25% of liberals and 20% of Democrats withhold approval for Obama is obviously significant, by itself proving that dissatisfaction extends far, far beyond a "couple of blogs."  Add to that all of this other empirical evidence, and it's undeniably clear that dissatisfaction is widespread in the Party -- pervading most of its core constituencies -- and is a serious threat to continued Democratic rule.

It's fine if someone wants to be a cheerleader, clapping loudly in order to rally the troops.  Every Party has and needs those types of people (though it's strange (though not unusual) that a person who wants to do that would call himself a "journalist"; generally one finds that trait in political operatives and spokespeople).  But as the Bush propagandists of the last decade learned the hard way -- as they continuously insisted that the Iraq War was Going Great even as everyone could see how false that was -- being an effective propagandist requires at least a pretense of what Michael Kinsely today hails as "intellectual honesty":

Intellectual honesty is more demanding: It means being truthful about what's going on inside your own head.

To start, you shouldn't say anything that you don't believe is true. But that's just to start. Intellectual honesty means that you have a basis for your belief, that you have tested your belief against other beliefs on the same subject, that you have no blinding bias or, at least, have put bias aside as best you can.

"Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander": Your views on, say, the constitutional limits of presidential war powers should not turn on which party controls the presidency. . . .

Intellectual dishonesty, meanwhile, is so built into the Washington culture that you have to force yourself to notice it. It even has a more familiar and less pejorative name: "spin." Spin is not just another word for lies. A better definition might be "indifference to the truth." The really great spin artists, like Karl Rove and James Carville, are celebrated as masters of their craft.  Journalists crowd around them, longing to get spun.

The claim that dissatisfaction among Democrats is confined to a "couple of blogs" might advance Schmitt's political objectives.  Given the human craving to make perceptions correspond with desires, it likely makes him feel good to believe that it's true.  But it's so plainly false that it's hard to believe that anyone could say it with a straight face, let alone believe that it will help anything -- their Party or themselves -- to claim it.  As a general proposition, papering over serious problems -- pretending they do not exist -- is never constructive, and that's certainly true when it comes to a Party's political failures.  Worst of all, making this claim obscures a very important truth that ought to be promoted and amplified, one which the establishment media ("move to the Right!") will do its best to deny after November:  Democrats do themselves no favors when they ignore the wishes, values and agenda of their "base":  i.e., those who are most responsible for their being in power.  Quite the opposite is true.

War on Terror logic

The U.S. war in (against) Pakistan continues to escalate, as Pakistanis attacked NATO tankers carrying fuel through their country to soldiers in Afghanistan last night, killing three people, an attack that was in retaliation for vastly increased U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan this month, which were ordered in alleged response to reports of increased Terrorist threats aimed at Europe, which, in turn, were in retaliation for the escalating wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan (as evidenced by the large numbers of individuals of Afghan descent involved in these plots).  Jim White -- in a post this morning entitled "Stuck in Feedback Loop: Drone Strikes Provoke Terrorists Who Provoke More Drone Strikes" -- documents exactly the process at play here:

The situation in Pakistan appears to have reached a point where a positive feedback loop prompts continued escalation on both sides. The US sees drone attacks as its primary weapon and has stepped up such attacks in the belief that they will create more security for military actions in Afghanistan and disrupt planning of terrorist attacks on the West.  Instead, the attacks appear to enrage the surviving targets, recruit more to their ranks and lead to more attacks.

What a surprise:  bombing Muslims more and more causes more and more Muslims to want to bomb the countries responsible.  That, of course, has long been the perverse "logic" driving the War on Terror.  The very idea that we're going to reduce Terrorism by more intensively bombing more Muslim countries is one of the most patently absurd, self-contradicting premises that exists.  It's exactly like announcing that the cure for lung cancer is to quadruple the number of cigarettes one smokes each day.  But that's been the core premise (at least the stated one) of our foreign policy for the last decade:  we're going to stop Terrorism by doing more and more of exactly the things that cause it (and see this very good Economist article on the ease with which drones allow a nation's leaders to pretend to its citizenry that they are not really at war -- as we're doing with Pakistan).

Speaking of counter-productive U.S. actions in Pakistan, this Washington Post article from Friday discusses the possibility that a coup could be engineered in that country to overthrow the current Government and replace it with one that is friendlier to U.S. interests:

U.S. officials pointed to recent signs that Pakistan's powerful army and opposition parties are positioning themselves to install a new civilian government to replace President Asif Ali Zardari and his prime minister in the coming months. . . . U.S. officials indicated that the administration has begun to contemplate the effects of a change, engineered through Zardari's resignation as head of his political party, the dissolution of the current coalition government, or a call for new elections under the Pakistani constitution, rather than any overt action by the military. Some suggested that a new, constitutionally-approved government that was more competent and popular, and had strong military backing, might be better positioned to support U.S. policies.

The article does not say that the U.S. is actively involved in those efforts, but it's very difficult to imagine American military and intelligence officials simply sitting passively by as a coup is underway in a country (like Pakistan) where we are so invested, just keeping their fingers crossed that it results in a new government "better positioned to support U.S. policies."  Whatever else is true, it's very easy to imagine how such a coup -- resulting in a more U.S.-friendly government -- will be perceived in that country and around the Muslim world.  That perception is unlikely to help reduce the threat of Terrorism.

For more on the growing U.S. war in (on) Pakistan, watch this quite good Rachel Maddow monologue from Thursday night:

Sullivan's defense of presidential assassinations

(updated below)

During the Bush-era torture debates, I was never able to get past my initial incredulity that we were even having a "debate" over whether the President has the authority to torture people.  Andrew Sullivan has responded to some of the questions I posed about his defense of Obama's assassination program, and I realize now that throughout this whole assassination debate, specific legal and factual issues aside, my overarching reaction is quite similar:  I actually can't believe that there is even a "debate" over whether an American President -- without a shred of due process or oversight -- has the power to compile hit lists of American citizens whom he orders the CIA to kill far away from any battlefield.  The notion that the President has such an unconstrained, unchecked power is such a blatant distortion of everything our political system is supposed to be -- such a pure embodiment of the very definition of tyrannical power -- that, no matter how many times I see it, it's still hard for me to believe there are people willing to expressly defend it.

Moreover, it's almost impossible to ignore how similar are the rhetoric and rationale between (a) Bush supporters who justified presidential torture and (b) Obama supporters who now justify presidential due-process-free assassinations.  Please read Daniel Larison's argument about that, responding to Sullivan's post.  He's exactly right. 

The central rhetorical premise of Bush defenders was that if they just scream "Terrorist!!' and "we're at war!!!!" enough times, and loudly enough, then it would make basic precepts of due process, Constitutional safeguards and the rule of law disappear.  If they demonized their targets enough (this is a really bad Terrorist who wants to kill Americans, with nukes if he can!!) -- or manipulatively invoked 9/11 enough times (note Andrew's prominent display of a smoldering WTC photo strategically placed at the top of his argument) -- then it would mean that anything goes, that no compliance with law is or should be required to do anything to them (a claim that always led to the unanswerable question:  if it's really so obvious that this is a really bad Terrorist, then why not prove it in court?). 

And if you just toss enough insult-strawmen at those who insist upon basic rights even when "we're at war!!," then you can marginalize them to the point of invisibility (I wasn't around in 2003 and thus never got to be accused by Andrew of being a Far-Leftist-pacifist-unwilling-to-fight-the-menace-of-Islamic-Evil, so I guess it's nice that I'm making up for that now.  I always thought a "pacifist" was one who opposes the use of force under all circumstances, even self-defense [a view to which I do not subscribe]; I never knew that one becomes a "pacifist" by believing that the President lacks the power to order his own citizens assassinated far from any battlefield without due process).  Just read Andrew's post to see how reliant he is on these same tactics to justify Obama's program:  quite ironic, given how often he has had these same tactics used against him during his steadfast, eloquent opposition to torture.

In any event, I was going to address a few of Andrew's specific claims, because some of them are factually inaccurate (I don't believe that's intentional, but merely the by-product of the fact that Andrew doesn't write about the legal issues raised here very often).  And I still will do that below, but before I do:  as I was writing this, I received an email from a Kenyan lawyer, David Majanja, that so perfectly illustrates how far America has fallen on these issues of basic liberty as compared to much of the rest of the world, and what authoritarian extremists many Americans have become on these questions, that I want to feature it first. 

As Majanja noted in his email to me, Kenya faces a massive threat from terrorism.  Radicals bombed the U.S. embassy in Nairobi in 1998 and attacked an Israeli-owned tourist resort and Israeli airliner in Mombasa in 2002, and that country has repeatedly been under Terrorist threats for the last decade.  Nonetheless, consider this court decision that was just issued in Nairobi on Thursday.  A Kenyan Muslim, Mohamed Sulemein, was detained in August -- without any charges or due process -- by Kenyan anti-terrorism agents (the ATPU), accused of having participated in the horrific June World Cup bombings in Kampala, Uganda, which killed 74 innocent people.  He had his passport seized and was told he would be sent to Uganda without any opportunity to contest the accusations against him.  His wife filed a habeas corpus petition in a Kenyan court, demanding that "he be treated in accordance with the laws and Constitution of Kenya," which, among other things, guarantees the right to be charged with a crime within 24 hours of arrest and not to be shipped outside the country without a hearing. 

The Kenyan Court agreed, and ruled that the due-process-free extradition of this accused Terrorist to Uganda was illegal and unconstitutional.  Just read what the court said to see what's so profoundly absent from American political thought; this, to me, is the crux of all of these debates, including the one over presidential assassinations:

The person whose rights were denied there is accused of Terrorist acts every bit as reprehensible and dangerous as the accusations aimed at Anwar Awlaki.  His rights were denied to a far less extreme degree than what is being done to Awlaki (rendition to Uganda for trial v. being targeted for due-process-free assassination).  Kenya faces a Terrorism threat at least equal to what the U.S. faces, and several times has suffered atrocious attacks on its soil.  But they are nonetheless able to recognize that citizens "are not exempted from the ordinary protections of law" by virtue of being a Terrorism suspect, and that "the preservation of liberties [even for Terrorist suspects] is the only way to reinforce this country's commitment to the rule of law and human rights."  If only that recognition were equally widespread in the U.S., which still holds itself out as "the leader of the free world."

* * * * *

As for Andrew's specific claims:  I realize that it's not possible for him to address every point I made and that he made a good faith effort to answer the questions I asked, but I was still disappointed to see him ignore these questions, because these are the same ones I could never get Bush supporters to answer either:  (1) would you also be comfortable with having a GOP President -- such as Sarah Palin -- vested with the unchecked power to order American citizens killed far from any battlefield, with no due process and no obligation to prove the accusations?; (2) Andrew says that the President does not have the right to kill American citizens on U.S. soil, but what rationale can justify that limitation once you endorse the view that the President can order citizens killed anywhere they are found via the mere accusation of Terrorism?; (3) shouldn't the long and disturbing record of serious error and/or abuse on the part of both the Bush and Obama administrations -- whereby numerous individuals, a majority, have been falsely accused of Terrorism -- lead a rational person to refuse to vest faith in the President's ability to decide who is a Terrorist without due process or oversight?; and (4) how could Bush's oversight-free detention or eavesdropping of citizens be so dangerous, whereas Obama's oversight-free killing of them isn't?

Then there are several factually inaccurate assertions.  Andrew claims that Obama has "expanded judicial review of this kind of military action," which is the only reason Awlaki's case is in court.  The claim that these assertions of power are being reviewed by courts due to Obama's beneficence is absolutely false; they're in court because Obama -- like Bush -- has been sued for acting illegally and unconstitutionally, and Obama -- like Bush -- has asserted that no courts can review his conduct due to secrecy and standing (see this article from the Obama-friendly TPM site -- headlined:  "Expert consensus:  Obama mimics Bush on state secrets" -- to see how identical the conduct is).  Obama's argument is the exact opposite of what Andrew claims:  it's that courts have no right and no power to review his decisions about which citizens are assassinated. 

Then Andrew cites Ex parte Quirin [1942]  to claim that "it is utterly uncontroversial that the military can kill a US citizen abroad if he is waging a treasonous war against the United States," but even that case -- long considered quite radical and a favorite of the Yoo/Addington camp -- came only after the defendants were charged in a military commission of being saboteurs, and the Supreme Court merely held that military commissions constitute sufficient due process for the offenses with which they were charged.  Here's what the Court actually said (emphasis added):

The President, as President and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, by Order of July 2, 1942, appointed a Military Commission and directed it to try petitioners for offenses against the law of war and the Articles of War . . . On July 3, 1942, the Judge Advocate General's Department of the Army prepared and lodged with the Commission the following charges against petitioners, supported by specifications: . . . The Commission met on July 8, 1942, and proceeded with the trial, which continued in progress while the causes were pending in this Court . . .As announced in our per curiam opinion we have resolved those questions by our conclusion that the Commission has jurisdiction to try the charge preferred against petitioners. . . .

We are concerned only with the question whether it is within the constitutional power of the national government to place petitioners upon trial before a military commission for the offenses with which they are charged. . . . Lawful combatants are subject to capture and detention as prisoners of war by opposing military forces. Unlawful combatants are likewise subject to capture and detention, but in addition they are subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals for acts which render their belligerency unlawful. . . . We hold only that those particular acts constitute an offense against the law of war which the Constitution authorizes to be tried by military commission. 

Aside from the fact that these defendants were caught in the act of engaging in hostilities -- not sleeping or driving in a car with their parents, as Awlaki might be doing when he's killed -- this case doesn't remotely justify assassinating citizens without any due process, and I really hope Andrew would retract the suggestion that it does.  The whole point of Ex parte Quirin -- as anyone can see -- is that these defendants were given due process:  a military tribunal which the court found constitutionally adequate under the circumstances.  That's the opposite of Obama's due-process-free assassinations.

Then Andrew says this:

I agree that the Obama administration's decision to shut down inspection of the evidence behind the decision to regard Awlaki as someone waging an active war against the US under "state secrets" is a step way too far. I think the president has a duty to explain in court why he believes this person must be treated as an active enemy at war with the US, and therefore treated as all such enemies in wartime as someone to be killed.

But this is the crux of the whole dispute.  Once one concedes this, what disagreement is left with critics of Obama's conduct?  What Andrew says Obama has a "duty" to do -- "explain in court why he believes this person must be treated as an active enemy at war with the US" -- is precisely that which Obama is steadfastly refusing to do.  Rather than indict or charge Awlaki, or even respond to his lawsuit with evidence of his guilt, he's simply asserting the right to kill him without any oversight.  Indeed, before Awlaki's father filed suit, that's exactly what Obama has been trying to do:  kill this American citizen without any due process whatsoever (along those lines, Andrew's announcement that he's "sick of the left treating Obama as if he has done nothing to change the dictatorial, illegal and indecent policies of his predecessor" is very odd, given that Andrew himself -- in a post from several weeks ago which he entitled "The Untamed Prince" -- called for the prosecution of Barack Obama as a war criminal, and wrote:  "Obama as executive quickly co-opted the kind of blanket secrecy and protection of the national security apparatus from the rule of law that plagued us in the Bush-Cheney administration"; those are Andrew's words, not the words of "the left").

But the most telling part of his response is where Andrew replies to my question about how he knows that Awlaki is actually an "Al Qaeda Terrorist" who deserves to die:

There is much public information about Awlaki, and I urge readers to go to Wiki and examine the public record and sources in detail to make their own minds up. . . . But seriously, is Glenn honestly saying that a man who has committed treason, has had multiple direct contacts with al Qaeda, including the 9/11 mass-murderers, has been directly connected with inciting American citizens to kill others in terror attacks is not, self-evidently, an al Qaeda terrorist who poses a direct and imminent threat to innocent human beings, motivated by a poisonous religious ideology that was responsible for the murder of 3,000 people on 9/11?

This is what we're reduced to in America:  trial by Wikipedia.  Apparently, as long as there are enough links on your Wikipedia page to other accused Terrorists, then the President can wave his imperial wand and impose the death penalty on you.  Aside from the fact that most of what is on "Wiki" comes from unproven government accusations, and aside from the fact that it's almost all rank guilt by association (Andrew:  "Witnesses report he was a spiritual adviser to and met with two 9/11 mass-murderers, Nawaf Al-Hazmi and Khalid Almihdhar"), this claim raises the painfully obvious question:  if the evidence is so clear and overwhelming that Awlaki is a Terrorist who deserves the death penalty, then why are Obama -- and his supporters -- so afraid to indict him and prove these claims in court?  That was always the quandary posed by Bush's assertion that he could eavesdrop or detain with no judicial oversight, but was doing so only on obvious Terrorists:  if it's so clear that they're Terrorists, why won't you go to court and convince a court that they're Terrorists?

As for Andrew's claim that Awlaki "has committed treason," I'll say this:  he may or may not have.  But we have this document called "the Constitution," and it makes as clear as can be that no President has the power to simply decree that someone is guilty of that crime.  Right in Article III, Section 3, it explicitly makes clear what must be done if one is to be punished as a traitor:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

What possible justification exists for ignoring that Constitutional provision?  Even if we are at war, there is, manifestly, no "war exception" to the Constitution.  "War" is not, and never has been, a cognizable excuse for disregarding Constitutional guarantees -- at least not in a republic that still adheres to the rule of law.

In general, the U.S. Constitution prohibits the deprivation of "life or liberty . . . without due process of law."  But because of how serious a crime Treason is, the Constitution imposes heightened requirements on proving it in court.  It's not something that is presidentially declared by anonymous press leaks or reading a Wikipedia page.  If the rule of law means anything, it's that explicit Constitutional protections like this one don't get to be swatted away by yelling "War!!!" or "Terrorist!" or by putting emotionally powerful pictures of 9/11 on your blog.  As the Kenyan judge put it: "the preservation of liberties [even for Terrorist suspects] is the only way to reinforce this country's commitment to the rule of law."  If you're willing to vest the President with the power to order your fellow citizens murdered as a Traitor without a shred of due process, then, by definition, you simply do not believe in these core principles.

 

UPDATE:  In response to numerous reader emails, Andrew posts a couple more brief thoughts on all of this here.

Also worth reading on this:  (1) Harper's Scott Horton, who says he originally thought the objections of civil libertarians in the Awlaki case were overblown, but has now concluded -- in light of the Obama DOJ's brief -- that the Obama program is the embodiment of "tyranny":  "When the executive claims the power to take the life of a citizen without recourse to law and legal process, and seeks to sustain that under vague claims of commander-in-chief authority, that claim is in its essence tyrannical"; and (2) former CIA officer and current novelist Barry Eisler, who examines other dubious claims made by Sullivan in defense of Obama's program.

U.N. Report finds Israel "summarily executed" U.S. citizen on flotilla

(updated below - Update II - Update III)

Last week, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights released a comprehensive report detailing its findings regarding the May, 2010, Israeli attack on the six-ship flotilla attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Israel-blockaded Gaza.  The report has been largely ignored in the American media despite the fact (or, more accurately:  because) it found that much of the Israeli force used "was unnecessary, disproportionate, excessive and inappropriate and resulted in the wholly avoidable killing and maiming of a large number of civilian passengers"; that "at least six of the killings can be characterized as extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions"; and that Israel violated numerous international human rights conventions, including the Fourth Geneva Conventions (see p. 38, para. 172). 

Even more striking in terms of U.S. media and government silence on this report is the fact that one of the victims of the worst Israeli violations was a 19-year-old American citizen.  As Gareth Porter documents in an excellent article at The Huffington Post, the report "shows conclusively, for the first time, that US citizen Furkan Dogan and five Turkish citizens were murdered execution-style by Israeli commandos."  In particular:

The report reveals that Dogan, the 19-year-old US citizen of Turkish descent, was filming with a small video camera on the top deck of the Mavi Marmara when he was shot twice in the head, once in the back and in the left leg and foot and that he was shot in the face at point blank range while lying on the ground.

The report says Dogan had apparently been "lying on the deck in a conscious or semi-conscious, state for some time" before being shot in his face.

The forensic evidence that establishes that fact is "tattooing around the wound in his face," indicating that the shot was "delivered at point blank range." The report describes the forensic evidence as showing that "the trajectory of the wound, from bottom to top, together with a vital abrasion to the left shoulder that could be consistent with the bullet exit point, is compatible with the shot being received while he was lying on the ground on his back."

Needless to say, the Israeli Government -- as it virtually always does when confronted with well-documented, official findings of its severe human rights violations -- attacked the source, accusing the report of being "biased and distorted."  The U.N. investigators interviewed 112 witnesses and consulted with numerous forensic and medical experts, while Israel refused to speak with its investigators (though Israeli officials are cooperating with a separate group investigating the attack).  There's no reason to take the findings of this report as Gospel:   like everything, it's subject to reasonable dispute, but it's clearly well-documented, consistent with documentary evidence and overwhelming witness tesitmony, and is entitled to be taken seriously.

To this day, I'm still amazed by how the American media and U.S. Government responded to this incident, given the fact that it was painfully obvious from the start that the Israelis' conduct was the behavior of a guilty party.  The Israelis immediately seized all documentary evidence from the passengers showing what actually happened, blocked all media access to witnesses by detaining everyone on board (including journalists) for days, and then quickly released its own highly edited video -- spliced to begin well into the middle of the Israeli attack -- that was dutifully and unquestioningly shown over and over by the U.S. media to make it appear that the flotilla passengers were the first to become violent.  That was a lie from the start, and it was an obvious lie. 

In no other situation would a party to a conflict who steals all of the evidence, withholds it from the world, and then selectively releases its own blatantly distorted, edited version of a fraction of the evidence be trusted.  The opposite is true:  that party would immediately be assumed to be guilty precisely because of that very behavior of obfuscation; that behavior is the behavior of a guilty party.  But with Israel, the opposite happens (at least in the U.S.).  The IDF video was shown over and over to propagnadize Americans into believing that the passengers were the first to engage in aggression, even though the video -- and the Israelis' withholding of all the rest of the evidence -- begged the glaringly obvious question:  what happened before the commandos descended onto the ship?  Based on smuggled video and forensic evidence, this new report documents what countless flotilla witnesses tried to tell the world once they were finally released:  "live ammunition was used from the helicopter onto the top deck prior to the descent of the soldiers" (p. 26; para. 114 -- emphasis added).

Last Wednesday night, I spoke at Brooklyn Law School on this event, and with me on the panel were Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi and Iranian-American lawyer Fatima Mohammadi, who was on the Mavi Marmara.  I'm trying very hard to obtain the video of that event because Mohammadi's narration of what happened -- all documented by smuggled video from passengers' cell phones -- leaves little doubt as to who the guilty aggressors were here.  I would really like as many people as possible to hear what she has to say and view the video evidence and make their own assessments as to her credibility and persuasiveness.  Suffice to say, there is no doubt that the Israelis used force against the passengers long before the commandos descended onto the ship -- which is precisely why Israel prevented the world from seeing any evidence showing what happened before the events in the IDF video, and why the U.N. Report so conclusively found Israel at fault.  I'd be willing to venture that a tiny percentage of the American public, whose perceptions were shaped by American media coverage, have any clue that this is the case.

The fact that a 19-year-old American citizen was one of the dead -- among those whom the report concluded was "summarily executed" by the Israelis -- makes the U.S. Government's silence here all the more appalling.  One of the prime duties of a government is to safeguard the welfare of its own citizens.  It's inconceivable for most governments in the world to remain silent in the face of formal findings that a foreign nation "summarily executed" one of its own citizens.  One of the reasons Turkey was so emphatic in its condemnation of Israel was because the dead were Turkish citizens; that's what governments do when a foreign nation kills its own citizens.  Yet not only does the U.S. Government sit silently, but its prior statements defending Israel were disgustingly cavalier.  Virtually the entire world -- literally -- vehemently condemned Israel for what it did here, yet the U.S. refused and continues to refuse to do so, notwithstanding these findings that one of its own citizens was essentially murdered.

Perhaps most illustrative of all is how inconceivable it is to imagine the U.S. Congress doing anything at all in the face of this report . . . . except passing a Resolution condemning the investigators themselves while defending Israeli actions, including the actions that resulted in the death of an American teenager.  Is there any doubt that such a Resolution would pass with overwhelming bipartisan support, approaching unanimity -- as happens each and every time there is a controversy involving Israel?   Thus far, the U.S. media and Government are largely silent about this U.N. Report, but if they are prodded into responding, the response will almost certainly be to condemn the report itself while defending and justifying Israeli actions even in the face of overwhelming evidence as to what really happened here, which managed to emerge despite the Israelis' very telling efforts to keep it suppressed.

* * * * *

In not unrelated news, a new Gallup survey of numerous Middle Eastern and North African nations finds that public opinion of the U.S. and its political leadership has collapsed back to Bush-era levels.  That is consistent with prior polls in the Muslim world finding the same thing.  One of the central, stated goals of the Obama campaign and his presidency was improving how that part of the world perceives of the United States, on the ground that widespread anti-American sentiment is what fuels Terrorism and endangers Americans around the world.  That effort is clearly failing.

 

UPDATE:  Just to get a sense for how little attention has been paid to the killing of this American teenager by Israel, contrast how much media attention was devoted to mourning the Iranian Government's killing of Neda Agha-Soltan with the attention paid to Dogan.  A NEXIS search for "Neda and Iran" produces this:

A search for "Furkan Dogan" produces this (click image to enlarge):

In terms of attention and coverage, they're not even in the same universe.

 

UPDATE II:  I neglected to mention that the 47-member U.N. Human Rights Council voted to endorse this report.  The vote was 30 in favor, 15 abstentions, and 1 opposed.  No prizes are available for those who are able to guess the one nation voting against.

 

UPDATE III:  Mark Leon Goldberg notes that he wrote about the U.N. Report yesterday for U.N. Disptach, as did The Washington Post's Column Lynch, so there was some limited media coverage.