Neoconservatives attack Obama on Iran

         As Iran moves into its second week of unrest stemming from the flawed presidential election, the neoconservatives are still hammering away on President Obama for not being more forceful in defending the rights of the protesters.  Paul Wolfowitz, Charles Krauthammer, Michael Gerson, et al. are trying to portray Obama as a calculating, disinterested, inhumane, inadequate defender of the free world by failing to “harshly criticiz[e] the regime thugs on motorbikes for breaking the heads of women and youth during protests…condemning Internet censorship and the arrest of dissidents.”

            To be clear, the president from the start said that this election was about Iran, and only once it became clear that repression and violence were being carried out at the behest of the regime did he state that, electoral struggles aside, Iran as a civilized nation must respect the rights of its citizens.  Here is the White House statement issued yesterday:

We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

         I suppose that Obama could have called Iran “evil” as George W. Bush did with Iran, North Korea, and Iraq; or as Ronald Reagan did with the Soviet Union.  Or he could have equated the Iranian government as siding “with the terrorists”, as Bush phrased the terms of engagement after 9/11.  Despite Gerson’s snarky characterization of “President Obama’s snail-mail response to Iran’s Twitter revolution”, Obama can see the many shades of gray between the two caricatures of “good” (i.e. the protestors) and “evil” (the government).  Ahmadinejad has wide support—perhaps even majority support—across the country, and if that be the case, why would we want to acknowledge as sovereign a political movement that seemingly has no desire (yet) to topple the regime?

         Many Arab countries are already suspicious of our presence in the Middle East, from our military bases near Saudi Arabian holy sites to the occupation of Iraq.  If we admit that Iran is in revolution, we acknowledge that the opposition protesters are worthy of military assistance and recognition as a body politic.  It is way too early—and too reckless—to assume that the protesters in Iran want a new government, when they only appear to be asking that their current government live up to its responsibilities of transparency and accountability.

         Gerson also claims that “diplomatic engagement, after a successful repression would not only be difficult but shameful….How could Obama or Hillary Clinton or anyone else shake the bloody hands and walk the bloody streets on the way to some meeting in Tehran?”  Yes, how could a representative of the United States ever legitimately normalize relations with an abusive authoritarian regime…?

            How can any Republican claim—after the Bush administration’s support of corrupt and militant Pakistani general Pervez Musharraf, Hamid Karzai’s deference of authority to warlords in Afghanistan, and his soulful glance into Vladimir Putin’s eyes—that Obama is putting politics before principle?  And the net doesn’t even have to be cast that far: negligence of the residents of New Orleans, ideological hirings and firings at the Justice Department, domestic wiretapping, torture at Guantanamo, failure to expand children’s health insurance, etc. are all the trappings of a presidency that valued political expediency over the obligations of a government to its people.

            Iran is situated in a fishbowl for all the world to watch.  As much as we might be tempted to intervene politically or militarily, we can’t be a crutch to either side because it could be interpreted as an act of war.  Unless the unthinkable happens—anarchy, genocide—the Iranian government must either pacify or crush the rebellion, or bow out due to the pressure of public opinion.  It’s our position to advocate principle, not politics; and the president has done exactly that.

It’s time for a truth commission on torture

         President Obama arrived in Washington in January intending to wipe away the crippling partisanship of the nation’s capital through such well-publicized gestures as inviting megachurch pastor Rick Warren to speak at his inaugural, spending hours at a time for days on end convincing GOP legislators to back his stimulus plan, and attempting to accommodate Republicans in his administration.  When the issue of torture flared up, he continued to seek the high ground by declaring that prosecutions of CIA interrogators would be unfair and would set a bad precedent and that truth commissions would be counterproductive—devolving into finger pointing and name calling.

         Well, that was an honorable position while it lasted, but the issue is no longer in Obama’s control.  The CIA has accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of knowing about waterboarding techniques as long ago as 2002 and failing to register protest.  Pelosi has denied that she knew that waterboarding was actually taking place, and says that the CIA was “misleading” the Congress, and that they would not have listened to her even if she did express outrage—which she could not necessarily have done without publicizing classified information.

          To complicate matters further, Obama, who pledged to comply with a court order by releasing a small sample of photographs depicting prisoner abuse, now has decided against doing so to protect troop morale, to prevent recruitment by terror organizations, and because the photos do not add to anything we do not already know.  This coming from a man who only recently said that “withholding [the torture] memos would only serve to deny facts that have been in the public domain for some time. This could contribute to an inaccurate accounting of the past, and fuel erroneous and inflammatory assumptions about actions taken by the United States.”

            The problem is that it is entirely possible that prisoner abuse occurred not by the few rogue soldiers who have already taken the blame, but rather was part of a systematic military policy authorized at higher levels.  This, coupled with questions over what the Speaker knew and when, requires a truth commission, established by Congress, with power to subpoena Bush officials all the way up the chain of command to the president and vice president.

         It is a shame that this would be the third of the last five Republican administrations to end in a congressional probe on illegal activities.  And the remaining two presidents, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, were vilified for pardoning those involved in the Watergate and Iran-contra scandals.  Furthermore, it’s not out of the question that Obama would issue a blanket pardon to Justice Department lawyers and CIA interrogators involved in drafting and executing the torture policy.

         At the same time, it is necessary that this truth commission not be as timid as was the Iran-contra probe—which did not ask Reagan to testify, even though he knew about, authorized, and then lied to the American public about arms sales to Iran in exchange for hostages and funds to be diverted to the Nicaraguan contras, against the explicit will of Congress.  The Democratic Congress made a series of errors in that investigation: they did not want to gain a reputation for prosecuting Republican presidents; they did not get out in front of an internal report issued by the Reagan administration that only lightly chastised the president; and they let their star witness, Lt. Col. Oliver North, skirt questions of constitutionality (and document shredding) by continually reiterating his patriotic desire to keep the country safe from terrorists (communists).

         Unlike in 1988, I don’t think it would be proper to jail anyone for what seemed like a misguided attempt to find the best way to protect the homeland.  Some say that this punishment would set a bad precedent by causing future presidents to receive less-than-candid advice for fear of prosecution from vengeful politicians.  But it would have truly been candid if the Justice Department lawyers had written that although they approved of interrogation methods, some people and organizations may consider them to be torture—therefore giving both sides of the issue.

         Above all, Obama needs to either endorse a congressional truth commission or stand out of its way in uncovering official misconduct.

Rice on torture: “You’re wrong”

            Up until now, Dick Cheney, who had made every attempt to operate clandestinely and without oversight during his eight years as vice president, has been the leading defender in the media of the Bush administration’s legacy on enhanced interrogation techniques.  We needed to waterboard, he has said, because it kept the homeland safe after 9/11.  Furthermore, the Obama administration is not admitting that the information-gathering practices were effective and ultimately saved lives—so shame on them for portraying Bush officials as criminals.  (This coming from a man who shot someone in the face and was ready to start bombing Iraq before any link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda was even established.)

            Okay, Cheney is allowed to rant, even though strong majorities of the country think he is wrong.  But last week, another figure appeared to defend torture—and angrily at that.  The formerly-unflappable Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice took questions from Stanford University students in which she said “you’re wrong” about torture.

       In this clip, Rice is belligerent and defensive about policies which she ultimately claims she had no part in formulating.  Her rebuttal to torture critics amounts simply to saying, “if you were there,” you would have done exactly what the administration did.  And what the administration did authorize, in established legal doctrine, was not torture.  It was doing “anything you could that was legal” to prevent another terrorist attack.

       She chided her questioner for not knowing obscure facts about Guantanamo that proved that no wrongdoing occurred there—but a quick fact check shows that her assertions may have been a little off.  First, she claimed that the Organisation for Cooperation and Security in Europe called Guantanamo a “model medium-security prison.”  In fact, the Belgian man who made that statement did not represent the OCSE and also called the indefinite detention of the Guantanamo prisoners “mental torture.”

       Secondly, she said that the International Committee of the Red Cross “made no allegations” of torture during their inspection of the facilities.  If oner were to believe what the detainees said (and the ICRC does seem to), this is simply false.  According to a 2007 report, which states the following:

       The absence of scrutiny by any independent entity—including the ICRC—inevitably creates conditions conducive to excesses that would not otherwise be permitted.  Persons held in undisclosed detention are especially vulnerable to being subjected to ill-treatment.  Indeed, the allegations of the fourteen include descriptions of treatment and interrogation techniques—singly or in combination—that amounted to torture and/or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

            Lastly, and most consequentially Rice claimed that waterboarding was not torture since it was authorized by the Justice Department. “The president instructed us that nothing we would do would be outside of our obligations, legal obligations, under the Convention Against torture….And so, by definition, if it was authorized by the president it did not violate our obligations under the Conventions Against Torture.”  Although the argument is basically a version of Nixon’s “When the President does it, that means it is not illegal” quip, the actual syllogism is a bit more complex.  Here is a diagram of what she is trying to convey:

            Now, her argument would be invalidated if the Justice Department’s authorization of enhanced interrogation techniques (EIT) was, in fact, against the Geneva Conventions and was therefore illegal.  To determine that, we would have to turn to someone whose job it is to examine matters of legality.  Fortunately, such a person—in the form of Susan J. Crawford, the judge in charge of convening military tribunals—has already weighed in on the matter.  Here is what she had to say:

“We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani….His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not refer the case” for prosecution.

            In reality, then, the treatment at Guantanamo authorized by the Justice Department was torture, meaning it was against the Geneva Conventions, making it illegal.  Now, I’m not pin pointing aspects of Rice’s answers that I think are technically inaccurate.  I don’t believe that, in an attempt to skirt standards of human decency, being technically correct in drawing the line between torture and not torture is a good stance to take.  After all, you could probably find someone to argue logically that segregation is a sound policy; that doesn’t make it right.

            All I am trying to say is what many writers and commentators have been saying ever since the release of the torture memos: we should not need to painstakingly devise methods of dealing with prisoners of war that inflict mental and physical pain even though some body of international law does not explicitly declare it to be torture.  Aside from the practical question of its efficacy, we have no way of knowing if the men in Guantanamo are the hardened criminals that the CIA claims they are.  And to torture anybody—guilty or not—is something that may happen in authoritarian regimes, like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, but does not befit our republic.

            I had thought that Dr. Rice as a diplomat would be less defensive about one of the most notorious prisons in existence today, but I take comfort in knowing that everyone of importance in the current administration disagrees with her stance.

The meek have inherited the Congress

            Rare is the occasion when I find myself in agreement with conservative commentator George F. Will.  Given that he is to newspapers what Bill O’Reilly is to television—only with a better vocabulary and a more even temper—many of his columns have elicited eye rolls and head shakes of disgust.  But in a Sunday opinion piece, Will provided a political assessment that is as accurate as it is disturbing: that Congress has allowed the executive branch to gain disproportionate at its own expense.

            He cited the Economic Stabilization Act of 2008—the bailout bill—as the perfect storm of Congress signing over vast amounts of money to the executive branch, whereby non-elected officials accountable only to the president decided how much money got doled out and to whom.  Car companies, banks, and lending institutions all got theirs, but what have we to show for it?  There is no use asking the people who oversaw the operation—they have already left town.

            It is not just during the bailout that Congress has been under-aggressive in performing their duties of regulating commerce, providing for the common defense and general welfare, promoting the progress of science, and making rules for the government.  During the entire Bush administration, when foreigners were being tortured, the justice department was being politicized, and veterans were receiving abominable care at Walter Reed Medical Center—not to mention the prosecution of the war in Iraq—Congress meekly was strung along.  Its subpoenas were ignored; its questions were evaded; the vice president of these United States even dropped an f-bomb to an elected official on the floor of the Senate.

            There is a reason that Article I of the Constitution is the first and lengthiest section of our nation’s blueprint: protecting the interests of the people and of the individual states is the chief duty of our representatives.  Judges and the president are merely administrators, checking the will of the people when it threatens individual liberty and collective security; but otherwise, their job is to translate the needs of the electorate, interest groups, and institutions into law.  Part of that job is to channel populist outrage into reform—as we saw in the AIG bonus debacle. 

       But when the executive branch is the party committing the outrage, Congress has been more than tepid.  I do not feel that my welfare is more secure when secret wiretaps and waterboarding are authorized by the president.  Or when the EPA refuses to acknowledge that greenhouse gases are harmful to the public.  Or when the Treasury Secretary disappears large amounts of money into shaky financial institutions.  None of the executive branch’s lawyers, administrators, or Cabinet members is elected by the public-and most are faceless bureaucrats.

       Alexander Hamilton, writing in the Federalist Papers to advocate the adoption of our Constitution, maintained that the executive branch should consist only of the president and his vice president, not a “council” of administrators.  Through a unitary executive, one person alone would be accountable to the country and would have to answer to the voters.  “An artful cabal” in a presidential council, he wrote, “would be able to distract and enervate the whole system of administration….It often becomes impossible, amidst mutual accusations, to determine on whom the blame or the punishment of a pernicious measure, or series of pernicious measures ought really to fall.”  We are now bordering on that type of system: a Congress which deputizes the conduct of national affairs to the president, who then parcels out administration among his loyalists who are merely trusted to obey the spirit of the law.

       I recognize that in difficult times we need a single person to provide direction and unify the country.  But Congress should not wring its hands when wrongdoing occurs under the president as they did during the Bush years.  Our representatives thoroughly embarrassed auto executives last fall for flying in private jets, yet none of the Bush Cabinet officials has answered questions about improprieties in the Justice Department, violations of the Geneva Conventions, or scientific censorship.  The 535 men and women in the Capitol are the only barrier to the imposition of an imperial presidency on our republic.  Congressmen should not aim to become as rabid as Joseph McCarthy, but in order to prevent another rabidly-powerful Bush White House, Congress should not delegate their legislative powers to the president and must expose wrongdoing through hearings, the media, and prosecutions.

Barack Obama becomes nation’s most unpopular black president

Widely popular President Barack Obama meets with congressional leaders in an attempt to salvage his approval rating.

Washington, D.C.—After coming into office on a wave of grass-roots enthusiasm and a message of hope and post-partisanship, Barack Obama’s first week in office has been tainted by the lowest approval rating ever for an African American president.

            A recent Pew Research poll shows that 79 percent of adults view Obama favorably.  While this number is far higher than most other newly-inaugurated presidents since Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is the lowest ever number for any black American president.

            “For someone who was able to change a number of states from red to blue this election cycle, I must say that this momentous occasion will be overshadowed by abominably-low approval,” said Democratic strategist Keila Humphries.  “History will not treat him kindly,” she added.

            In a press release by Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the minority leader claimed that Obama “has clearly not been carefully attuned to the will of the public.  Given the groundbreaking nature of the President’s mandate and its implications for race relations, Republicans find it disappointing that over twenty percent of the American people disapprove of how he is performing….by no stretch of the imagination, President Obama is the least popular black president in the history of this country.”

            Even though Obama’s first acts of governance included signing executive orders on ethics reform and more transparent disclosure rules for his White House, some experts are wondering whether such unprecedented disapproval will make it increasingly harder for future black presidents to be elected.

            “There have been no African American presidents up to this point who have been so highly disliked as Mr. Obama is now,” presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin said.  “If he ends up being our most unpopular black president, he will be ranked right down there with George W. Bush, who many think to be the most unpopular white president.”

            Goodwin added, “I mean, the two of them might as well just be the same person.”