The specter of Specter haunts the Republican Party

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m going to start out by saying something that will shock a few people, I suppose: I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the Republican Party.

Not only that, but I doubt I ever will be. I doubt I will join any political party again, although I was a card-carrying Democrat for many years. I consider myself an Independent.

So perhaps I’m not the best person to be analyzing what Arlen Specter’s defection means for Republicans. Then again, perhaps I’m more objective than those more ideologically driven.

One thing that’s for certain: Specter’s “ratting” (as Churchill and the Brits would call it) was the most practical sort of decision: Arlen Specter did what was best for Arlen Specter. In doing so, he probably acted no worse than so many other self-centered narcissistic politicians (I know; that’s somewhat redundant)—and at least he’s honest about his non-principled motivations.

Specter had already been angering the vast majority of his fellow Republicans for years, and his support of the stimulus bill was the last straw. With “friends” like this, the Congressional Republicans must have thought, who needs enemies? In what way, exactly, could Specter be considered a Republican any more? And, looking at his record, I don’t see how.

And so it became clear that Specter would be challenged in the primaries by his own party, and would go down despite the fact that he is popular enough state-wide to win re-election. If Specter thought the best thing for Pennsylvania (and himself) would be another term of Specter in the Senate, then his path was clear: he had to become a Democrat or face defeat.

Just what do the Republicans lose by his move? The commentary in the press and blogs indicate that it’s the magical 40 votes that could have stopped some of the ultra-liberal Obama agenda. But was Specter ever one of those votes? I’m not familiar with his entire voting record, but I don’t see any indication that he was.

Yes, if he is now caucusing with the Democrats, the pressure will be on for him to become even more aligned with them. But wasn’t he already aligned with them on nearly every vote that mattered?

I’m more interested in the general question of how big a tent the Republican Party should be, and what it actually stands for. As I’ve written before, no party in America can win without playing to the middle. Those who are looking for ideological purity (such as Jim Demint, for example, who said “”I would rather have 30 Republicans in the Senate who really believe in principles of limited government, free markets, free people, than to have 60 that don’t have a set of beliefs”) may find themselves left with just that: purity and unity of mind in a powerless party.

But if you forsake all principles, what’s the point of power, anyway? If Republicans turn into Democrats Lite, why bother to run for office? That makes sense, too—at least, to those who are motivated by some sort of coherent ideology rather than the self-serving need to have the perks of Senate membership.

One of the problems for Republicans and conservatives is that the middle in the US has shifted to the Left in recent years—or has it? Polls are confusing, but this one, published only a few months before the 2008 election, seems to belie the leftward trend the country has taken since:

Overall, Americans are against the core principle behind Barack Obama’s domestic economic policy – income redistribution – by an astounding 84% to 13%. Republicans oppose it 90%-9%, Independents oppose it 85% to 13%, and even Democrats oppose it 77% to 19%…

A separate question finds Americans more likely to believe government is doing too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses (50%) as opposed to saying government should do more to solve the country’s problems (43%). This broad question is not directed specifically at the economy, but reinforces the general idea that many Americans are leery of too much direct government intervention in fixing the country’s problems.

So how is it that a Congress and an administration dedicated to doing just those things is gaining power and influence rather than losing it? Some of it no doubt is the fear engendered by the economic crisis, which occurred some months after the poll. But the idea remains that many Americans would vote for “true conservatives” and “real Republicans” if we only had some principled and personable ones around who could clearly articulate the message.

And perhaps it’s even true that this would work. Ronald Reagan was all those things, and he brought many people under the Republican tent and kept them there for a long time.

But short of an unlikely Reagan reincarnation, Republicans seem to be condemned to wander in the desert for a while. Americans don’t seem to be hearing what they have to say right now, and I don’t think it’s just due to lack of charisma. Nor do I think the Specter defection is all that meaningful: he was honestly no Republican at all, not even a moderate one.

What is most important for the Republican Party is to decide what its core message will be, and how to show the American people they mean business about it. The majority of voters may remain amenable to this message if it resonates with conviction as it did when Reagan stated it [emphasis mine]:

We should emphasize the things that unite us and make these the only “litmus test” of what constitutes a Republican: our belief in restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, tax reduction, sound national defense, and maximum individual liberty. As to the other issues that draw on the deep springs of morality and emotion, let us decide that we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate the disagreement.

The principles I highlighted in bold are the ones that draw me to vote Republican. Just as Reagan says, they are the ideological and policy issues the party ought to articulate and emphasize if it wants the best hope of implementing any of its agenda—and of blocking the ultra-liberal one currently in ascendence.

[NOTE: It is interesting that the Reagan quote was offered in an op-ed in today’s NY Times by Olympia Snowe, RINO of Maine. Republicans must decide where to draw the line, and it’s not always easy. Snowe, for example, voted for Obama’s stimulus bill (as, of course, did Specter)—hardly an example of the restraint of government spending that Reagan mentioned and that she quotes in the Times.

But Maine may now be such a blue state that targeting the very popular Snowe in a primary, as Republicans did Specter, is probably not the answer. Therein lies the dilemma. In the 2008 Presidential race, Obama took Pennsylvania 55% to 44%, but in Maine the margin of victory was a whopping 58% to 41%. And that was in an election in which Snowe nevertheless won by a 61 to 38 margin, a bona fide landslide.

This is the sobering reality of what Republicans face today—although that doesn’t mean the situation will be the same in 2010; there are always black swans and wild cards.

But they can’t be counted on to happen, or to help Republicans if they do. Meanwhile, Republicans must be realistic and focused if they wish things to improve. That means deciding what principles are truly important to them, and then framing them in a coherent and appealing manner.]

Neoneocon’s handy guide to investing for the mature set

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a SmartMoney piece on how financial planning for one’s retirement years isn’t the science it was once cracked up to be.

Well, surprise surprise—not! Even I, no financial wizard, could have told you that. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t fall prey to the planner’s charms. And that makes sense, too I suppose: one has to make decisions in an unpredictable world, and it’s reassuring to think that someone is an expert in knowing the unknowable.

My financial history until recently had always been quite simple (in every sense of the word): defer to the advice and counsel of others. My own instincts were to be low-risk: if I’d had my way, none of my money would ever have been invested in the stock market, but in much more conservative holdings instead.

This notion of mine hardly even qualified for the dignity of the term “investment philosophy;” it was more a kneejerk reflection of the monetary habits of my extremely frugal and Depression-raised mother, who had always refused to touch anything connected with the stock market.

I was married for most of my adult life, however, and part of a pooled pair. As such, I decided to let my husband handle the investments. That suited both of us quite well, since he seemed to be more motivated, interested, and knowledgeable about those things. That he was also less risk-aversive didn’t bother me, because during the many years we were married we rode the stock market up and down but mostly up. His decisions had made more money for us than mine would have. I never once thought “oh, if only I’d been investing the money, how much better off we’d have been!”

By the time we got divorced a couple of years ago, there was a certain modest but not insubstantial sum that was now officially Mine rather than Ours, and for which I had to make my own decisions. My gut instinct was to revert to my gut instinct (especially now that I was older)—buy some CDs and municipal bonds and call it a day.

But I hardly had the courage of my convictions; I had seen how the strategies of others had paid off much better than mine. The financial adviser I consulted was, not surprisingly, of a less conservative mindset than I. He said I should get into the market in a way that allowed me to take advantage of what he called “growth;” diversification would protect me.

And so it was that I listened to him, and wound up doing exactly and precisely what one isn’t supposed to do: buying high, at what in retrospect was virtually the peak of the bull market.

So far, at least, I’ve managed to resist the other side of the coin: I haven’t sold low. I haven’t sold at all, actually, just watched the value of my assets sink like a stone, in a way that my adviser had never even suggested was a remote possibility, and yet which—thanks to my mother—I always knew in my heart of hearts and brain of brains could occur (and, by the way, the adviser isn’t doing much suggesting of anything any more).

And that is why the message of articles such as the one in SmartMoney with which I began this essay no longer surprise me. The surprise is that anyone ever thought there would be a way to know the future, or that stocks would be a good idea for investing the bulk of the holdings of someone nearing retirement age who doesn’t have a huge nest-egg.

My new financial strategy is to listen politely to what people recommend, but with great skepticism (so if you want to take my advice you won’t take my advice, if you know what I mean). But for what it’s worth, here are its basic principles (this applies to the investor of a certain age; the rules would be somewhat different for the young):

(1) Buy low and sell high is the laudable goal. The trouble is that it’s extremely hard to tell when these high and low points are actually occurring. Is it just a temporary downturn, for example, or the beginning of a huge drop? Nobody knows, and anyone who tells you they do is telling you a lie. Therefore…

(2) Don’t invest any money in the stock market that you’re not willing to lose. The stock market is not a bank giving a predictable rate of return, even in times when it appears to resemble one. And furthermore…

(3) When you do invest, do so relatively short term. I’m not suggesting day-trading, but set a point ahead of time at which you will take profits and/or cut losses. And then (and this is the hard part, folks) do so.

(4) Don’t look back at all. Made a mistake? Fine—you and a gazillion others, including your financial adviser. Made some money? That’s nice, but don’t think it means you’re a wizard. Probably you just got lucky that time.

(5) If you must hire a financial adviser, get an elderly one, with sufficient memory of the past and some idea of the fact that these things run in cycles, up and down and up and down, and that when a particular portion of the cycle looks as though it will last forever it is always an illusion.

Now take two aspirin and don’t call me in the morning.

Torturous decisions about torture

The New Neo Posted on by

When I was in graduate school, I lived in a house with four other women. It was a large and lovely place, with five airy bedrooms, a living room and parlor, a pantry and a little yard.

The rent was a cool sixty-five dollars a month per person. That’s right—and it was a bargain even then. Altogether a wonderful find.

The house was owned by a couple who had emigrated from China at some unknown time in the past. Mrs. Chen could speak heavily-accented and halting English, but Mr. Chen could not. She came by every now and then to tend to landlady business and look over the place, but I only saw him once.

It was a memorable sight. His hands were deformed, the thumbs broken, dangling and useless. We surmised that he’d been subject to torture back in China.

There’s no telling whether we were correct in our supposition. But Mr. Chen’s thumbs often come to mind when I think about torture. And whether or not it’s true that interrogators purposely inflicted his terrible wounds on him in an effort to make him talk, it’s clear that if it were true, there would be no ambiguity, no hesitation whatsover, in applying the word “torture” to that process. His wounds were the terrible and permanent marks of profound suffering.

Those who call the controversial process known as waterboarding “torture” are not necessarily wrong. But it is disingenuous to pretend that the matter is as clear as thumbs made permanently useless. The boundaries of torture are not so well-defined, unless one draws the line at any coercive technique meant to make a prisoner uncomfortable enough to want to give out information to make it stop, a definition so strict as to make the obtaining of such information virtually impossible.

How far are we willing to go in order to keep our own hands squeaky clean in this matter? As I wrote in a previous post on a related subject:

As human beings making choices, I don’t see how we can ever avoid making moral judgments about relative good and evil…In the real world in which we live…moral choices are usually between the lesser of two evils…Failure to make such choices between relative goods/evils would make us into moral monsters of another sort, trapped in a rigid rules-bound way of thinking that would lead almost inevitably to tragic consequences.

Blogger Richard Fernandez has done a lot of thinking about torture and morality. He writes (and I’d recommend reading the entire piece) that those who take the position that torture can never be justified, even if it could save many innocent lives in this country, are at least acknowledging the moral complexity that flows from the fact that sometimes torture actually does work to protect innocent people.

Fernandez writes that those taking such a strict anti-torture stand are doing it from the safety of the hypothetical; it is uncertain what they would do if faced with a more clear and present danger:

But I am afraid that…one day a biological weapon or a dirty nuke might be set off in one or a number of American cities and as the scale of the suffering and carnage becomes clear, that many ”” including the persons who are now so willing to sit in judgment of the persons who drafted the legal memos which guided Bush administration interrogation policy ”” will demand the authorities do something, anything, to put a stop to it.

Although that certainly may be true, I think the more important point Fernandez makes is this one:

It is intellectually feasible to argue…that we ought not to use torture under any circumstances. In the same spirit, we could undertake not to employ Clinton-era “extraordinary rendition”, to which Guantanamo Bay was actually proposed as a more humane alternative; nor accept information from foreign intelligence agencies which use coercion as a method (any more than you would buy shoes made with child labor); and simply rely on such intelligence gathering methods as meet our moral standards and willingly endure the sacrifices implied.

Here Fernandez supplies context for the decision to waterboard. That context was not only the immediate post-9/11 mentality of urgency to discover whether other attacks were imminent, and to stop them before they were carried out (although that was part of it). The context included the alternatives to the setting up of Guantanamo, and the decision to waterboard three detainees there. These alternatives require asking ourselves whether it is okay to allow others to torture for us, and then for us to profit from the fruits of this forbidden tree? Or are we (and especially those advocating a strict “no physically coercive methods allowed” policy) really prepared to “endure the sacrifices implied,” which could be the death of many thousands of innocent Americans—in order to save one terrorist from some reversible and temporary suffering at the hands of others?

In assessing complex moral decisions in the real world, we must look not only at our acts, but at the consequences of our failures to act. Would it really have been more moral, for example, to have not waterboarded Khalid Sheik Mohammed, if the result had been a successful 9/11 type attack in Los Angeles? A person might answer “yes.” But it is disingenuous to assert that such a person is clearly and unequivocally in a position that is morally superior to that of the person who would answer “no.”

There are sins of omission as well as sins of commission. Are we morally responsible—and therefore guilty—for failing to stop an attack that might have been prevented by gaining information through a coercive technique such as waterboarding?

The people who drew up the rules about waterboarding seemed to have been cognizant of these and other moral complexities. They certainly did not intend or allow the United States to engage in the more extreme type of torture endured by Mr. Chen, for example. But they wanted to permit—and to give guidelines for the use of—something strong enough to extract vital information from terrorists, but weak enough to cause no permanent damage to them.

Here are some of the guidelines they drew up:

“The ”˜waterboard,’ which is the most intense of the CIA interrogation techniques, is subject to additional limits,” explained the May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo. “It may be used on a High Value Detainee only if the CIA has ”˜credible intelligence that a terrorist attack is imminent’; ”˜substantial and credible indicators that the subject has actionable intelligence that can prevent, disrupt or deny this attack’; and ”˜[o]ther interrogation methods have failed to elicit this information within the perceived time limit for preventing the attack.’”

This appears to be an effort to accomplish what must be done in making all moral decisions: to balance the harm done against the benefits gained. And it is by no means clear that those opposing the policies described in this memo, or the care taken to draw them up, are the ones occupying the moral high ground.

The following is particularly telling [emphasis mine]:

“In particular, the CIA believes that it would have been unable to obtain critical information from numerous detainees, including KSM and Abu Zubaydah, without these enhanced techniques,” says the Justice Department memo. “Both KSM and Zubaydah had ”˜expressed their belief that the general US population was ”˜weak,’ lacked resilience, and would be unable to ”˜do what was necessary’ to prevent the terrorists from succeeding in their goals.’ Indeed, before the CIA used enhanced techniques in its interrogation of KSM, KSM resisted giving any answers to questions about future attacks, simply noting, ”˜Soon you will know.’”

Sooner or later, it appears we will know—whether the actions of the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress, and well as the release of the “torture memos” and the ACLU-demanded photos, will cause terrorists and other enemies to once again believe that we are too weak to protect ourselves.

Swine flu threat?

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s always possible, of course, that this time it will be the terrible pandemic that is feared.

But I wonder. When I did a search of this blog for “influenza,” for example, I came up with this post from the beginning of 2006, which begins with the words:

An article appeared in this Sunday’s NY Times advising us that our relations with our neighbors may need to change if the much-feared bird flu pandemic ever arrives.

Ah yes, remember the dread bird flu? It did kill a number of people, which is a sad thing, just as the swine flu has already done. But this does not a dangerous pandemic make.

The words “swine flu” ring a bell. In 1976, there was a promised epidemic that never came, and a flawed vaccination that caused more deaths than that year’s flu did. Not a good precedent, although much better than that of the worldwide pandemic of 1918, in which the flu killed approximately fifty million people, most of them young adults in their prime (see my post about the scope of that disaster).

A work of great art that was spawned by the 1918 pandemic is the long short story “Pale Horse, Pale Rider,” by Katherine Anne Porter. Porter herself was nearly a victim of the disease, as she describes in this work of fiction that is based on her own experiences. One of the now-neglected masterpieces of American literature (and a beautiful love story as well), it explains better than anything I’ve ever read what the horror of those times must have felt like to those who were there.

The CIA photos: Obama strikes another blow for transparency

The New Neo Posted on by

In refusing to fight the release of the prisoner interrogation photos, the Obama administration, according to ACLU attorney Amrit Singh, is showing its commitment to transparency.

Yes, it’s transparent, all right—transparently clear that Obama is determined to strike fear into the hearts of CIA agents who did their duty under the Bush administration, even if they acted with the green light of lawyers and Congress.

Transparent that our new President will stop at nothing to discredit his predecessor, including (and perhaps especially) endangering all future intelligence and our country’s security. Do we have a single doubt that, if the ACLU had been trying to release photos of a policy attached to the Obama administration, he would have fought such “transparency” right up to the Supreme Court?

As for the ACLU, the group helpfully pushing for the release of the photos, I have nothing but contempt for that institution (to which I gave money for years long ago, and which still has me on their mailing list). I’m entirely in agreement with Dr. Mark M. Lowenthal, former Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and Production, who referred to the ACLU’s campaign for the photographs’ release as “prurient” and “reprehensible,” and an action the Obama administration “should have fought all the way.”

Dream on, Dr. Lowenthal. This is custom-made for Obama. He doesn’t have to actually do his own dirty work in pressing for the release of the pictures. He just has to allow others to do it for him.

What is that dirty work? The release of the photos furthers the favored Obama narrative: the US did evil things and must atone, but under the great Obama it will go forth and sin no more. Security? Intelligence? They won’t be needed in the new age of Obama, during which our new rectitude will cause other nations to drop all aggressive impulses in their awe at the guidance of our inspirational moral compass.

Remember way back during the campaign, when Michelle Obama caught such flak for saying that now she was really proud of her country for the first time in her adult life? The reason was twofold: Barack Obama was doing well, and hope was making a comeback (come to think of it, that was one reason, wasn’t it?) It strikes me now that this was a deeply felt sentiment that Barack Obama shares.

I think it’s transparently clear: the man is a dangerous egotist whose narcissism requires that his predecessor be crushed and discredited in every possible way. And he doesn’t care if he endangers our national security to do so.

[NOTE: Rich Lowry has a similar notion.]

[ADDENDUM: And this op-ed by former CIA chief Porter Goss is well worth reading (hat tip: Ann Althouse).

Goss writes with great clarity and urgency:

[O]ur government has crossed the red line between properly protecting our national security and trying to gain partisan political advantage. We can’t have a secret intelligence service if we keep giving away all the secrets. Americans have to decide now.

Read the whole thing.]

Madoff’s chief deputy tells a few tales

The New Neo Posted on by

His name is Frank DiPascali. He was in charge of the smooth operation of Madoff’s Ponzi scheme on Floor 17, a top-secret operation needing a special pass to visit , and featuring an ancient IBM computer server, a bunch of clerks, and little else.

Fortune magazine has a lengthy article featuring DiPascali. The piece mostly recaps already-known facts about Madoff’s history and personal quirks. But there’s a bit of new information, based on reports that DiPascali is starting to do some talking in exchange for a possible plea bargain.

This is what he is alleged to be revealing:

According to a person familiar with the matter, DiPascali has no evidence that other Madoff family members were participants in the fraud. However, he is prepared to testify that he manipulated phony returns on behalf of some key Madoff investors…

It’s a long article, and I read it quickly. But it contains no indications that DiPascali has suggested that these investors-in-the-know actually knew about the Ponzi scheme aspect, or the scope of the fraud—just that they were involved in some fishy bookkeeping for their own benefit. But the part of the article that interested me most was the fact that so far, no evidence—including DePascali’s tale-telling—seems to backup the popular idea of the involvement and/or knowledge of family members.

It’s way too early to say, of course; there’s much more to learn. And whether we ever will know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is doubtful. But I’ve been concluding for quite some time that there is a good chance that Madoff kept his fraud from family members. Whether there was enough evidence available to say that they should have known something was amiss is another story.

However, Madoff has hardly protected his family, even if he kept them in the dark about some things. And I’m not just talking about the money they themselves may have lost. Their reputations are ruined just as surely as his, whether a single bit of evidence ever emerges of their complicity or not. There are many kinds of prisons, and my guess is that they already have gotten a life sentence of sorts.

Sticking it to the streets of New York—and elsewhere

The New Neo Posted on by

Recently when I was visiting my family in NY, I happened to look down and notice that those little dark circles that stud the sidewalks had become more numerous than ever.

You might be in New York and not even see them as you walk down the street, especially if you’re busy looking up at the buildings. But if you happen to glance in the general direction of your feet, you will see that there are wads of something-or-other seeded every few inches in seemingly random fashion on the concrete.

The culprit, of course, is chewing gum. You wouldn’t think there had been so much gum chewed since the world began, much less stuck to the sidewalks of one city. Here’s what it looks like:

stickygum2.jpg
New York isn’t the only city with the problem; far from it. Fittingly, Mexico City (in the vicinity of the birthplace of natural chicle chewing gum) is probably the worst offender, with an estimate of seventy wads of the stuff per paving square.

The days of the dominance of naturally biodegradable chicle are long gone, and although there have been attempts to revive them, the supply is inadequate to fill more than a fraction of the world’s needs, which are now met by the synthetic variety.

There are also machines made that specialize in the steam-cleaning of sidewalks marked with gum globs. But it’s clearly a tough task to keep up, one that New York is failing.

The world doesn’t lack for attempts at solutions. A non-sticky gum has been invented, but it has yet to crowd out the more tenacious—in every sense of the word—brands. Mexico City has suggested that people just swallow their gum if they can’t manage to use trash cans.

But Draconian Singapore has gone so far as to ban chewing gum, except for certain medicinal varieties. The ban began in 1992 and continues today:

This law was created because people disposed of gum incorrectly by sticking under places like chairs or tables…Chewing gum was causing serious maintenance problems in high-rise public housing flats, with vandals disposing of spent gum in mailboxes, inside keyholes and even on elevator buttons. Chewing gum left on floors, stairways and pavements in public areas increased the cost of cleaning and damaged cleaning equipment…

In 1987, the S$5 billion metro system, the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT), began operations…It was then reported that vandals had begun sticking chewing gum on the door sensors of MRT trains, preventing the door from functioning properly and causing disruption of train services. Such incidents were rare but costly and culprits were difficult to apprehend. In January 1992, Goh Chok Tong, who had just taken over as Prime Minister, decided on a ban.

Just as with the US Prohibition experience, there was upset at first. But, unlike Prohibition, the defiance died down:

When first introduced, the ban caused much controversy and some open defiance. Some took the trouble of traveling to neighbouring Johor Bahru, Malaysia, to purchase chewing gum. Offenders were publicly “named and shamed” by the government, to serve as a deterrent to other would-be smugglers. As time passed and the uproar died down, however, Singaporeans became accustomed to the lack of chewing gum.

Civil rights activists entered the picture for a while. But the softening of the ban, and the introduction of the “medicinal” exception (a gum that is supposed to whiten teeth, for example) was thanks to none other than our hero George Bush, who won the concessions in 2004 as part of a free trade agreement with Singapore.

And no, this is not an Onion article.

More on those terror truth commissions

The New Neo Posted on by

If even Harry Reid says the idea of an independent truth commission on supposed torture by the previous administration is a bad idea, I guess it won’t be happening—even though Paul Krugman and much of the Left of the Democratic Party may disagree.

Krugman says truth commissions are necessary: they’re only way to regain our “moral compass.” In his op-ed on the subject, he completely ignores the shocking, precedent-setting, banana republic, show trial aspect of the proposal.

But then again, Krugman’s ignorance on everything except economic issues is no longer news. And yes, I realize that his ignorance may be feigned and strategic—but my guess is that he actually is ignorant of the significance of what he is recommending here, and what a terrible precedent it would set.

Wesley Pruden understands, only too well. Read his op-ed for contrast. Here’s an excerpt:

The president’s on-again, off-again, maybe-he-will and maybe-he-won’t decision to punish someone who loosened tongues of Islamist terrorists at Guantanamo suddenly threatens not only the CIA interrogators and Justice Department lawyers, but even members of Congress. Maybe it won’t stop there: if the lawyers who offered legal opinions are at risk of punishment for their legal advice, why not the members of Congress who knew what was going on? Why not the secretaries who typed up the transcripts? Why not the interns who fetched the coffee? All were accessories either before or after the fact.

We’re on unfamiliar ground now. No president before has sought to punish his predecessor for policy decisions, no matter how wrong or wrong-headed…Exacting revenge for unpopular policies is the norm in the third world, heretofore more likely in Barack Obama’s ancestral Kenya than in America, more in the tradition of gangland Chicago than in Washington, where we count on cooler heads to prevail when raw emotion threatens to overwhelm sobriety and the undisciplined senses.

The president hadn’t counted on the rage of the jackals on the leftmost fringe of his party, organizations like MoveOn.org, which want only the “unity” of the lynch mob. They demand a hanging and the president promises only to think about it. Ever confident that his golden tongue, with or without the teleprompter, would mesmerize all foes and vanquish all rancor, Mr. Obama then threw George W. Bush’s lawyers to the mob.

Perhaps the president imagines that nobody cares much about what happens to lawyers, but he has set in motion something neither he nor anyone else can control. Some of the Democrats in Congress, eager now to join the mob, will regret what they cry for. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, for one, was a member of the House intelligence committee and sat in on super-secret briefings after Sept. 11. She concedes that she heard about waterboarding but she doesn’t remember exactly what she heard. Just like Barack Obama sleeping through 20 years of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s rabid sermons, Ms. Pelosi dozed through the briefings. Her colleagues on the intelligence panel say they remember her demanding that the CIA do more to get the “intelligence” to prevent another attack.

Perhaps that’s what’s behind Harry Reid’s reluctance to go there: just in practical terms, it can come back to bite them all in the butt. And although that’s hardly the best or most lofty reason to oppose the truth commissions, it’ll do for now.

Some thoughts on Obama and the torture memos

The New Neo Posted on by

On the topic of Obama’s decision to release the so-called “torture memos,” others have stated the basics already, and stated them well (see this and this, for example). In the latter article, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, ranking Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, writes:

…[L]ast week Mr. Obama overruled the advice of his CIA director, Leon Panetta, and four prior CIA directors by releasing the details of the enhanced interrogation program. Former CIA director Michael Hayden has stated clearly that declassifying the memos will make it more difficult for the CIA to defend the nation.

Ponder that for a moment: not only the previous, but also the present CIA director—Obama’s own recent appointee—warned him of the dangers of what he was about to do. And yet Obama disregarded the advice of all of them.

That’s hubris, because it sure isn’t good judgment. And to what purpose did Obama jeopardize our security against this advice? According to Hoekstra:

It was not necessary to release details of the enhanced interrogation techniques, because members of Congress from both parties have been fully aware of them since the program began in 2002. We believed it was something that had to be done in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to keep our nation safe. After many long and contentious debates, Congress repeatedly approved and funded this program on a bipartisan basis in both Republican and Democratic Congresses.

But worse may still be to come [emphasis mine]:

Last week, Mr. Obama argued that those who implemented this program should not be prosecuted — even though the release of the memos still places many individuals at other forms of unfair legal risk. It appeared that Mr. Obama understood it would be unfair to prosecute U.S. government employees for carrying out a policy that had been fully vetted and approved by the executive branch and Congress… Unfortunately, on April 21, Mr. Obama backtracked and opened the door to possible prosecution of Justice Department attorneys who provided legal advice with respect to the enhanced interrogations program. The president also signaled that he may support some kind of independent inquiry into the program.

It doesn’t take expertise in intelligence-gathering to understand what an incredibly dangerous precedent Obama is setting here. It’s not even really about security, it’s about respect for the continuity of the office of the presidency and the acts of previous Congresses.

Not only is Obama showing how wedded he is to the far Left wing of his party, not only is he showing how little he understands the complexity of decision-making in the immediate post-9/11 period, but he is setting an extraordinary—and I believe unprecedented—precedent.

Ordinarily, decisions made by a previous administration, even ones with which a new administration markedly disagrees, are considered to have been made in good faith unless there is strong and overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Mere disagreement on a point of law is hardly enough; there must be some sort of subversion of the ordinary process of policy-making itself in order to consider prosecuting those who served in previous administrations.

I cannot recall another example in which a new administration not only criticized the previous one at every opportunity, publicly and even (perhaps especially) while abroad, but also prepared to investigate and even prosecute those who made good faith decisions in that administration on the advice of properly appointed lawyers and in a process that was fully disclosed to Congress and approved by that body—or, as in this case, to prosecute the Justice Department lawyers themselves.

This is without any allegation of some sort of egregious misconduct, such as the withholding of evidence by prosecutors in the Stevens case. The sort of prosecution contemplated by the Obama administration is analogous to the show trials of Communist countries, or other dictatorships in which the new leader must stifle and punish the opposition in order to make sure his power is secure, and to sow fear in his rivals.

The closest analogy I can come to in this country is the work of the post-Vietnam War Church Committee, a Congressional body which investigated the CIA and made recommendations that ended such “rogue” practices as attempts to assassinate foreign leaders. The differences between then and now are huge, however; the clandestine CIA tactics investigated then were a far cry from today’s lawyer-generated memos and interrogation techniques, about which Congress was fully informed and of which Congress approved.

It is interesting, however, to note that the Church Committee’s work was mostly classified until the 1990’s; it did not involve the contemporaneous public release of CIA memos. In addition, the checks already in place for the so-called “torture memos” (lawyer approval, Congressional oversight) were exactly the sort of limits on unbridled CIA power and autonomy that were the results of the Church Committee’s work.

In addition, the Church Committee’s recommendations led to policies such as the “firewall” (which I discussed at length here) which hampered our ability to collect and share intelligence between government agencies, and paved the way for 9/11. It all seems rather ironic, doesn’t it?