Kinder, Gentler GWOT
Fascinating article at The New Republic seeks to pants Cheney on his claim that Obama is endangering the United States by reversing Bush anti-terrorism policies. Posits that Obama, though adopting Bush policies wholesale, is in fact fighting terrorism smarter. Gentler.
Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law prof and former Bush AAG, a soft-power advocate who left after less than a year reportedly at odds with the Cheneyites, goes on document 11 ways Obama opposed Bush policies, sought to change them or claimed he was trying to, anyway, and has backed off, adopting Bush policies with minor tweaks. Goldsmith says this is because the “late Bush” policies were modified and more palatable than “early Bush” (fails to note in making that excuse that Obama’s 2008 campaign was based on virulent opposition to both “early” and “late” Bush, though he documents it in his 11 points). Goldsmith also observes that actually governing is really hard. And adds:
A third reason for the closeness of the Bush and Obama policies is that many of the Bush policies reflect longstanding executive branch positions. Every wartime president has asserted the right to detain enemy forces without charge or trial during war. Many of them used military commissions for war criminals. Presidents dating back at least to Carter have maintained that habeas corpus review does not extend to aliens detained outside the United States. The state secrets doctrine is over a century old and has been employed vigorously by presidents since the 1970s. Rendition and targeted killings began under Clinton if not earlier. It is no surprise that President Obama seeks to maintain these presidential powers. It would be a surprise if he did not do so.
Wow. Howbout that New Republic. So Bush was justified by prior precedent all along, and his policies have been legitimized by Obama’s adoption of them. Here’s another eye-popper:
Its changes to Bush practices thus far–cutting back on secret detentions, probable new restrictions on interrogation, and relatively small procedural changes to military commissions–will leave some suspected terrorists in a better place than they would have been under the Bush regime (although Obama’s increase in targeted killings will likely result in more deaths and injuries, without due process, to terror suspects and innocent civilians).
Curious observations from someone who left the Bush admin because it was being too harsh, and likes the Obama admin’s soft touch.
I also like the part where Goldsmith says the “state of war” vs. terrorism view adopted by the Obama admin should be “unsurprising” seeing as Congress and the Supreme Court have affirmed it. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned police work?
It turns out, being president is different. There’s responsibility and … knowing stuff.
President Obama has gone from a legislator and presidential candidate to the commander in chief wholly responsible for the nation’s safety. He now reads the same threat reports as President Bush and confronts the same challenge of stopping Islamist terrorists who hide among civilians and who want to use ever-smaller and more deadly weapons to disrupt our way of life. He also faces the same paucity of truly useful information about the enemy and the same hard tradeoffs between liberty and security. And he knows that the American people will blame him and no one else if the terrorists strike … The intense personal responsibility of the president for national security, combined with the continuing reality of a frightening and difficult-to-detect threat, has unsurprisingly led President Obama, like President Bush, to want to use the full arsenal of presidential tools.
That’s a heck of a rehabilitation for the battered old war criminal. I applaud The New Republic for presenting this revisionist view to its moderate armchair lefty readership.
OK, so TNR has established that we have a GWOT, Bush was doing a great job, and Obama, despite the denunciations, balking and half-hearted efforts to change course, agrees. How does all this make Obama the smarter GWOT fighter?
Obama puts a bow on it:
The main difference between the Obama and Bush administrations concerns not the substance of terrorism policy, but rather its packaging. The Bush administration shot itself in the foot time and time again, to the detriment of the legitimacy and efficacy of its policies, by indifference to process and presentation. The Obama administration, by contrast, is intensely focused on these issues.
The article concludes with an elaboration on how Obama is keenly focused on symbolism and rhetoric, and didn’t do anything dumb like invade Iraq based on faulty intelligence.
Of course, the Obama admin is pretty much not done anything overseas yet … gaffes re Britain and Russia notwithstanding … except tweak the Bush program, while capitalizing on Bush’s Iraq success to apply its lessons to the flareup in Afghanistan, and throwing even more money at Pakistan. It’s not like he has seven and a half years of preventing any repeat attack on the United States behind him. So this notion that he’s fighting smarter is rhetorical and untested at best.
But that’s OK, because Goldsmith has already established that rhetoric trumps action.
If it’s all about rhetoric, this news item seems like a good way to close. NYT: Obama gives Iran a year to get with the program or the mullahs are really in big trouble.
It’ll be interesting to see Obama but a bow on that piece of unfinished GWOT business.
Greenwald, with a rant on the same TNR Goldsmith article, appears to more or less agree me, though I admit I didn’t hang in for all of Greenwald’s expository tangents. The difference is, I’m glad Obama’s showing some sense, and Greenwald isn’t. That said, I am not confident that Obama’s lack of principle and his default to reality is any substitute for an actual willingness to fight the enemies of the United States and protect the interests of the free world.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:06 am Comments (3) on Tuesday, May 19, 2009
3 Responses to “Kinder, Gentler GWOT”
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May 19th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
“If it’s all about rhetoric, …”
It’s not. It’s all about looking good in the mirror.
May 19th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Obama gives Iran a year to get with the program or the mullahs are really in big trouble.
In a year, Iran will have nukes, and we won’t be able to do a darn thing about it. So once again, Obama will have slithered out of making a tough decision.
He’s hanging on to Bush policies because he doesn’t have a choice. He simply doesn’t know what else to do, and he absolutely can’t let himself be blamed for failure. His acolytes don’t want him to be blamed either, because blaming him is, by extension, blaming them.
May 19th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
A parade of astroturfing blog commenters told me last year that unlike Bush, Obama was going to get tough on Pakistan, based on a gaffe about invading it he blurted out in 2007. I told them there really was not good choice regarding Pakistan but we might be able to do something about Iran, and would they be on board with Bush doing it now? No medals for guessing the response.