Thursday, May 21, 2009
Obama, Democrats, Gitmo With the Senate Democrats failing to back Obama’s push to close Guantanamo, Obama addressed the needless fear that continues to paralyze Harry Reid and too many Democrats. Much to commend as to his artful rhetoric, his good intentions and his multiple statements about adhering to the rule of law. And he blistered the “haphazard” Bush administration that “set aside principle” and “created an ad hoc legal approach that was neither effective or sustainable.” Yet, human rights advocates were passionately, if not bitterly disappointed, as his call for “prolonged detention” of some detainees becomes a continuation of the Bush-Cheney policy of indefinitely holding the accused, only not keeping them, ultimately, in Gitmo. Obama added that the Administration is creating a "legal regime" for this extra-constitutional policy.
President Obama delivered an impassioned defense of his administration’s anti-terrorism policies on Thursday, reiterating his determination to close the prison at the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba in the face of growing Congressional pressure and declaring that America will remain strong if it stands by its basic precepts.
The president said that what has gone on at Guantánamo for the past seven years has demonstrated an unjust, haphazard “ad hoc approach” that has undermined rather than strengthened America’s safety, and that moving its most dangerous inmates to the United States is both practical and in keeping with the country’s cherished ideals.
Moreover, he said that transferring some Guantánamo detainees to highly secure prisons in the United States would in no way endanger American security.
Speaking at the National Archives, which houses the Constitution and other documents embodying America’s system of government and justice, the president promised to work with Congress to develop a safe and fair system for dealing with a particularly thorny problem: what to do with those Guantánamo detainees who, for one reason or another, cannot be prosecuted in civilian or military courts “yet who pose a clear danger to the American people” and therefore cannot simply be released. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/us/politics/22obama.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print
Greg Sargent:
Today, perhaps out of frustration, or perhaps out of necessity, Obama the Persuader is back.
Obama directly confronted every one of the national security attacks coming from Republicans of late. Obama’s aggressiveness and coherence today was a strong reminder of just how absent this sort of push-back has been in recent weeks and just how incoherent the Dem response has been.
Obama argued that torture is not only wrong, but is also ineffective. He practically mocked the idea that we should fear housing terrorists in maximum security prisons in America. He didn’t shy away from arguing that the law, ultimately, is our most important source of strength. Tellingly, he also refused to cede ground to his liberal critics, implicitly insisting that decisions that have disappointed them do have a place in his larger vision.
Obama’s return to persuasion mode is itself an acknowledgment that Republicans have succeeded in framing the debate and that the GOP attacks were creating deep consternation among Congressional Dems. One interesting thing to watch will be whether Obama’s speech reassures Dems in Congress or whether they persist in believing that they remain vulnerable to the GOP attacks. http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/president-obama/obama-returns-to-persuasion-mode-in-big-national-security-speech/
James Fallows:
Taken at his word, he's saying: Congress can do the investigating, the courts (and my Department of Justice) can prosecute. In theory, this works out well. A new president moves ahead; the System provides accountability. We'll see.
…Subtle harpoon crux of the speech, in the last paragraph:
We will not be safe if we see national security as a wedge that divides America - it can and must be a cause that unites us as one people, as one nation. We have done so before in times that were more perilous than ours. http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/05/on_obamas_security_speech.php
Russ Feingold:
I welcome the president's emphasis on congressional oversight and the need for collaboration with Congress, for which the Bush Administration held such contempt.
The president has taken some important steps in his first four months. He has banned torture, increased transparency, and focused on the crucial threat to our national security emanating from al Qaeda's safe haven in Pakistan. And he has pledged to close Guantanamo, which is being used as a recruiting tool by our enemies. But nobody expected the president would be able to undo the eight year assault on the rule of law by the last administration in just four months. So I look forward to continuing to work with him to restore the rule of law and put in place policies that will keep America safe and reduce the threats to our country that have grown more challenging because of the missteps of the last administration. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/05/feingold-praises-obama-speech.php?ref=fpa
Anthony Romero, ACLU:
"President Obama's decision to continue George Bush's policies essentially means that they become his own," Romero said. "And if he continues down this path, these policies will certainly become known in the history books as the Bush-Obama doctrine." Romero described the discussion as "freewheeling" and said Obama was "clearly deeply steeped in the issues. But he had little interest in revisiting his recent decisions." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/20/AR2009052001365.html
Glenn Greenwald:
Obama repeatedly invoked the paradigm of The War on Terror to justify some extreme policies… beginning with his rather startling declaration that he will work to create a system of "preventive detention" for accused Terrorists without a trial, in order to keep locked up indefinitely people who, in his words, "cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people." In other words, even as he paid repeated homage to "our values" and "our timeless ideals," he demanded the power (albeit with unspecified judicial and Congressional oversight) to keep people in prison with no charges or proof of any crime having been committed, all while emphasizing that this "war" will continue for at least ten years. Compare the power of indefinite, "preventive" detention he's seeking to this:
"I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Paine, 1789. ME 7:408, Papers 15:269.
Executive imprisonment has been considered oppressive and lawless since John, at Runnymede, pledged that no free man should be imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, or exiled save by the judgment of his peers or by the law of the land." Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443, 533 (1953) (Jackson, J.) (conc. op.).
Similarly, he simultaneously paid homage to "rule of law" while demanding that there be no investigations or accountability for those who repeatedly broke the law.
The speech was fairly representative of what Obama typically does: effectively defend some important ideals in a uniquely persuasive way and advocating some policies that promote those ideals (closing Guantanamo, banning torture tactics, limiting the state secrets privilege) while committing to many which plainly violate them (indefinite preventive detention schemes, military commissions, denial of habeas rights to Bagram abductees, concealing torture evidence, blocking judicial review on secrecy grounds). Like all political officials, Obama should be judged based on his actions and decisions, not his words and alleged intentions and motives. Those actions in the civil liberties realm, with some exceptions, have been profoundly at odds with his claimed principles, and this speech hasn't changed that. Only actions will.
Who Approved Torture Pre-Memos? Gonzales! He signed off when he was White House Counsel.
The public record includes testimony from Ali Soufan, a former FBI interrogator who was with Zubaydah during April and May of 2002....Soufan testified that in the first two months of Zubaydah's interrogation, a CIA contractor used nudity, sleep deprivation, loud noise and extreme temperatures during interrogations. That contractor has been identified as a psychologist named James Mitchell.
Sources tell NPR that "nearly every day, Mitchell would sit at his computer and write a top-secret cable to the CIA's counterterrorism center. Each day, Mitchell would request permission to use enhanced interrogation techniques on Zubaydah. The source says the CIA would then forward the request to the White House, where White House counsel Alberto Gonzales would sign off on the technique. That would provide the administration's legal blessing for Mitchell to increase the pressure on Zubaydah in the next interrogation....
Attorneys who have worked in the White House counsel's office describe it as 'highly unusual' for the White House to tell interrogators what they can and cannot do. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104350361
Harry Reid: Wimp Extraordinaire: He bent to the fear-mongering/hysteria by a weak GOP, that we can’t reassign Gitmo prisoners to hard core prisons in the U.S. One is supposed to root for Democrats to control the Senate, but they so rarely exercise that control. It makes one not shudder to learn of Reid’s low approval marks in Nevada.
Chris Hayes notes another weak showing by Reid, this time over shotguns in national parks.
Senator Tom Coburn has struck again, aided and abetted by feckless Majority Leader Harry Reid.
This time around, Coburn hijacked the credit card reform bill, attaching yet another insane gun amendment that has nothing whatsoever to do with the issue at hand. The result? A vote for the "Credit Card Bill of Rights" is now also a vote for allowing loaded shotguns, rifles -- even AK-47s -- into our national parks. Score another win for the NRA, poaching, environmental degradation, and national insecurity -- and a huge loss for public safety.
Congressman Raúl Grijalva, who chairs the National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands Subcommittee as well as the Progressive Caucus, held a press conference on Capitol Hill yesterday to urge action against the amendment. He was joined by Representatives Carolyn McCarthy and Carolyn Maloney, as well as advocates from the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, the Humane Society, National Parks Conservation Association, and two retired park rangers-- one of whom is a former director of law enforcement at the parks.
Grijalva and his colleagues urged Americans to contact their representatives and tell them to vote against this amendment, which could be taken up on the House floor as early as today. (Grijalva said it was an "uphill" battle to find the votes to shoot the amendment down.) They also urged House leadership to take the bill to conference and strip the amendment as not germane, which clearly it isn't.
Yesterday a Reid spokesman told CongressDaily that there is little Reid can do to prevent amendments like Coburn's -- frankly, that's a load of crap. He could toughen up (as could Dems fearful of the NRA). There is a well known process on the Hill called "filling the tree", whereby the Majority Leader cuts off amendments by offering his own -- even if they are simply place holders. In response, the GOP would certainly complain bitterly or maybe try to slow down the process. Let them. http://www.thenation.com/blogs/jstreet/437306?rel=emailNation
Philadelphia Mississippi: Black Mayor The notorious city where three civil rights workers were killed in 1964, where Reagan kicked off his 1980 campaign and which is still with a white majority, brought itself into the modern era.
The city of Philadelphia, Miss., where members of the Ku Klux Klan killed three civil rights workers in 1964 in one of the era’s most infamous acts, on Tuesday elected its first black mayor.
James A. Young, a Pentecostal minister and former county supervisor, narrowly beat the incumbent, Rayburn Waddell, in the Democratic primary. There is no Republican challenger.
The results, announced Wednesday night, were a turning point for a mostly white city of 7,300 people in east-central Mississippi still haunted by the killings, which captured front-page headlines across the nation and were featured in the 1988 film “Mississippi Burning.”
“This shows a complete change of attitude and a desire to move forward,” said Mr. Young, 53, a Philadelphia native who integrated the local elementary school as the only black student in his sixth-grade class in the mid-1960s. “When I campaigned, the signs on the doors said, ‘Welcome,’ and I actually felt welcome.”
Mississippi has the largest number of black elected officials in the country, but they rarely come from majority-white electorates, said Joseph Crespino, an expert in Mississippi history at Emory University. Mr. Crespino called Mr. Young’s victory “remarkable.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/us/22mayor.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
Health Care: Public Option The lobbying is intense and despite romantic notions about Teddy Kennedy being healthy enough to make a difference, the public option continues to appear to be endangered. Public concern must be registered, a groundswell must be palpable. Even Kerry- and Kennedy- should hear from residents of Massachusetts.
Senate Switchboard
(202) 224-3121
A Suggested script:
"I oppose the healthcare trigger. Please ask the Senator to stand up against the insurance industry and the so-called ‘trigger' for a public option. We need the choice of a public healthcare option now, not more of the same broken healthcare system for years to come." www.democracyforamerica.com
Dealing with the Taliban: Negotiations are happening, and there are demands:
Dexter Filkins:
Leaders of the Taliban and other armed groups battling the Afghan government are talking to intermediaries about a potential peace agreement, with initial demands focused on a timetable for a withdrawal of American troops, according to Afghan leaders here and in Pakistan.
The talks, if not the withdrawal proposals, are being supported by the Afghan government. The Obama administration, which has publicly declared its desire to coax “moderate” Taliban fighters away from armed struggle, says it is not involved in the discussions and will not be until the Taliban agree to lay down their arms. But nor is it trying to stop the talks, and Afghan officials believe they have tacit support from the Americans.
The discussions have so far produced no agreements, since the insurgents appear to be insisting that any deal include an American promise to pull out — at the very time that the Obama administration is sending more combat troops to help reverse the deteriorating situation on the battlefield. Indeed, with 20,000 additional troops on the way, American commanders seem determined to inflict greater pain on the Taliban first, to push them into negotiations and extract better terms. And most of the initial demands are nonstarters for the Americans in any case.
Even so, the talks are significant because they suggest how a political settlement may be able to end the eight-year-old war, and how such negotiations may proceed. They also raise the prospect of potentially difficult decisions by President Hamid Karzai and President Obama, who may have to consider making deals with groups like the Taliban that are anathema to many Americans, and other leaders with brutal and bloody pasts. Some of the leaders in the current talks have been involved with Al Qaeda.
…American officials insist they are not participating in any talks. “The U.S. would support such efforts only if Taliban are willing to abandon violence and lay down their arms, and accept Afghanistan’s democratically elected government,” said Ian Kelly, a State Department spokesman. Still, two of the principal intermediaries, Mr. Zaeef and Daoud Abedi, said they had held extensive discussions with American officials. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/world/asia/21kabul.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print
-R
