Brad DeLong

The Only Comment Possible on the Tsarnaev Burial

Sophokles:

Creon: You alone, of all the people in Thebes, see things that way.

Antigone: They see it just that way but defer to you and keep their tongues in leash.

Creon: And aren’t you ashamed to differ so from them? So disloyal!

Antigone: Not ashamed for a moment, not to honor my brother, my own flesh and blood.

Creon: Wasn’t Eteocles a brother too—cut down, facing him?

Antigone: Brother, yes, by the same mother, the same father.

Creon: Then how can you render his enemy such honors, such impieties in his eyes?

Antigone: He will never testify to that, Eteocles dead and buried.

Creon: He will—if you honor the traitor just as much as him.

Antigone: But it was his brother, not some slave that died—

Creon: Ravaging our country!—but Eteocles died fighting in our behalf.

Antigone: No matter—Death longs for the same rites for all.

Creon: Never the same for the patriot and the traitor.

Antigone: Who, Creon, who on earth can say the ones below don’t find this pure and uncorrupt?

Creon: Never. Once an enemy, never a friend, not even after death.

Antigone:  I was born to join in love, not hate—that is my nature.

Creon: Go down below and love, if love you must—love the dead! While I’m alive, no woman is going to lord it over me.

Barack Obama's Statement on Boston Marathon Bombing

President Obama:

Earlier today, I was briefed by my homeland security team on the events in Boston. We’re continuing to monitor and respond to the situation as it unfolds. And I’ve directed the full resources of the federal government to help state and local authorities protect our people, increase security around the United States as necessary, and investigate what happened.

The American people will say a prayer for Boston tonight. And Michelle and I send our deepest thoughts and prayers to the families of the victims in the wake of this senseless loss.

We don’t yet have all the answers. But we do know that multiple people have been wounded, some gravely, in explosions at the Boston Marathon.

Keeping the President from Having Powers William the Bastard Never Claimed

William the Bastard never claimed to have the power to execute his vassals on his say-so and whim without providing an explanation. Pejman Yousefzadeh has a proposal to keep U.S. presidents from claiming that power without ceding jurisdiction to an Article III court:

Drones and the Law: Restoring Checks and Balances: The Department of Justice has recently released a white paper detailing what it believes to be the scope of the president’s authority to kill Americans suspected of being members of al Qaeda… states that the power to kill such suspects can take place “away from the zone of active hostilities.”… The white paper has prompted spirited reaction… who qualifies as “an informed high-level official”[?]… Jeffrey Rosen claims that the administration’s arguments do not pass constitutional muster…. Jack Goldsmith states that… the white paper “does reveal problems in the administration’s political and legal strategy for conducting drone strikes, especially against American citizens”… we need “a new framework statute”….

Some have argued that the best “form of review” of the president’s actions would be found in a FISA-like court charged with the responsibility to authorize lethal operations against Americans…. But as Robert Chesney, a law professor at the University of Texas, Austin notes, “some judges want absolutely nothing to do with” the process of reviewing whether certain Americans ought to be marked for death, and even if they do, judicial oversight may be constitutionally and procedurally problematic. So perhaps a different “form of review” is required. One such alternative mechanism might be to empower the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board to serve as a check against any overreach of presidential power in targeting American suspects for killing… to truly establish the entity’s independence from the office of the presidency, Congress should pass and the president should sign legislation reconstituting the PIAB as a Federal Intelligence Commission, and making it an independent regulatory agency… members of the new FIC must be nominated by the president and must undergo Senate confirmation…. Empowering an independent agency to act as a check against presidential power and allowing for greater congressional oversight in the process is a good way to ensure the drone program is not being abused…

It's a smart idea--I'm still attracted to the idea of using the medieval law of outlawry, on the grounds that that worked reasonably well, and I do not see why courts do not see this as their business. But definitely worth thinking about...

Dennis Perrin on the Transformation of Christopher Hitchens: Tuesday Ten Years Ago on the Internet Weblogging

Dennis Perrin: A friend and protégé tries to make sense of what's happened to Christopher Hitchens:

Bright spring afternoon. Hitch and I spend it in his fave D.C. pub just down the street from his spacious apartment. At the long polished bar, he sips a martini, I swig Tanqueray on ice offset by pints of ale. The pub's TV is flashing golf highlights while the jukebox blasts classic rock. We're chatting about nothing in particular when the juke begins playing "Moonshadow" by Cat Stevens. Hitch stops talking. His face tightens. Eyes narrow. I know this look--I saw it on Crossfire when he nearly slugged a Muslim supporter of the Ayatollah's fatwa against Salman Rushdie. I saw it during a Gulf War panel discussion at Georgetown when he responded to some pro-war hack with a precision barrage of invective, followed by the slamming down of the mike, causing a brief reverb in the speakers.

And here it was again.

Tuesday Ten Years Ago on the Internet: Glen Whitman on Marginal Terror Avoidance and George W. Bush

Glen Whitman:

Agoraphilia: Marginal Terror Avoidance: I didn’t watch the State of the Union address, so Thursday’s press conference was the first time I’d actually seen Bush speaking since – wow, maybe not since 9/11. And I noticed something interesting: he’s learned to speak like a real president. No, seriously. The accent is milder now (I grew up in Texas, and even I couldn’t stand the accent as it was before), he speaks carefully and earnestly, and the lurking smirk is gone. He actually exhibited, dare I say it, gravitas.

And that’s too bad, really, because much of what he had to say doesn’t bear much scrutiny. Will Wilkinson has some choice commentary on the evasiveness of Bush’s answer to a question about the cost of making war on Iraq. The basic gist: in response to a question about costs, the president talked about benefits instead.

A Question for Harold Hongju Koh on Changes Over the Last Nine Centuries in the Law of Outlawry...

Come January 6 I will be not in New Orleans but in San Diego, and hence not at the AALS Luncheon with the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State, Harold Hongju Koh.

So I will not get to ask Dean Koh the following question:

Dean Koh,

According to John Reeves, author of the History of English Law from the Time of the Romans to the End of the Reign of Elizabeth, a declaration of outlawry—that such-and-such a man could and should be shot or knifed on sight—proceeded according to a legal process in front of judges at least since the reign of Henry III Plantagenet. To quote:

[T]hose of inferior age, as they were not sub lege, could not properly be ever said to be outlawed, or put out of the law: the same of a woman, who, as she also was never in laughe—that is, in frank pledge, or in a decenna, could not be outlawed; but if she fled upon commission of any felony she might be wayviata, as they called it…. esteemed as one deserted and forlorn….

The time necessary to complete the outlawry was this: the offender was to be demanded at four counties, from county to county, till he was outlawed; but at the first county there was only to be what they termed simplex vocatio; and that was not computed towards the time of one of the four counties; so that in truth five were to pass before the outlawry was had; the outlawry therefore was to be at the fourth of those after the simplex vocatio. At the fifth or, as they called it, the fourth county, no essoin or excuse could be received, nor was it sufficient that any one would engage to produce him at the next county…. [T]he fugitive had till the fifth county to render himself to prison or defend himself and purge his innocence, but after that time the outlawry stood in the way, and he could not return till that was removed by the mercy of the king….

In… instances where the king would have pardoned a conviction of the fact [of the underlying crime], he would readily pardon the outlawry, as in case of homicide per infortunium, or se defendendo; and in general where there was really no offence committed. Process of outlawry would not lie against a clerk…

Today, by contrast, in order to be outlawed—and thus in order to have your death commanded not just by blade or bow or gun but by teleoperated robot drone—there needs to be no public process by which you are commanded and offered the opportunity under the king’s peace to surrender and publicly defend yourself at five different successive county sessions. Instead, all that has to happen is that the high functionaries of the President, men and women not bound to others by feudal ties of mutual obligation or republican ties of election and representation but simply chosen at the President’s pleasure to sit on the National Security Council, in secret proceeding without judicial or other scrutiny, put your name on a list. And if you are a minor? Then a high functionary of the President will say, with a straight face, that you “should have chosen a better father” than one who was himself outlawed.

This is not a good trend in the rule of law as applied to outlawry that we have seen since the thirteenth century, is it?

What steps have you taken while in government to reverse this trend, and return the law of outlawry to something that would not have caused the justiciars of Henry III to raise their eyebrows and suggest that we remember what the common law is?

I cannot ask this question. I would dearly love to hear Harold Hongju Koh answer it.

Spencer Ackerman: Two Cheers for "Zero Dark Thirty"'s Torture Scenes

Spencer Ackerman:

Two Cheers for Zero Dark Thirty's Torture Scenes: [A] bloodied, disoriented and humiliated man… strapped to a wall with his pants around his ankles… having liquid forcibly poured down his throat… shoved into a box that could barely hold your stereo…. It’s enough to make you wretch. It’s arguably the best and most important part of the movie.

Kathryn Bigelow’s new film about the decade-long manhunt for Osama bin Laden begins with an unsparing, nauseating and frighteningly realistic look at how the CIA tortured many people and reaped very little intelligence…. The torture on display in the film occurs at the intersection of ignorance and brutality, while the vast, vast majority of the intelligence work that actually does lead to bin Laden’s downfall occurs after the torture has ended…. Bigelow is being presented as a torture apologist, and it’s a bum rap…. Bigelow instead presents a graphic presentation of what declassified CIA documents indicate the torture program really was….

War Is Cruelty: Middle East Weblogging

Ariel Sharon withdrew from Gaza as a dry-run for withdrawal from the West Bank…

And Gaza was taken over by crazies who want to destroy Israel and launch rockets over the border to try to kill civilians whenever they can.

And Israeli left arguments that withdrawal from the West Bank would bring peace suddenly became a lot less credible.

Walter Russell Mead:

America, Israel, Gaza, the World: As Israeli airstrikes and naval shells bombarded Gaza this weekend, the world asked the question that perennially frustrates, confuses and enrages so many people across the planet: Why aren’t the Americans hating on Israel more?… [T]he real force driving American support for Israeli actions in Gaza isn’t Islamophobia, Jewish conspiracies or foam-flecked religious nuts. It’s something much simpler….

Theoreticians of “just war” say that in order for war to be justifiable, two tests must be met. You have to have a legitimate cause for war (self defense, for example, rather than grabbing land from a weaker neighbor) and you must fight the war in the right way. You must fight fair (that is, fight a just war), and you must fight nice. One of the criteria for jus in bello… is proportionality….

For some, Zionism itself is an illegitimate idea…. For others, Israel['s] occupation of the West Bank and other crimes against the Palestinians have deprived it of a just grounds for war when Palestinians attack it…. But more moderate critics… focus on jus in bello… proportionality. When the Palestinians flick a handful of fairly crude rockets at random across Israel, these critics say, Israel has a right to a kind of pinprick response… [but not] to respond to limited attacks with unlimited force….

The whole jus in bello argument sails right over the heads of most Americans…. An endless war of limited intensity is worse, many Americans instinctively feel, than a time-limited war of unlimited ferocity…. This is the same logic by which someone like Osama bin Laden could justify his attacks on civilians at the World Trade Center, and it is the fundamental logic behind Hamas’ indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilian targets. Americans don’t like it when their enemies use this kind of logic, but it is a type of warfare they understand….

Thus when television cameras show the bodies of children killed in an Israeli air raid, Jacksonian Americans are sorry about the loss of life, but it inspires them to hate and loathe Hamas more…. They blame the irresponsible dolts who started the war… they admire Israel’s strength and its resolve for dealing with the appalling blood lust of the unhinged loons who start a war they can’t win, and then cower behind the corpses of the children their foolishness has killed. The whole situation strengthens the widespread American belief that Palestinian hate rather than Israeli intransigence is the fundamental reason for the Middle East impasse…

Friday Music: Bossa Nova Terror in the Desert "Iron Dome" Edition

Hoisted from the Archives: Is There Hope for the Rule of Law in America?

Brad DeLong: Social Studies 50th Anniversary Symposium: Is There Hope for the Rule of Law in America?:

That was the question asked by Denver University Professor Alan Gilbert during the morning panel.

Here is the answer I gave, as best as I can reconstruct it:

The question is: "Is there hope for the rule of law in America?" My answer is: No.

Begin with the assassination of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham and Prime Minister to King Charles I Stuart, on 23 August 1628. Nobody at the time doubted the king's power to torture the confessed assassin, John Felton, on the rack--the king's father James I Stuart had tortured Guy Fawkes and the other Gunpowder Plot suspects. But the king's power to torture was part of his prerogative powers of state, and Charles I Stuart sought to reserve his prerogative powers for use in more important arenas--that is, to raise money with them.

Thus Charles I asked his judges to authorize the torture of John Felton not as an act of state under the royal prerogative but as part of the process of the criminal law.

And let's let William Blackstone pick up the story at IV, 25, 326 of his Commentaries on the Laws of England:

[T]rial by rack is utterly unknown to the law of England; though once... [the] ministers of Henry IV [Lancaster]... laid a design to introduce the civil law into the kingdom as a rule of government... erected a rack for torture, which was called in derision the Duke of Exeter's daughter, and still remains in the Tower of London; where it was occasionally used as an engine of state, not of law, more than once in the reign of queen Elizabeth.

But when, upon the assassination of Villiers, duke of Buckingham, by Felton, it was proposed in the privy council to put the assassin to the rack in order to discover his accomplices, the judges, being consulted, declared unanimously, to their own honour and the honour of English law, that no such proceeding was allowable by the laws of England...

With the Great Revolution of the 1640s the prerogative powers of the monarch of the United Kingdom shrank. And with the Glorious Revolution they shrank again. And with the accession of the German-speaking Hanover dynasty they shrank yet again. And by 1789, when James Madison and company moved the then-powers of the monarch of the United Kingdom to make them the powers of the President of the United States, there were no prerogative powers left: the President was 100% Chief Magistrate with the power and the duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and 0% princeps legibus solutus.

So things stood for 200 years--save for Abraham Lincoln's arrogation to himself of Congress's Art. I §9 power to suspend the "privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in "cases of rebellion or invasion" but only when such suspension was "required" for the public safety.

So things stood until John Yoo.

Now John Yoo is an interesting case. In 2000 he was arguing at the Cato Institute that the President's powers as commander-in-chief were extremely crabbed and narrow--and that President Clinton had, in fact, exceeded his c-in-c powers and undermined the rule of law by ordering American soldiers to obey the orders of a British NATO general. That the president--or, indeed, that any commander--does not have the power to place American soldiers under allied command would have been a great shock to Dwight D. Eisenhower, or Harry S Truman, or Franklin D. Roosevelt, or Woodrow Wilson, or William McKinley, or indeed George Washington himself.

Yoo's claim in 2000 had absolutely no warrant in the constitution, in the law, in precedent, or in history.

But that is how it is with Yoo.

Sources who should know and whom I believe to be reliable tell me that when his tenure case moved through the University of California at Berkeley, historians objected to his use of history in his published articles: "What the frackity-frack is this?" they asked. "This isn't history. This isn't how it happened. This isn't history wie es eigentlich gewesen."

The response of then then-Dean of Berkeley Law School, a response that was convincing to the then-Chancellor of the University of California is said, by sources I believe reliable, to have been that history plays a special role in legal academia and argument. In legal academia, one's claims about history do not have to be true, the argument went. Indeed, a major mode of legal argumentation and academic debate is to make false claims about what the law has been in past in the hope that those claims will then shape what the law will be in the future.

By 2001, with a Republican as president, John Yoo had reversed field from his 2000 position by 180 degrees. He was making a very different set of false claims about what the law of America had been. He was then claiming that the president's commander-in-chief powers contained within them prerogative powers to torture and kill outside of legal procedure that would have astonished George III Hanover, and even exceeded those of William I Conqueror.

When William I Conqueror tortured or killed his tenants-in-chief, he agreed he owed his barons at least an after-the-fact accounting of why, if not any before-the-fact procedural checks.

Backed by John Yoo and company, George W. Bush claimed that he did not owe even an after-the-fact accounting. And Barack Obama holds to the same line.

So I see no hope.

Jason Kuznicki: "We live in the world that W. created, for good or — mostly — for ill"

http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2012/10/the-towering-legacy-of-george-w-bush/

Joe Klein: "Romney’s foreign- and national-security policies have been a steaming heap of nonsense from the start"

http://swampland.time.com/2012/10/22/the-third-debate-perfect-symmetry/

Hari Sevugan Wants to Watch Byron York and John McCain Fight Mitt Romney

Hari Sevugan (HariSevugan) on Twitter:

.@ByronYork in his own words on @MittRomney's OBL position: “Perhaps Romney should watch the tape of the planes hitting the towers again.”

.@ByronYork in his own words on @MittRomney's OBL position: “I can’t imagine any serious Republican candidate for president [saying that]"

.@SenJohnMcCain in his own words on @MittRomney position on OBL: shows "naïveté."

.@MittRomney in his own words on OBL: "It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person."

And here is the tape:

LIZ SIDOTI: Why haven’t we caught bin Laden in your opinion?

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: I think, I wouldn’t want to over-concentrate on Bin Laden. He’s one of many, many people who are involved in this global Jihadist effort. He’s by no means the only leader. It’s a very diverse group—Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood and of course different names throughout the world. It’s not worth moving heaven and earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person. It is worth fashioning and executing an effective strategy to defeat global, violent Jihad and I have a plan for doing that.

LIZ SIDOTI: But would the world be safer if bin laden were caught?

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Yes, but by a small percentage increase—a very insignificant increase in safety by virtue of replacing bin Laden with someone else. Zarqawi—we celebrated the killing of Zarqawi, but he was quickly replaced. Global Jihad is not an effort that is being populated by a handful or even a football stadium full of people. It is—it involves millions of people and is going to require a far more comprehensive strategy than a targeted approach for bin laden or a few of his associates.

Bush Lawyer: Proposed Romney Torture Policy Is 'Indisputably Illegal'

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2012/10/03/947211/goldsmith-romney-torture-illegal/

The Foreign Policy Establishment Says: Don't Vote for Mitt Romney. Don't Work for Mitt Romney. Don't Give to Mitt Romney. Don't Raise Money for Mitt Romney

Ben Smith: Foreign Policy Hands Voice Disbelief At Romney Cairo Statement:

“Bungle… utter disaster…not ready for prime time… not presidential… Lehman moment.” And that's just the Republicans.

Mitt Romney's sharply-worded attack on President Obama over a pair of deadly riots in Muslim countries last night…. It was the second time Romney has been burned by an early statement on a complex crisis: Romney denounced the Obama Administration's handling of a Chinese dissident's escape just as the Administration negotiated behind the scenes for his departure from the country.

"They were just trying to score a cheap news cycle hit based on the embassy statement and now it’s just completely blown up," said a very senior Republican foreign policy hand, who called the statement an "utter disaster" and a "Lehman moment" — a parallel to the moment when John McCain, amid the 2008 financial crisis, failed to come across as a steady leader. He and other members of both parties cited the Romney campaign's recent dismissals of foreign policy's relevance. One adviser dismissed the subject to BuzzFeed as a "shiny object," while another told Politico that the subject was the "president's turf," drawing a rebuke from Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol.

"I guess we see now that it is because they’re incompetent at talking effectively about foreign policy," said the Republican. "This is just unbelievable — when they decide to play on it they completely bungle it."

Romney…[']s campaign faces a near consensus in Republican foreign policy circles that, whatever the sentiment, Romney faltered badly.

"It’s deeply unfortunate when the circumstance of the statement becomes the story," said Rick Perry's former foreign policy adviser, Victoria Coates, who is now a adjunct fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and who suggested that Romney should simply have "gone earlier rather than save it for midnight" to avoid appearing to play politics on September 11….

"Its bad," said a former aide to Senator John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. "Just on a factual level that the statement was not a response but preceding, or one could make the case precipitating. And just calling it a 'disgrace' doesnt really cut it. Not ready for prime time."

A third former Republican, a former Bush State Department official, told BuzzFeed, "It wasn't presidential of Romney to go political immediately -- a tragedy of this magnitude should be something the nation collectively grieves before politics enters the conversation."…

The Republicans declined to speak for attribution, for fear of being publicly disloyal to their party's nominee.

Veteran Democratic foreign policy hands, operating under no such restriction, called Romney's quick move all but disqualifying.

"He did jump the gun. It revealed yet again that his foreign policy team is not ready for prime time," said David Rothkopf, a former Clinton State Department official. "It is ugly and amateurish. It also seems strangely out of character with Romney who elsewhere in the campaign seems inclined to be restrained to a fault."

Heather Hurlburt, who heads the National Security Network, a Democratic group, said the statement "shows not just poor judgment and a willingness to use tragedy for political gains, regardless of the security consequences — but also poor management. He has policy people on his team who know better. Clearly they weren't consulted…. As someone who worked at state and with diplomats for many years, it makes me feel sick," she said.

"Romney blew it and revealed how seriously maladroit he is when it comes to foreign affairs and national security," said Steve Clemons, the founder of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. "An attack on an Embassy, the murder of US officials including an Ambassador, is an attack on all Americans and the idea of America – and Romney gave terrorists what they want – a divided country still torn emotionally and politically by the events of 9-11. Romney talks of leadership but with his reckless commentary when events were fragile and still unfolding, he belly-flopped."

Statement by the President on the Attack in Benghazi

Barack Obama:

I strongly condemn the outrageous attack on our diplomatic facility in Benghazi, which took the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Right now, the American people have the families of those we lost in our thoughts and prayers. They exemplified America's commitment to freedom, justice, and partnership with nations and people around the globe, and stand in stark contrast to those who callously took their lives.

I have directed my Administration to provide all necessary resources to support the security of our personnel in Libya, and to increase security at our diplomatic posts around the globe. While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants.

On a personal note, Chris was a courageous and exemplary representative of the United States. Throughout the Libyan revolution, he selflessly served our country and the Libyan people at our mission in Benghazi. As Ambassador in Tripoli, he has supported Libya's transition to democracy. His legacy will endure wherever human beings reach for liberty and justice. I am profoundly grateful for his service to my Administration, and deeply saddened by this loss.

The brave Americans we lost represent the extraordinary service and sacrifices that our civilians make every day around the globe. As we stand united with their families, let us now redouble our own efforts to carry their work forward.

As Benjamin Franklin Said: "A Rising, Not a Setting Sun": 911 Anniversary

The first 911 on which the dead can sleep somewhat easier.

Osama bin Laden is dead too…

Barry Ritholtz

9/11 Recollections | The Big Picture: This is the first anniversary of 9/11 where Justice has been served. It is 11 years later and the wounds still seem fresh. Even the NYC weather — bright, crisp autumnal sunshine — feels similar. Each year, I try my best to avoid writing anything about September 11th. Given the history, it has become nearly unavoidable. Rather than write something new, I will instead point you to my experiences that day (which I wrote on the evening of 9/11). I was the Market Strategist for a firm headquartered at 2 WTC. I was fortunate to be in the LI office as events unfolded. I managed to get my head trader on the phone, and he gave me a full play by play of what was occurring to him in real time, until the towers went down and broke our phone connection. I put all of what he said down on paper, and published it the next day: A Personal Recollection From a Day of Horror (September 12th, 2001).

There is nothing else for me to add…

The Supreme Court Justices Who Elected George W. Bush Have an Awful Lot of Explaining to Do: 911 Edition

Kurt Eichenwald:

The Bush White House Was Deaf to 9/11 Warnings: On Aug. 6, 2001, President George W. Bush received a classified review of the threats posed by Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, Al Qaeda. That morning’s “presidential daily brief” — the top-secret document prepared by America’s intelligence agencies — featured the now-infamous heading: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” A few weeks later, on 9/11, Al Qaeda accomplished that goal.

On April 10, 2004, the Bush White House declassified that daily brief — and only that daily brief — in response to pressure from the 9/11 Commission, which was investigating the events leading to the attack. Administration officials dismissed the document’s significance, saying that, despite the jaw-dropping headline, it was only an assessment of Al Qaeda’s history, not a warning of the impending attack. While some critics considered that claim absurd, a close reading of the brief showed that the argument had some validity.

That is, unless it was read in conjunction with the daily briefs preceding Aug. 6, the ones the Bush administration would not release.

John Kerry: “Ask Osama bin Laden if he’s better off than he was four years ago!”

John Kerry: “Ask Osama bin Laden if he’s better off than he was four years ago.”

Who Are We Becoming?: Torture Edition

Scott Lemieux: Torture Without Accountability:

Adam Serwer: Investigation of Bush-era Torture Concludes With No Charges | Mother Jones

It is not as though we got anything out of torture. We blackened our reputation for a generation and did substantial damage to our national security. We gave away a piece of our soul. And our torturers and our torture techniques--they are the techniques designed to elicit false confessions.

At least when we sent Maher Arar to the Syrian Mukhabarat, the professionals there figured out pretty quickly that he was innocent and sent him back. Had our CIA kept hold of him, it would have elicited a false confession and still be claiming that he was a mastermind behind 911…

So I write:

I think the good guys have lost this permanently.

Impeaching or trying presidents and cabinet members for policies of torture is a vote loser, or so all the High Politicians think. And going after lower-downs creates very bad precedents for the future--for one thing, it then makes CIA agents slaves of the then-president because they must get their end-of-term plenary pardons before the administration changes. And the Roman Republic's fall teaches it how bad it is for people to fear that losing an election will land them in jail.

POTUS now has plenary power to arrest, detain, torture, or kill anyone on his say-so alone without ever having to explain why--a power William the Conquerer never claimed…

And somebody smarter than I am responds:

I would urge people to think of accountability as a generational project -- this is how it has worked out in Chile, Argentina, South Africa... the thing that can be done now is create opportunities for more participants to tell their stories, put on record what was done and who did it and how, so that the record gets fuller rather than thinner over time.

Ezra Klein: Do Democrats Have Their Own Individual Mandate Level Flip-Flop? No.

Why am I not surprised to find Peter Suderman saying something that does not have the truth nature as he plays for Team Republican?

Peter Suderman: Democrats and liberal policy wonks took a similar turn with Medicare premium support, now championed in broad form by both GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and the party’s leading policy entrepreneur, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan. The story is remarkably similar: The idea started out as a policy promoted by prominent liberal wonks, briefly gathered support from a handful of top-level policymakers near the end of the Clinton presidency, and is now deeply opposed by the majority of Democrats, who often refer to the idea as a plan to “end Medicare as we know it” — or occasionally just a way to “end Medicare,” period. Premium support, which would pay a flat rate toward the purchase of a private insurance plan for each Medicare beneficiary, was first developed by Alain Enthoven, a Democratic adviser who had previously served as a health policy consultant to President Jimmy Carter,  in “The History of Principles of Managed Competition” in 1993. In 1995, Henry Aaron, a scholar at Brookings who served as a senior official in President Carter’s Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, gave the policy its name — premium support — and suggested that it represented a Medicare reform compromise, a “middle ground” that could retains Medicare’s strengths but address budgetary challenges. In 1999, the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare, which was chaired by Democratic Senator John Breaux and included Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey, met to develop a proposal to reform the seniors’ health entitlement. The first item in the final proposal put forth by Breaux and supported by Kerrey was “the design of a premium support system.”

Ezra Klein:

There are a few problems with drawing an equivalence between “premium support” in Medicare and the individual mandate in health care. The first, and biggest, is simply who supported it… a few Democratic wonks, and then-Sens. Breaux and Kerrey. Of those Democratic wonks, some, like Alice Rivlin, continue to support a premium support system…. The reason the report from the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare never went anywhere is that every other Democrat on the Commission voted against the recommendations, and the Clinton White House quickly released a statement opposing premium support. There were, in other words, exactly no leading Democrats who signed onto premium support…. [T]he most significant elected Democrat to sign onto premium support is Sen. Ron Wyden, who crafted a plan with Paul Ryan earlier this year.

Compare that to the individual mandate. The mandate’s first political appearance was in a brief from the conservative Heritage Foundation. It then appeared in legislation co-sponsored by 18 Senate Republicans, including Bob Dole… Newt Gingrich… Mitt Romney… the Wyden-Bennett plan… Lamar Alexander… Chuck Grassley…. As late as June 2009, Grassley was telling Fox News, “there is a bipartisan consensus to have individual mandates.”

To my knowledge, there are no senior Republicans who have maintained or announced their support for an individual mandate in the manner of Rivlin or Wyden.

Premium support, in other words, was once endorsed by a handful of Democratic wonks and heterodox senators, though it was, from the beginning, a policy that gained the vast bulk of its political support from elected Republicans. It never gained any serious traction within the Democratic Party. The individual mandate was a Republican idea that garnered support from a diverse array of Republican leaders and institutions over the course of almost 15 years. And unlike with Breaux and Kerrey, many of those Republican leaders and institutions — like Gingrich and Romney and Grassley and Hatch and the Heritage Foundation — are still around today.

That’s not to say motivated reasoning doesn’t happen on both sides. But premium support isn’t a very good example of it. Rather, the clearest example of motivated reasoning among Democrats probably comes in the civil liberties sphere….

Finally, on premium support, it’s not clear to me that Democrats actually oppose it…

For the record, I support premium support--if Henry Aaron, Ron Wyden, or Alain Enthoven design it. I don't think that what Paul Ryan is proposing is anything that Enthoven, Aaron, or indeed Wyden would call "premium support": it is something else.

For the record, I believe that Glenn Greenwald is correct in being absolutely terrified of the Obama administration's continued and expanded abuses of power in national security. We may all suffer someday from the failure to confirm Dawn Johnson:

Glenn Greenwalda: To avoid counting civilian deaths, Obama re-defined "militant" to mean "all military-age males in a strike zone": Virtually every time the U.S. fires a missile from a drone… American media outlets dutifully… cite always-unnamed “officials” claiming that the dead were “militants.” It’s the most obvious and inexcusable form of rank propaganda: media outlets continuously propagating a vital claim without having the slightest idea if it’s true.

This practice continues even though key Obama officials have been caught lying, a term used advisedly, about how many civilians they’re killing. I’ve written and said many times before that in American media discourse, the definition of “militant” is any human being whose life is extinguished when an American missile or bomb detonates (that term was even used when Anwar Awlaki’s 16-year-old American son, Abdulrahman, was killed by a U.S. drone in Yemen two weeks after a drone killed his father…. “Another U.S. Drone Strike Kills Militants in Yemen”)…

Donald Rumsfeld? Not George W. Bush?

What were we paying Bush for, anyway?

Twitter / @attackerman: Bin Laden and the Arab Spring

Twitter / @attackerman:

RT @dangerroom: Watching bin Laden twist himself in knots over Arab Spring is fascinating. phrase "Zionist Arabs" appears in the documents.

The Constitution Guarantees Due Process **OF LAW**, D#%&head!

Attorney General Eric Holder:

Due process and judicial process are not one and the same. The Constitution guarantees due process, it does not guarantee judicial process.

The U.S. Constitution:

No person shall be… deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

It Is Not Quite as Stupid as the Ban on Breast Milk, But Still...

No, I do not feel safer:

Quote of the Day: January 20, 2012

"Parents of other friends were Revisionists, so named by Ze’ev Jabotinsky in the 1920s, when he invented his own brand of right-wing Zionism. The Revisionists’ slogan, which I heard often, was “A Jewish state with a Jewish majority on both sides of the Jordan,” a view that seemed pointless and funny to me in the 1950s and early 1960s, but became much less so after the Six Day War of 1967. The Revisionists were affiliated with the right-wing Herut (Freedom) Party in Israel, led by Menachem Begin, who, before Israeli independence, had led Jewish terrorists against the British colonizers of Palestine. According to my mother, Begin had dated her sister, one of my Israeli aunts, back in Poland when they were both young."

--Emanuel Derman, Models Behaving Badly

Gene Healy Wriitng in 2009 on Those Who Welcomed 9/11

Gene Healy:

Good News: 9/11 Didn’t ‘Change Everything’: On the eighth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York and D.C., things are going much better than most of us dared hope in the initial aftermath of that horrible day.  We’re still a secure, prosperous, and relatively free country, and the fear-poisoned atmosphere that governed American politics for years after 9/11 has thankfully receded.

Not everyone’s thankful, however.  Boisterous cable gabber Glenn Beck laments the return to normalcy. The website for Beck’s “9/12 Project” waxes nostalgic for the day after the worst terrorist attack in American history, a time when “We were united as Americans, standing together to protect the greatest nation ever created.” Beck’s purpose with the Project?  “We want to get everyone thinking like it is September 12th, 2001 again.”

My God, why in the world would anyone want that?  Yes, 9/12 brought moving displays of patriotism and a comforting sense of national unity, but that hardly made up for the fear, rage and sorrow that dominated the national mood and at times clouded our vision. 

But Beck’s not alone…. Less than a month after people jumped from the World Trade Center’s north tower to avoid burning to death, David Brooks asked, “Does anybody but me feel upbeat, and guilty about it?” “I feel upbeat because the country seems to be a better place than it was a month ago,” Brooks explained, “I feel guilty about it because I should be feeling pain and horror and anger about the recent events. But there’s so much to cheer one up.” One of the things that got Brooks giddy was liberals’ newfound bellicosity. That same week, liberal hawk George Packer wrote:

What I dread now is a return to the normality we’re all supposed to seek: instead of public memorials, private consumption; instead of lines to give blood, restaurant lines… ”The only thing needed,” William James wrote in ”The Moral Equivalent of War,” ”is to inflame the civic temper as past history has inflamed the military temper.” I’ve lived through this state, and I like it.

There’s something perverse, if not obscene, in “dreading” the idea that Americans might someday get back to enjoying their own lives.  “Private consumption!”  “Restaurant lines!”  The horror!  The horror!… National unity has a dark side.  What unity we enjoyed after 9/11 gave rise to unhealthy levels of trust in government, which in turn enabled a radical expansion of executive power and facilitated our entry into a disastrous, unnecessary war….

Not only have some of us forgotten “what this country has already done… when imagination is joined to a common purpose,” it’s as if some of us are trying to erase the memory of our complicity in the last eight years — to forget that in the face of a crisis we did transcend our stale differences and cut the president a blank check that paid for disaster. How can we not question the scale of our leaders’ ambitions? How short would our memories have to be?…

Dennis Perrin's Christopher Hitchens Obituary

Obit For A Former Contrarian

An xkcd Cartoon for Josh Barro Tonight

Hoisted from the Archives from March 4, 2004: "I Know! George Bush Should Make a Speech!"

"I Know! George Bush Should Make a Speech!": Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal: March 04, 2004:

Matthew Yglesias is overcome with laughter:

Matthew Yglesias: Hahahahahah: This is really very funny.

OxBlog: Posted 8:36 AM by Josh Chafetz: I THINK... [George W. Bush] should make... [a speech] devoted to... the strategic vision behind the war on terror. I want to hear an hour-long address that does the following things: (1) Discusses the dangers... and why they need to be met with a military response. (2) Defends the Bush Doctrine that regimes that harbor terrorists will be treated as terrorists. (3) Lays out Bush's understanding that despotism and oppression are root causes of terrorism, and explains his vision for international democracy promotion.... (4) Explains how non-military options are also being used to promote these goals.... (5) Explains how the war in Iraq served a number of goals related to the above points.... Saddam was a destabilizing force... brutal... democratization has important cross-border effects.... (6) Is honest about the lack of WMD in Iraq. Promises (and follows up on) a good faith effort to find out why our intelligence was faulty.... (7) Lists the countries that made up our coalition in Iraq. Points out that calling the war "unilateral" is an insult to these allies, many of whom are significant players.... (8) Emphasizes the importance of rebuilding... civil society... not just in Afghanistan and Iraq, but everywhere that seeks to overcome a legacy of despotism and oppression. This is not just the right thing to do, it is also the right way to protect America.

That -- written by Michael Gerson, of course, who is an incredible speechwriter -- is the speech I want to hear. And that kind of bold statement would not only reassure the American people that Bush knows what he's doing (his new ads say that he knows what he wants to do, but they don't tell us), it would also put Kerry on the defensive.

I agree with Yglesias. Josh Chefetz has made a rather large category mistake. Chafetz just wants to hear Bush say that he is doing these things--and when he hears them, he will be happy, for "Michael Gerson... is an incredible speechwriter."

I, by contrast, don't want to hear George W. Bush say he will do these things. I want him to do (some of) these things (and I want him to do somewhat different things). I want to watch him do the following:

1. Attack the problem of Al-Qaeda and its ilk through a unified response--military, intelligence, law enforcement, and diplomatic.

2. Not necessarily treat regimes that harbor terrorists as terrorists (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, South Boston, anyone?), but make them aware that nothing good will happen for them as long as they harbor terrorists, and that invasion is definitely something that we are thinking hard about.

3. Promote democracy around the world, rather than just pretend to.

4. Undertake a serious development and global health effort, rather than just pretend to.

5. Explain the real reasons we attacked Iraq--it wasn't that we failed to realize what Hans Blix's findings meant for the reliability of our intelligence, was it?

6. Retire the architects of the intelligence debacle--Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney, and company. People foolish enough to take exiles' statements at face value don't belong in government.

7. Apologize to those of our allies who correctly thought that containment and inspections was a successful Iraq policy in late 2002 and early 2003 and whom we ignored.

8. Put Marshall Plan-scale resources into building civil society in the Middle East, rather than just pretend to.

But there's no chance of any of that, is there? No chance of any real policy change. So all Josh Chafetz dares hope for is a speech.

Noam Chomsky Lies About Matthew Yglesias: International Law as Implementation of the Melian Dialogue Blogging

It makes me a little envious…

Noam Chomsky: There were a few criticisms of Operation Geronimo – the name, the manner of its execution, and the implications. These elicited the usual furious condemnations, most unworthy of comment, though some were instructive. The most interesting was by the respected left-liberal commentator Matthew Yglesias. He patiently explained that “one of the main functions of the international institutional order is precisely to legitimate the use of deadly military force by western powers,” so it is “amazingly naïve” to suggest that the US should obey international law or other conditions that we impose on the powerless. The words are not criticism, but applause; hence one can raise only tactical objections if the US invades other countries, murders and destroys with abandon, assassinates suspects at will, and otherwise fulfills its obligations in the service of mankind. If the traditional victims see matters somewhat differently, that merely reveals their moral and intellectual backwardness.

Matthew Yglesias explains:

International law, as it exists, was not written by pacifists, political radicals, or grassroots communities in small or weak states. It was, rather, written by political elites who are not committed to pacifism or radical politics…. [P]eople who are committed to pacifism or radical politics shouldn’t be surprised to find that the existing body of international law often fails to support their policy ideas. The founding purpose of the United Nations Security Council is to create a mechanism to legitimize great powers’ desire to use violent force abroad over the objections of smaller states. Simply because something is legal doesn’t make it right…. The existing legal framework is a compromise between the victors of World War II, not a vindication of abstract justice.

And:

That’s not to say one can raise no objections…. Viewing terrorism as a primarily military problem is a mistake that led the United States into a lot of policy errors. I hope we’ll turn away from this. And of course if you’re Pakistani you might look at this series of events and say that international law looks kind of bogus. They didn’t even get a vote on the Security Council! What kind of sense does it make for the US, China, and Russia to get together and tell the world which countries may and may not be subject to SEAL raids? This would also be a very valid point for a political radical like Chomsky to raise. But it is what it is. International law is made by states, powerful states have a disproportionate role in shaping it, and powerful states have obvious reasons to not be super-interested in the due process of suspected international terrorists or the sensibilities of mid-sized countries. Many people are pacifists and/or strong critics of western military power, and that’s fine. But it’s simply not the case that international law is identical with these policy preferences...

Santorum Claims That Killing Osama Bin Laden Was Not a Foreign-Policy Success

The Twitter Machine:

David Corn

Santorum: Obama has not succeeded in nat. sec. policy. You know who agrees with that? Osama bin Laden! No, wait... #GOPGoesVegas

Restraints on Executive Power

Thoreau on Marty Lederman and David Barron: "[S]ome of the people who wanted restraints on executive power when there was a Red boot stomping on a human face will serve as death panelists when there’s a Blue boot stomping on a human face."

It’s sports bar all the way down:

Martin Lederman, 2007:

In that respect, what’s been really quite radical are the president’s and the vice president’s views that in numerous cases, statutes duly enacted by the Congress are not necessarily binding on the president to the extent that they impinge on his discretion about how to best fight the enemy.

David Barron, 2008:

The Bush Administration has claimed the constitutional power to defy a number of extant statutory restrictions on executive war powers that would otherwise cabin the Commander in Chief’s discretion.

Now:

It was principally drafted by David Barron and Martin Lederman, who were both lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel at the time, and was signed by Mr. Barron. The office may have given oral approval for an attack on Mr. Awlaki before completing its detailed memorandum. Several news reports before June 2010 quoted anonymous counterterrorism officials as saying that Mr. Awlaki had been placed on a kill-or-capture list around the time of the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, 2009. Mr. Awlaki was accused of helping to recruit the attacker for that operation.

The Teabaggers were right:  We really do have a death panel.  Just not the sort of death panel that they were rallying against.  And some of the people who wanted restraints on executive power when there was a Red boot stomping on a human face will serve as death panelists when there’s a Blue boot stomping on a human face.  Just as the Teabaggers were silent for 8 years.

Princeton Professors and Harvard Senior Lecturers Behaving Very Badly Department

Marty Peretz, September 4, 2010:

Frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse...

Michael Walzer,September 25, 2010:

I wonder if you have undertaken a survey of everything that every present member of the Social Studies faculty has said in postings, in footnotes, in lectures to make sure that nothing they have said is offensive or hurtful or embarrassing. If you are not doing that, well you had better start doing that because you will find a lot of things that you do not like.

Matthew Yglesias on a Big Difference Between Obama and Bush

MY:

The Obama Doctrine In Action: Rachel Maddow had a segment last night taking note of the remarkably rapid increase in the pace with which actual al-Qaeda leaders have been killed by US forces since President Obama’s inauguration. It reminded me that there’s a tendency, which I think is somewhat misguided, to take all of Obama’s “hawkish” actions and fold them into a narrative about continuity with Bush administration policies since Bush was also “hawkish.” There are some real continuities, but I think this business is actually an example of discontinuity.

The difference—and I think it’s a big difference—is that the Bush administration took a very ideological view of “the war on terror.” They viewed the United States as broadly in conflict with a vast-yet-hazily-defined array of Muslim Bad Guys such that Saddam Hussein and the government of Iran were somehow part of the same problem as Osama bin Laden. The conceptual alternative to this that Obama offered (and I think you see it in early coverage of Obama’s national security thinking from Spencer Ackerman and yours truly) was to think of al-Qaeda as a specific, narrow thing that ought to be obsessively targeted and destroyed. His team viewed the Iraq War as a catastrophic distraction from that task, and also repeatedly clashed with John McCain over the need to more forcefully disregard Pakistani government views about hitting targets in Pakistan. You see in the rising body count that this all wasn’t just talk. There’s been some kind of meaningful reallocation of national resources away from Bush’s geopolitical vision in favor of a much more literal global effort to identify, locate, and kill members of al-Qaeda.

This whole suite of undertakings is in significant tension with the administration’s desire to pursue a rules-based global order and if Obama asked me I’d tell him he’s tilted too far against his own big picture ideas. Still, world affairs doesn’t exist on a two-dimensional hawk/dove axis and this militaristic aspect of Obamaism should be seen as a departure from Bush’s view of the terrorism problem.

Spencer Ackerman on 9/11

I don't know what you are doing, but I observed the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001 on May 2, 2011…

Spencer Ackerman:

How to Beat Terrorism: Refuse to Be Terrorized: Ten years ago today, 2,996 people were murdered, unleashing a pair of destructive, mutually reinforcing trends. To prove their relevance, terrorists keep trying to attack the United States at home. And the media and politicians react to it with hysteria, running in fear of getting blamed for a successful attack and perpetuating the gigantic, expensive, counterproductive National Security State. As awful as the snuffing of so many souls on 9/11 was, the second trend has often proved more dangerous than the first.

In case you haven’t noticed, hysteria is what the terrorists want. In fact, it’s the only win a decapitated, weakened al-Qaida can get these days. The only hope that these eschatological conspiracy theorists possess for success lies in compelling the U.S. to spend its way into oblivion and pursue ill-conceived wars. That’s how Osama bin Laden transforms from a cave-dwelling psycho into a world-historical figure — not because of what he was, but because of how we reacted to him.

We can honor the 9/11 victims without being permanently haunted by them.

And that points to the only way out of a trap that’s lasted a decade. It has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with politics. The U.S. has to embrace the reality that terrorism is not anything remotely like the existential threat we make it out to be. We can honor those 2,996 without being permanently haunted by them…. There is only one kind of terrorism that actually is a major threat: nuclear terrorism. And there, the U.S. has shamefully underreacted. It’s a travesty that there’s unsecured nuclear material in this day and age, and the Obama administration’s efforts to secure it, however incomplete, deserve credit. But notice that’s a problem about unsecured nuke material, not al-Qaida. Lock up the loose nukes — and yes, that’s difficult — and there’s no nuclear terrorism. What’s more, the difficulty of al-Qaida acquiring that material, even with its ties to the spy service of nuclear Pakistan, is reflected in the fact that al-Qaida’s most ambitious plots now involve … car bombs….

[T]errorism alone cannot do anything to the Constitution. Only Americans can damage the Constitution. Goldberg is conflating the act and our response to it — a response that is entirely within our power to affect. Indeed, as citizens in a democracy, it’s our responsibility to check the government from its excesses, and to stop adding fuel to the political fire….

The only way this changes is if citizens change the political incentives for politicians. Two-bit terrorists will always be around, sadly. But when the Harry Reids get major political blow-back for attacking the Rand Pauls, then — and only then — will the 9/11 Era be truly over.

Obama has accommodated himself to the politics of fear far more than he’s confronted it.

This isn’t a call to stop counterterrorism. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says that al-Qaida is on the verge of strategic collapse. If surveillance, drone strikes and Special Operations Forces can actually end al-Qaida, it would be foolish to let the pressure relent. And to confront a residual threat from car bombs, police will need to be vigilant, and the country will need to retain some smaller, focused intelligence apparatus for early warning. But all of that is only justifiable if the new U.S. Shadow Wars — undeclared, largely covert wars in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and beyond —  actually end soon. The Bush administration never had an endgame for the war on terrorism, preferring to conceive of a “Long War” that amounted to an epochal, generation-spanning struggle….

[S]ince coming to power, Obama has accommodated himself to the politics of fear far more than he’s confronted it. He’s allowed widespread surveillance of American Muslims. He was reluctant to fight Congress over closing Guantanamo Bay. He backed down on holding criminal trials for the 9/11 conspirators…. Only when citizens make it acceptable for politicians to recognize that the threat of terrorism isn’t so significant can the country finally get what it really needs, 10 years later: closure.

The Future Is Not Evenly Distributed, But It Is Definitely Here...

Yes, I am living in a science-fictional universe. Why do you ask?

Saeed Shah for McClatchy:

Pakistan holds doctor who tried to collect bin Laden DNA: ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan — Pakistani authorities have jailed a doctor who helped the CIA by creating an elaborate plot to get DNA samples of Osama bin Laden’s family before the al Qaida leader was killed in a special forces raid here. The doctor, who holds a senior government health post in Pakistan, used nurses, who were able to gain entry to the residence on the pretext of giving vaccinations to children living there, according to Pakistani and U.S. officials and local residents. The U.S. special forces operation that found and killed bin Laden on May 2 severely damaged relations between the United States and Pakistan, which was kept in the dark about the CIA's discovery that the al Qaida leader was living in a town filled with active-duty and retired Pakistani military. The doctor's detention has added to the tension, and American authorities are thought to have intervened on his behalf.

Previous news reports have quoted U.S. officials as alleging that the Pakistanis had detained some people for questioning about their role in assisting the United States in tracking down bin Laden. But until now, there's been no detailed information on anyone detained or what he or she might have done for the Americans. The doctor apparently is the only person still under arrest. His story provides previously unknown details about the lengths the CIA went to as it tried to confirm suspicions that bin Laden was hiding in the compound...

Paul Krugman: Shadow of the Torturers

On the psychology of the George W. Bush administration. I believe he is correct:

Paul Krugman: Shadow of the Torturers: After reading John Yoo’s attack on the president for not taking Osama alive and bringing him to Gitmo, I thought I might take a minute to explain something I sometimes say. Once in a while I mention, in passing, that the Bush administration saw torturing people as a plus, not a cost. And whenever I do, some readers clutch their breasts and reach for the smelling salts: how dare I say such a thing? But it’s true — not because they’re sadists, but because it suited their self-image.

From day one of the War on Terror (TM), it was clear that the Bush people reveled in the notion that they were tough guys, willing to Do What Needs to be Done. They were all wannabe Kiefer Sutherlands. Far from showing qualms about suspending the rule of law and using torture to extract information, they obviously enjoyed the idea that they were willing to go all the way, unlike those wimpy liberals. Of course, they never admitted that, probably not even to themselves. But did you ever see the slightest hint of reluctance or discomfort? Or did you see tremendous self-satisfaction as the acts became ever more abusive?

And so they are, inevitably, deeply upset that someone who isn’t a tough guy by their standards seems to be doing a better job of getting the terrorists than they did.

The Epistemology of Torture Justification

Mark Thompson:

The Slippery Slope of Justifying Torture: Conor Friedersdorf explains well how the argument that justifying torture under even limited circumstances would morally corrupt and result in justifying torture under almost any conceivable circumstance has been proven correct in the debate over torture’s role in the death of Osama Bin Laden. Conor writes:

The return of the torture debate is striking because its apologists no longer feel the need to advocate for a narrow exception to prevent an American city from being nuked or a busload of children from dying. In the jubilation over getting bin Laden, they’re instead employing this frightening standard: torture of multiple detainees is justified if it might produce a single useful nugget that, combined with lots of other intelligence, helps lead us to the secret location of the highest value terrorist leader many years later. It’s suddenly the new baseline in our renewed national argument. That’s torture creep.

As I tried to allude to in my post this morning, torture will always appear to “work” regardless of whether it in fact “works.”  We will attribute any success to it, and any failure to not enough of it...

Jason Kuznicki: America Should Not Torture

Jason:

A Narrow and (so far as I can tell) Untraveled Path on Torture: ]T]orture generates its own epistemology, in which pain, not coherence or justification, is the standard of knowledge. By that standard, non-tortured witnesses are in general less reliable sources. In the Roman Empire, a slave’s testimony was only admissible if he had been tortured, which I suppose was only logical given the premise.

Note also that if we didn’t believe this, our torture would come from mere sadism — delight in pain — and this we’ve been assured repeatedly was not the case (I’ll let you be the judge, of course).

Spencer Ackerman @ dangerroom: U.S. Forces Kill Osama bin Laden

SA:

U.S. Forces Kill Osama bin Laden: Almost ten years after the 9/11 attacks, the leader of al-Qaida is dead. President Obama announced on Sunday night that Osama bin Laden is dead. Not just dead — killed by U.S. operatives.

In a “compound” near an area in tribal Pakistan called Abottabad, U.S. operatives engaged in a “firefight” with bin Laden’s handlers, Obama said, and killed the terrorist leader. It was the result of eight months of intelligence work, with Obama giving the order to carry out the operation last week. Obama didn’t exactly specify, but it appears bin Laden’s death is the result of a joint operation by the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command. But Obama said that bin Laden’s body has been recovered.

Matthew Yglesias: A Different Presidential Statement On Bin Laden

Yglesias » A Different Presidential Statement On Bin Laden

Mark Kleiman Sees a Weak President

MK:

A weak President « The Reality-Based Community: Asked about the extraordinary conditions imposed on Bradley Manning and the even more extraordinary remarks of the State Department spokesman dumping on DoD for that mistreatment, Barack Obama sounds completely clueless: clueless at the Bush level:

I have actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assured me that they are. I can’t go into details about some of their concerns, but some of this has to do with Private Manning’s safety as well.

Surely the President knows as well as anyone else that asking people accused of maltreating a prisoner whether the prisoner is being properly treated is like asking a drunk how much he’s had to drink. Since Barack Obama is not a fool, this can only mean that he’s reluctant to countermand Gates and Gates’s subordinates. (Note that he didn’t say that he’d had the allegations checked out and found that they were false.)...

[I]f the Republicans ran a candidate who took a forthright stand against torture, even if that person were otherwise “conservative” in the degraded contemporary sense of that term – committed to making the poor poorer, the country more ignorant, and the planet less habitable – this issue alone would be a cogent reason to vote for that Republican.... But Charles Fried isn’t going to get the Republican nomination, and the context for the President’s display of weak knees on this issue is the drumfire of “soft on terror” charges from the GOP and its tame media...

And a strong Secretary of State:

“Ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid” « The Reality-Based Community: That’s State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley on the torture of Bradley Manning. I would have used stronger language, but I’m glad he said it. And I very much doubt that he would have said it if his boss hadn’t wanted it said.

The Two Biggest Lies of George W. Bush

Dan Froomkin:

The Two Most Essential, Abhorrent, Intolerable Lies Of George W. Bush's Memoir: [T]he two most essential lies -- among the many -- in his new memoir are that he had a legitimate reason to invade Iraq, and that he had a legitimate reason to torture detainees. Neither is remotely true. But Bush must figure that if he keeps making the case for himself -- particularly if it goes largely unrebutted by the traditional media, as it has thus far -- then perhaps he can blunt history's verdict....

In "Decision Points," Bush describes the invasion of Iraq as something he came to support only reluctantly and after a long period of reflection. This is a flat-out lie. Anyone who paid any attention to the news at the time knew Bush was dead-set on war long before he sent in the troops in March 2003. And there is now an abundant amount of documentation, in the form of leaks, unclassified memos, witness interviews and other people's memoirs to prove it.... The only real question is whether he actively deceived the American public and the world -- or whether he was so passionate about selling the public on the war that he intentionally blinded himself to how brazenly Vice President Cheney had politicized and abused the intelligence process....

Bush writes in his memoir that the idea of attacking Iraq came up at a meeting of his national security team at Camp David, four days after the 9/11 attacks. By his account, it was then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz who "suggested that we consider confronting Iraq as well as the Taliban." Bush writes that he eventually decided that "[u]nless I received definitive evidence tying Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 plot I would work to resolve the Iraq problem diplomatically."... In the first tell-all book from inside Bush's national security team, Richard A. Clarke wrote in 2004 of a meeting he had with Bush the day after 9/11:

The president in a very intimidating way left us, me and my staff, with the clear indication that he wanted us to come back with the word there was an Iraqi hand behind 9/11 because they had been planning to do something about Iraq from before the time they came into office.... I think they had a plan from day one they wanted to do something about Iraq. While the World Trade Center was still smoldering, while they were still digging bodies out, people in the White House were thinking: 'Ah! This gives us the opportunity we have been looking for to go after Iraq.'

Clarke notes that the following day, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld complained in a meeting that there were no decent targets for bombing in Afghanistan and that the U.S. should consider bombing Iraq, which had better targets.

At first I thought Rumsfeld was joking. But he was serious and the President did not reject out of hand the idea of attacking Iraq. Instead, he noted that what we needed to do with Iraq was to change the government, not just hit it with more cruise missiles, as Rumsfeld had implied.

Just over two months later, on Nov. 21, 2001, Bush formally instructed Rumsfeld that he wanted to develop a plan for war in Iraq. Sixteen months after that, in March 2003, the invasion began....

That torture is even a subject of debate today is a testament to the devastating effect the Bush administration has had on our concept of morality. And in his book and on his book tour, far from hanging his head in shame, Bush is more explicit and enthusiastic than ever before endorsing one of torture's iconic forms. "Damn right," he quotes himself as saying in response to a CIA request to waterboard Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. "Had we captured more al Qaeda operatives with significant intelligence value, I would have used the program for them as well."

Bush's two-part argument is simple; That waterboarding was legal (i.e., that it was not really torture); and that it worked. But neither assertion is remotely true. Waterboarding -- essentially controlled drowning -- involves immobilizing someone and pouring water over their mouth and nose in a way that makes them choke. It causes great physical and mental suffering, but leaves no marks. It's not new; villains and despots have been using it extract confessions for something like 700 years. The CIA just perfected it. It is self-evidently, almost definitionally, torture. The U.S. government had always considered it torture. In 1947, the U.S. charged a Japanese officer who waterboarded an American with war crimes. It is flatly a violation of international torture conventions. And as far as I know, no American government official had ever even suggested it wasn't torture until a small handful of lawyers in Bush's supine Justice Department, working under orders from the vice president, claimed otherwise...

in Which Brad DeLong Loses His Nerve...

A question I did not ask Condi Rice from the audience last night:

I am thinking about the post-Cold War foreign policy of the GHW Bush administration...

It was that the U.S. would bind itself to use its military to execute the will of the U.N. Security Council, so that no other potential power would think it cost-effective to build a military, and no smaller power would think nukes necessary to protect itself from the U.S. its highest priority. The hope was that that would preserve the U.S.'s status as the world's hyperpower for another generation or so.

We broke that. You broke that.

Now all of the BRIC powers think that a weaker, distracted, and more troubled America is in their interest. And people like George Shultz are very pessimistic about the non-proliferation outlook.

Is there a way to get back from where we are now to the foreign policy world we hoped to live in back in 1992?

We Are Losing the Struggle That Began on 9/11...

That is how I read this:

Alex Tabarrok: Marginal Revolution: No Checks, No Balances: From the NYTimes

The lead plaintiff is Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian citizen and legal resident of Britain who was arrested in Pakistan in 2002. He claimed he was turned over to the C.I.A., which flew him to Morocco and handed him off to its security service.

Moroccan interrogators, he said, held him for 18 months and subjected him to an array of tortures, including cutting his penis with a scalpel and then pouring a hot, stinging liquid on the open wounds.

Mr. Mohamed was later transferred back to the C.I.A., which he said flew him to its secret prison in Afghanistan. There, he said, he was held in continuous darkness, fed sparsely and subjected to loud noise — like the recorded screams of women and children — 24 hours a day. He was later transferred again to the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where he was held for an additional five years. He was released and returned to Britain in early 2009 and is now free.

and from the court's response:

First, that the judicial branch may have deferred to the executive branch’s claim of privilege in the interest of national security does not preclude the government from honoring the fundamental principles of justice.

Oh that's nice the U.S. government is not precluded from honoring the fundamental principles of justice. Tell me, what government ever was?

The Bush Administration's Third-Biggest Mistake (and Now the Obama Administration's Mistake too)

Fareed Zakaria:

Zakaria: Why America Overreacted to 9/11: Nine years after 9/11, can anyone doubt that Al Qaeda is simply not that deadly a threat? Since that gruesome day in 2001, once governments everywhere began serious countermeasures, Osama bin Laden’s terror network has been unable to launch a single major attack on high-value targets in the United States and Europe. While it has inspired a few much smaller attacks by local jihadis, it has been unable to execute a single one itself. Today, Al Qaeda’s best hope is to find a troubled young man who has been radicalized over the Internet, and teach him to stuff his underwear with explosives. I do not minimize Al Qaeda’s intentions, which are barbaric. I question its capabilities. In every recent conflict, the United States has been right about the evil intentions of its adversaries but massively exaggerated their strength. In the 1980s, we thought the Soviet Union was expanding its power and influence when it was on the verge of economic and political bankruptcy. In the 1990s, we were certain that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear arsenal. In fact, his factories could barely make soap.

The error this time is more damaging. September 11 was a shock to the American psyche and the American system. As a result, we overreacted. In a crucially important Washington Post reporting project, “Top Secret America,” Dana Priest and William Arkin spent two years gathering information on how 9/11 has really changed America.

Here are some of the highlights. Since September 11, 2001, the U.S. government has created or reconfigured at least 263 organizations to tackle some aspect of the war on terror. The amount of money spent on intelligence has risen by 250 percent, to $75 billion (and that’s the public number, which is a gross underestimate). That’s more than the rest of the world spends put together. Thirty-three new building complexes have been built for intelligence bureaucracies alone, occupying 17 million square feet—the equivalent of 22 U.S. Capitols or three Pentagons. Five miles southeast of the White House, the largest government site in 50 years is being built—at a cost of $3.4 billion—to house the largest bureaucracy after the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs: the Department of Homeland Security, which has a workforce of 230,000 people...

Yes, Judge Jay Bybee Should Be Impeached and Removed from Office. Reason CXXVI

Scott Horton:

When Is Offering a Drink of Water a Crime?: Last August, I reported on the case of Walt Stanton, a graduate student at Claremont Theology School who, with a group called “No More Deaths,” deposited bottles of water at points in the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, an 18,000-acre area on the Arizona-Mexico border. Stanton and his group have no particular position on the illegal immigration issue—they just think that the immigrants shouldn’t die from dehydration. The Justice Department, however, saw the offer of a drink of water as a criminal act, and brought charges. In the absence of any clear criminal statute that would cover the situation, the prosecutors argued that Stanton’s act of Christian charity was in fact “criminal littering.” Under heavy pressure from the feds and a federal magistrate who made his intention to convict plain, Stanton agreed to 300 hours of community service in lieu of a prosecution.

As it turns out, Stanton should have stood his ground. Some of Stanton’s colleagues pushed the case and appealed their conviction. Now the Court of Appeals has handed down its less-than-astonishing decision: leaving purified water in sealed containers for human consumption is not “littering.” The convictions were overturned, and the Justice Department was given a smackdown.

One judge on the panel saw things differently: Jay Bybee. He argued that the statute, which prohibits

littering, disposing, or dumping in any manner of garbage, refuse sewage, sludge, earth, rocks, or other debris,

was actually intended to criminalize Samaritans who offer a drink to illegal immigrants. This is the same Jay Bybee who wrote a series of memoranda for the Bush Administration in which he concluded that a specific criminal prohibition–against torture–was so hopelessly vague and unclear as to be meaningless. He and his colleagues at the Office of Legal Counsel approved waterboarding, premised on the notion that the torture sessions would be limited by the number of bottles of water used to induce drowning. (CIA-procured waterbottles are now being examined by prosecutors in Poland and Lithuania investigating crimes committed at black sites on their soil.) So while Bybee concludes that simulated drowning of prisoners was perfectly lawful (a position repudiated even by the Bush Justice Department before it left), he concludes that leaving a bottle of water for a person stranded in a desert so as to forestall death is a crime.

Bybee’s impeachment and removal from office has been openly discussed in Congress for some time. An internal ethics review by the Justice Department concluded that he had engaged in serious professional misconduct and recommended referral for bar disciplinary action. The recommendation was, however, blocked in a political maneuver. Bybee is currently the only member of the federal judiciary who is himself the subject of a pending criminal investigation—now being pursued by two judges of Spain’s Audiencia Nacional looking into the torture of Spaniards held at Guantánamo, apparently using procedures that Bybee authorized. While the United States is refusing to cooperate with the criminal inquiry (violating its treaty obligations to Spain in the process), Bybee risks arrest if he ever leaves the country.

Tony Judt Talks About the State of Israel

Tony Judt:

Op-Ed Contributor - Talking About Israel, Without the Clichés: THE Israeli raid on the Free Gaza flotilla has generated an outpouring of clichés from the usual suspects... a little house cleaning is in order.

No. 1: Israel is being/should be delegitimized:** Israel is a state like any other, long-established and internationally recognized. The bad behavior of its governments does not “delegitimize” it, any more than the bad behavior of the rulers of North Korea, Sudan — or, indeed, the United States — “delegitimizes” them....

No. 2: Israel is/is not a democracy: Perhaps the most common defense of Israel outside the country is that it is “the only democracy in the Middle East.” This is largely true.... But the point is irrelevant. “Democracy” is no guarantee of good behavior... wwe should not forget that Gaza is another “democracy” in the Middle East: it was precisely because Hamas won free elections there in 2005 that both the Palestinian Authority and Israel reacted with such vehemence.

No. 3: Israel is/is not to blame: Israel is not responsible for the fact that many of its near neighbors long denied its right to exist. The sense of siege should not be underestimated.... Unsurprisingly, the state has acquired pathological habits. Of these, the most damaging is its habitual resort to force. Because this worked for so long... Israel finds it difficult to conceive of other ways to respond.... As American officials privately acknowledge, sooner or later Israel (or someone) will have to talk to Hamas. From French Algeria through South Africa to the Provisional I.R.A., the story repeats itself: the dominant power denies the legitimacy of the “terrorists,” thereby strengthening their hand; then it secretly negotiates with them; finally, it concedes power, independence or a place at the table. Israel will negotiate with Hamas: the only question is why not now.

No. 4: The Palestinians are/are not to blame: Abba Eban, the former Israeli foreign minister, claimed that Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. He was not wholly wrong. The “negationist” stance of Palestinian resistance movements from 1948 through the early 1980s did them little good. And Hamas, firmly in that tradition though far more genuinely popular than its predecessors, will have to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. But since 1967 it has been Israel that has missed most opportunities.... Terrorism is the weapon of the weak — bombing civilian targets was not invented by Arabs (nor by the Jews who engaged in it before 1948). Morally indefensible, it has characterized resistance movements of all colors for at least a century. Israelis are right to insist that any talks or settlements will depend upon Hamas’s foreswearing it. But Palestinians face the same conundrum as every other oppressed people.... If they pre-concede every Israeli demand — abjurance of violence, acceptance of Israel, acknowledgment of all their losses — what do they bring to the negotiating table? Israel has the initiative: it should exercise it.

No. 5: The Israel lobby is/is not to blame: There is an Israel lobby in Washington and it does a very good job — that’s what lobbies are for.... It is one thing to denounce the excessive leverage of a lobby, quite another to accuse Jews of “running the country.” We must not censor ourselves lest people conflate the two. In Arthur Koestler’s words, “This fear of finding oneself in bad company is not an expression of political purity; it is an expression of a lack of self-confidence.”

No. 6: Criticism of Israel is/is not linked to anti-Semitism: Anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews, and Israel is a Jewish state, so of course some criticism of it is malevolently motivated. There have been occasions in the recent past (notably in the Soviet Union and its satellites) when “anti-Zionism” was a convenient surrogate for official anti-Semitism. Understandably, many Jews and Israelis have not forgotten this. But criticism of Israel, increasingly from non-Israeli Jews, is not predominantly motivated by anti-Semitism.... Along with the oil sheikdoms, Israel is now America’s greatest strategic liability in the Middle East and Central Asia. Thanks to Israel, we are in serious danger of “losing” Turkey: a Muslim democracy, offended at its treatment by the European Union, that is the pivotal actor in Near-Eastern and Central Asian affairs...

Obama Tries to Guide Israel onto a Road to Long-Run Survival

Gideon Rauchman watches the friend of Israel at his work: "if Israel does not take [the road Obama offers] soon, the long-term survival of the Jewish state will be imperilled..."

Israel’s fear and loathing of Obama: I could not help thinking back to the early stages of the Northern Irish peace negotiations.... The Israelis’ furious reaction to the pressure they are under from the Obama administration is reminiscent of the British rage early in the Northern Irish peace process, when it became clear that our American allies were intent on “talking to the terrorists” of the Irish Republican Army. But, as it turned out, the Americans were right to insist that there was a peace deal to be made with the IRA. They are right again on the Middle East peace process. There is still a deal to be had – and if Israel does not take it soon, the long-term survival of the Jewish state will be imperilled.

In their more reflective moments, some senior Israeli politicians will acknowledge that a two-state solution is as vital for Israel as it is for the Palestinians. Dividing the land is the only way of ensuring that Israel remains both Jewish and democratic.... Yet for all their long-term concerns, the Israelis have failed to make vital concessions, because the status quo still feels more comfortable.... By contrast, calling a complete halt to illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land – as Mr Obama has demanded – entails risks and pain. There are members of the Israeli cabinet who still cling to the idea of a Greater Israel, incorporating all of the West Bank. If Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, delivered the settlement freeze the Americans want, his rightwing coalition would probably collapse. Many Israelis also worry that an eventual move to uproot at least 80,000 settlers as part of a peace deal could lead to a revolt in the army – some 30 per cent of whose officers are religious conservatives, presumed to be sympathetic to the settlers.... So rather than discuss settlements, the Israelis are desperately trying to change the subject. They point out that there are many obstacles to a peace deal other than the settlements....

The Israelis are certainly right to argue that there is no guarantee that a freeze on settlements will lead to a peace deal. On the other hand, there certainly is a guarantee that a continued expansion of settlements will ensure that no peace deal is ever possible.... [N]o special explanation should be needed for Mr Obama’s insistence on a settlement freeze. Such a policy is in the interests of Israel as well as the Palestinians. Israelis may fear and even detest Mr Obama – but the American president is actually doing them a favour.