Thoughtful Obama vs. Snarling Cheney

Against a veritable mountain of evidence showing a liberal media bias, I recently came across one piece of evidence suggesting that, somehow, the photographs that appear with news stories indicate a conservative bias. I can't find the link, but I just wanted to say that the photograph that is currently on the front page of CNN probably won't help to substantiate that claim:

Barack Obama's Greatest Accomplishment (so far)

That would be restoring George Bush's national security credentials, and it is an impressive accomplishment, indeed. He has basically adopted all of Bush's policies, with the notable exception of embracing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. On that subject, Bush was thoughtful and analytical (as always, in spite of what you mistakenly think), whereas Obama was as intellectually superficial as he was morally pompous. He still is.

Don't believe me? Consider these comments from George Bush from way back in 2006:

Press Conference of the President
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
June 14, 2006

The Rose Garden
...
Q Thank you, Mr. President. You expressed serious concern when you learned about the Guantanamo suicides, and you and your aides immediately called allies. I'm wondering, how concerned are you about the U.S. image abroad, based on this incident and the ongoing investigation in Haditha and Abu Ghraib and other incidents? And, also, why shouldn't Guantanamo be closed now?

THE PRESIDENT: I'd like to close Guantanamo, but I also recognize that we're holding some people that are darn dangerous, and that we better have a plan to deal with them in our courts. And the best way to handle -- in my judgment, handle these types of people is through our military courts. And that's why we're waiting on the Supreme Court to make a decision.

Part of closing Guantanamo is to send some folks back home, like we've been doing. And the State Department is in the process of encouraging countries to take the folks back. Of course, sometimes we get criticized for sending some people out of Guantanamo back to their home country because of the nature of the home country. It's a little bit of a Catch-22. But we're working through this.

No question, Guantanamo sends a signal to some of our friends -- provides an excuse, for example, to say the United States is not upholding the values that they're trying to encourage other countries to adhere to. And my answer to them is, is that we are a nation of laws and rule of law. These people have been picked up off the battlefield and they're very dangerous. And so we have that balance between customary justice, the typical system, and one that will be done in the military courts. And that's what we're waiting for.

Eventually, these people will have trials, and they will have counsel and they will be represented in a court of law. I say, "these people," those who are not sent back to their mother countries. You know, we've sent a lot of people home already. I don't think the American people know that, nor do the citizens of some of the countries that are concerned about Guantanamo.

That is, by 2006, Bush believed that America had been safe for long enough that it was finally time to close Guantanamo Bay. But, as he saw it, we had better have a thoughtful plan in place before we do, and coming up with such a plan was not trivially easy.

Fast forward to January of 2009. A new president is in power, and, by God, he's going to restore our moral authority throughout the world by just closing the Guantanamo Bay detection facility once and for all:

January 22, 2009

Obama signs order to close Guantanamo Bay facility

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Promising to return America to the "moral high ground" in the war on terrorism, President Obama issued three executive orders Thursday to demonstrate a clean break from the Bush administration, including one requiring that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility be closed within a year.

During a signing ceremony at the White House, Obama reaffirmed his inauguration pledge that the United States does not have "to continue with a false choice between our safety and our ideals."

If you mistook Obama's gratuitous moral grandstanding for intellectual depth of analysis (as many in the media did), then you probably celebrated this shining moment in the history of our great nation. But if you engaged your higher brain centers, you were likely less impressed. In fact, you might even have recognized that Obama's comments were ungracious and were beneath the dignity of the high office he holds because they imply that Bush was taking the moral low road and that he compromised our ideals in an effort to make us safe. Those are cheap shots that fail to recognize that reasonable people of good character can disagree about the hard choices that face a president who is trying to keep America safe (the kind of cheap shots that George Bush never ever took).

Either George Bush or Barack Obama is misguided about what it takes to close Guantanamo, and the evidence continues to pile up that it is our current commander-in-chief, not our previous one, who needs an education on the subject:

WASHINGTON — In an abrupt shift, Senate Democratic leaders said they would not provide the $80 million that President Obama requested to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The move escalates pressure on the president, who on Thursday is scheduled to outline his plans for the 240 terrorism suspects still held there.

In recent days, Mr. Obama has faced growing demands from both parties, but particularly Republicans, to lay out a more detailed road map for closing the Guantánamo prison and to provide assurances that detainees would not end up on American soil, even in maximum security prisons.
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“Guantánamo makes us less safe,” the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said at a news conference where he laid out the party’s rationale for its decision, which is expected to be voted on this week. “However, this is neither the time nor the bill to deal with this. Democrats under no circumstances will move forward without a comprehensive, responsible plan from the president. We will never allow terrorists to be released into the United States.”
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“In looking at the position of the House, that was more logical,” Mr. Reid said. “We have clearly said all along that we wanted a plan. We don’t have a plan. And based on that, this is not the bill to deal with this.”

Say what? George Bush wanted to close Guantanamo Bay, but he was thoughtful and reflective enough to realize that a plan had to be in place first (because it is a complicated issue). Usually, that's the order in which things are done: make a plan first and take action second. By contrast, Obama seemed frighteningly unaware of the basic facts of the matter, so he simply engaged in moral posturing on the day after he took office by taking bold action, but without a plan. Unfortunately, basic facts like this one, need to be addressed first:

1 in 7 Freed Detainees Rejoins Fight, Report Finds

By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: May 20, 2009

WASHINGTON — An unreleased Pentagon report concludes that about one in seven of the 534 prisoners already transferred abroad from the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has returned to terrorism or militant activity, according to administration officials.

The conclusion could strengthen the arguments of critics who have warned against the transfer or release of any more detainees as part of President Obama’s plan to shut down the prison by January. Past Pentagon reports on Guantánamo recidivism have been met with skepticism from civil liberties groups and criticized for their lack of detail.
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Two administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said the report was being held up by Defense Department employees fearful of upsetting the White House, at a time when even Congressional Democrats have begun to show misgivings over Mr. Obama’s plan to close Guantánamo.

Mustn't upset Obama's moral grandstanding by revealing facts that illustrate why the decisions about Guantanamo are actually difficult. Instead, some apparently believe that it would be better to let the White House act as if it is a simple choice between doing what the morally depraved wished to do vs. doing what the morally enlightened would rather do. That's the superficial stance of many of Obama's supporters, but it is intellectually vacuous. It might be best to close the facility, as both Bush and Obama want to do, but it is just downright silly to pretend that it is easy and needs no plan. The choice we face is between closing Guantanamo with a plan or closing it without a plan. Bush chose the former; Obama the latter.

Here is another reason to plan first and then act second (not the other way around):

FBI chief worried about Gitmo detainees in U.S.

Mueller says prisoners could radicalize others at high-security prisons

WASHINGTON - FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress on Wednesday that bringing Guantanamo Bay detainees to the United States could pose a number of risks, even if they were kept in maximum-security prisons. Responding to FBI concerns, Attorney General Eric Holder said the Obama administration would not put Americans at risk.
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At the start of Wednesday's hearing, Mueller was asked what concerns the FBI has about the release of Guantanamo detainees.

"The concerns we have about individuals who may support terrorism being in the United States run from concerns about providing financing, radicalizing others," Mueller said, as well as "the potential for individuals undertaking attacks in the United States."

"All of those are relevant concerns," Mueller said.

The FBI chief said he would not discuss specific individuals. He said there were also potential risks to putting detainees in maximum security prisons.

Except for Guantanamo Bay (and harsh interrogations of high-level al Qaeda detainees), Obama is coming around to Bush's position on everything. Karl Rove has noticed:

Barack Obama inherited a set of national-security policies that he rejected during the campaign but now embraces as president. This is a stunning and welcome about-face.
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These reversals are both praiseworthy and evidence that, when it comes to national security, being briefed on terror threats as president is a lot different than placating MoveOn.org and Code Pink activists as a candidate. The realities of governing trump the realities of campaigning.

Even the New York Times has noticed:

News Analysis

Obama After Bush: Leading by Second Thought

By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: May 15, 2009

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s decisions this week to retain important elements of the Bush-era system for trying terrorism suspects and to block the release of pictures showing abuse of American-held prisoners abroad are the most graphic examples yet of how he has backtracked, in substantial if often nuanced ways, from the approach to national security that he preached as a candidate, and even from his first days in the Oval Office.

Mr. Obama’s opening gambits as president were bold declarations of new directions, from announcing the closing of the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to sweeping restrictions on interrogation techniques. He advertised both as a return to traditional American values, after the diversions taken by George W. Bush to the detriment of America’s image abroad and of itself.

But as he showed this week in the way he dealt with those two hard cases, Mr. Obama has begun to scale back. Faced with the choice of signaling an unambiguous break with the policies of the Bush era, or maintaining some continuity with its practices, the president has begun to come down on the side of taking fewer risks with security, even though he is clearly angering the liberal elements of his political base.
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But the bottom line is that Mr. Obama’s course corrections have real-life consequences. Mr. Bush kept saying that he wanted to close Guantánamo Bay but could not find an effective replacement for it. So he never acted. Mr. Obama began with that action, and now discovers it is more difficult to accomplish than it seemed a few months ago.
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“These issues are always more difficult in practice than they are in the environment of a campaign,” Samuel R. Berger, who served as President Bill Clinton’s national security adviser, said Friday. “In the end, what you have to remember is that President Obama is going to close Guantánamo and he is going to end torture. But I think everyone admits that doing so has proven to be more difficult than anyone anticipated.”

The reality is that the second 100 days of this presidency are bound to be filled with course corrections. Announcing departures from the Bush-era practices was, as one of Mr. Obama’s national security aides put it recently, “grabbing the low-hanging fruit.” Writing the rules for the next four years, or eight, requires lawyers, compromises and, inevitably, disappointments for those who discover that cleanly breaking with the past always sounds more appealing than living with the consequences.

Leading by second thought, and not by just any second thought. Barack Obama is leading by adopting George Bush's thoughts. When both Karl Rove and the New York Times notice the same thing, you can pretty much take it to the bank.

But on Guantanamo Bay, Obama's speech today suggests that he still appears to be stuck in moral grandstanding mode:

He defended his decision to eventually close the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba, saying the prison has "set back the moral authority that is America's strongest currency in the world."

Would you stop with the superficial moral grandstanding already? Remember, the choice is to close Guantanamo Bay with a plan (the Bush option) or without a plan (the Obama option).

At least Obama is being a bit more gracious about his predecessor now that he is learning how hard it can be to deal with these issues:

After September 11, "faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions," Obama said.

"I believe that many of these decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people. But I also believe that all too often, our government made decisions based on fear rather than foresight; that all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions."

Fine, but if that isn't an example of the pot calling the kettle black, I don't what is. Obama is a the one who made a hasty decision to close Guantanamo Bay on his second day in office, and he did so to fit ideological predispositions. But I believe that his decision was motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people, and I'm glad he recognizes that this is true of Bush as well. But he still has no plan, and that's remarkable to me:

Obama said his administration was in the process of studying each of the remaining Guantanamo detainees "to determine the appropriate policies for dealing with them."

"Nobody has ever escaped from one of our `supermax' prisons which hold hundreds of convicted terrorists," Obama said.

Obama disclosed that administration lawyers had approved 50 detainees at Guantanamo for transfer to other countries.

Even so, it was not clear how many countries were prepared to take them.

Obama used the speech as an effort to try to retake the initiative on the matter. He spoke a day after the Senate, at the behest of majority Democrats, followed the lead of the House and voted decisively to deny his request for $80 million to close the prison. Lawmakers said they would block the funds until he gave a more detailed accounting of what would happen to the detainees.

He sought to do that in his speech, but stopped short of offering a clear answer on the key question of what to do with detainees who won't be tried for war crimes but are likely to be held indefinitely.

He described this group as those "who cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people."

"I want to be honest: this is the toughest issue we will face," Obama said.

He said that the his administration would "exhaust every avenue that we have" to prosecute detainees but there would still be some left "who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes" yet remain a threat.

Among these, he said, are prisoners who have expressed allegiance to Osama bin Laden "or otherwise made it clear they want to kill Americans."

The main concern is not that detainees will escape from supermax prisoners. Didn't Obama listen to the director of the FBI? Obama does not know which foreign countries will take the prisoners he wants to send abroad. He did not explain what to do with detainees who won't be tried for war crimes but are likely to be held indefinitely. He still has no plan. It makes no sense to take bold action first and then start thinking about the plan. You have to do things the other way around. I hope that, in time, Obama will come around to Bush's way of doing things on this issue, too (as he has with most other national security issues).

Emote Less; Think More

The difference between a reasonable liberal and reasonable conservative is that a reasonable liberal leans a bit one way, whereas a reasonable conservative leans a bit the other way. By the time relatively minor policy differences bubble up to the superficial coverage provided by the mainstream media, they become greatly magnified and seem vastly more consequential than they really are. Setting aside a few hot button issues where compromise can be hard to find (e.g., abortion), the battle is fought between the 40 yard lines (as Charles Krauthammer once put it), not from one end-zone to the other. But that's not how it seems when people get politically hysterical, which they often do. Nowhere was this more apparent than when people were angrily accusing George Bush of "trampling on the Constitution" with his "imperial presidency."

If you really believed that the last election was about fundamental change -- as opposed to a fairly reasonable liberal moving the line a tad farther to the left -- then you should really take a tour through the many ways in which Obama is just like Bush. And when you do, you should think about what it means for your own proclivity to descend into spasms of anger and hysteria over George Bush's national security policies. There is a lesson in the stories summarized below, and the lesson is that no matter how smart you think you are, if you were beside yourself with anger as you watched George Bush trample on the Constitution over the last 8 years, then you are a relatively superficial thinker when it comes to politics. You don't think so? Then look at how Obama is behaving, and take it as an invitation to emote less and think more:

1. Rendition:

Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool

The role of the CIA's controversial prisoner-transfer program may expand, intelligence experts say.

By Greg Miller
February 1, 2009
...
Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.
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The European Parliament condemned renditions as "an illegal instrument used by the United States." Prisoners swept up in the program have sued the CIA as well as a Boeing Co. subsidiary accused of working with the agency on dozens of rendition flights.

But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration's war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.
...
The decision to preserve the program did not draw major protests, even among human rights groups. Leaders of such organizations attribute that to a sense that nations need certain tools to combat terrorism.

"Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place" for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "What I heard loud and clear from the president's order was that they want to design a system that doesn't result in people being sent to foreign dungeons to be tortured -- but that designing that system is going to take some time."

2. Indefinite detention:

MAY 14, 2009

Obama Considers Detaining Terror Suspects Indefinitely

By EVAN PEREZ

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is weighing plans to detain some terror suspects on U.S. soil -- indefinitely and without trial -- as part of a plan to retool military commission trials that were conducted for prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The proposal being floated with members of Congress is another indication of President Barack Obama's struggles to establish his counter-terrorism policies, balancing security concerns against attempts to alter Bush-administration practices he has harshly criticized.
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Defense Secretary Robert Gates, at a hearing last month, hinted at the administration's deliberations, saying that there were "50 to 100 [detainees] probably in that ballpark who we cannot release and cannot trust, either in Article 3 [civilian] courts or military commissions."

3. Military tribunals:

Obama to Revamp Military Tribunals

Stance Is Reversal on Trials for Detainees

By Michael D. Shear and Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, May 16, 2009

As a candidate for president, Barack Obama offered himself as a clear alternative to Bush-era anti-terrorism policies. Governing has proven muddier.

Yesterday, President Obama announced that he will revamp, rather than reject, the system of military tribunals that President George W. Bush created to try terrorism suspects. Earlier in the week, Obama indicated that he will fight the release of photos depicting alleged abuse of detainees during Bush's tenure.

The reaction has been fierce. The American Civil Liberties Union accused the president of "stonewalling tactics and opaque policies" after the photo decision. And yesterday, the group threw Obama's words from the campaign back at him: "You can't put lipstick on a pig," it said of his efforts to revamp the commissions. Human rights groups vowed to fight Obama in court.
...
Yesterday's announcement was a unmistakable reversal for a man who, as a candidate, had promised to shelve the military commissions and called their use under Bush an "enormous failure."

4. Warrantless wiretapping:

MARCH 6, 2009, 10:37 P.M. ET

Obama Channels Cheney

Obama adopts Bush view on the powers of the presidency.

The Obama Administration this week released its predecessor's post-9/11 legal memoranda in the name of "transparency," producing another round of feel-good Bush criticism. Anyone interested in President Obama's actual executive-power policies, however, should look at his position on warrantless wiretapping. Dick Cheney must be smiling.
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The Obama Justice Department has adopted a legal stance identical to, if not more aggressive than, the Bush version. It argues that the court-forced disclosure of the surveillance programs would cause "exceptional harm to national security" by exposing intelligence sources and methods. Last Friday the Ninth Circuit denied the latest emergency motion to dismiss, again kicking matters back to Judge Walker.

More on this topic from back in 2008, while Obama was still on the campaign trail:

Fri July 11, 2008

Obama's surveillance vote spurs blogging backlash

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama's vote for a federal surveillance law that he had previously opposed has sparked a backlash from his online advocates, who had energized his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
...
In October, Obama had vowed to help filibuster an update of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that gave telecommunication companies that had cooperated with President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program immunity from lawsuits.

After 9/11, Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop, without the mandated warrant from a federal court, on electronic communication involving terrorist suspects.

Critics said Bush's Terrorist Surveillance Program was a violation of civil liberties.

The Senate voted Wednesday on the bill updating FISA -- which had a provision to shield telecommunications companies that had cooperated in the surveillance. Obama joined the 68 other senators who voted to send the bill to the president's desk.
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Bush signed the bill into law on Thursday, saying the bill "will help us meet our most solemn responsibility: to stop another attack."

5. Pakistan:

January 23, 2009

President Obama 'orders Pakistan drone attacks

Missiles fired from suspected US drones killed at least 15 people inside Pakistan today, the first such strikes since Barack Obama became president and a clear sign that the controversial military policy begun by George W Bush has not changed.
...
The operations were stepped up last year after frustration inside the Bush administration over a perceived failure by Islamabad to stem the flow of Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters from the tribal regions into Afghanistan.

6. Iraq:

Surge 'Suceeded Beyond Our Wildest Dreams,' Obama Now Says

Friday, September 05, 2008
By Susan Jones, Senior Editor

The troop surge in Iraq has “succeeded beyond our wildest dreams,” Sen. Barack Obama conceded in an interview with Bill O'Reilly that aired on the Fox News Channel Thursday night.

Obama not only opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, he also opposed the troop surge and predicted it would not work. Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, was a strong supporter of the troop surge.

More on this topic here:

Backers take Obama to task on troop surge

Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, February 27, 2009

A great majority of Americans approve of President Obama's early performance in office, but some of his staunchest supporters on the left are criticizing his troop surge proposal for Afghanistan and the withdrawal plan for Iraq that he's set to announce today at Camp Lejeune, N.C.
...
Obama is expected to announce a 19-month withdrawal Iraq plan today that would leave behind as many as 50,000 of the 142,000 troops currently there, even after August 2010. On the campaign trail, Obama promised that troops would be out of Iraq in 16 months, but compromised after his military commanders suggested a 23-month timetable.
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Soon after Obama's Iraq plan leaked, he began getting objections from the left. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday she didn't see any justification for 50,000 troops remaining in Iraq. Usually supportive MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow said this week that Obama's plan "looks very much more like a Bush plan than it did like a Barack Obama-the-campaigner plan."

7. Afghanistan:

Antiwar groups want Obama to forget pledge

By Michael Drost (Contact) | Tuesday, February 24, 2009

The antiwar left blasted former President George W. Bush for "lying" about the war in Iraq — "Bush lied, people died" — but now some feel betrayed that President Obama is keeping his word about Afghanistan.

Mr. Obama on Wednesday announced the deployment of 17,000 troops to Afghanistan in keeping with his position as a candidate that the United States needs to redouble its efforts there.

Many antiwar activists, including some who supported Mr. Obama, were angered by the move, with some saying they had hoped his war stance was "just campaign talk."

With all of that in mind, the editors of the Washington Post pretty much nail it:

Mr. Obama's War?

No. Like it or not, it's America's war.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S clashes with the liberal base of his party are the kind of sporting event that Washington loves. But what Mr. Obama is confronting is less his party and more a stubborn reality that many in his party are unwilling to accept: There are forces in the world that continue to wage war against the United States and its allies, whether or not the United States wants to acknowledge that war.

Mr. Obama's recent decisions on paying for Afghanistan, reviving military tribunals and withholding photos of detainee abuse, among others, all reflect this reality...His announcement Friday that he had reversed his opposition to trying some enemy detainees in military commissions reflects, again, the fact of a nation at war; the federal courts will not be the proper venue for every al-Qaeda member captured by U.S. forces...His commitment to fighting al-Qaeda and its allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan recognizes that pretending a threat does not exist will only increase the danger to America.

And finally, if you are an anti-war enthusiast, you might have thought you won a momentous battle when you helped to get Obama elected, but it seems somehow poetic that you now find yourself in this place:

May 17, 2009
Anti-War Voices Lose Influence
By Salena Zito

Will the last activist who hopes the antiwar cause will re-emerge as a central tenet of the Democratic Party please turn out the lights on the way out the door?

Little evidence exists that any antiwar movement is alive, well and influencing policy in this country.

Certainly no voice for it is coming from Barack Obama's White House. In fact, Obama has been pretty consistent in jerking-around antiwar crusaders, beginning with last summer's vote as a U.S. senator for a federal surveillance law and its provision shielding telecommunications companies that cooperated in warrantless wiretaps - a law he previously opposed.
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While President Obama gingerly takes ownership of the war in Afghanistan - pumping up troop levels, hand-picking his own commander, adding Pakistan as part of the solution and the problem - he is disowning antiwar activists who voted for him, expecting him to put an end all wars.

If you are a marginalized anti-war activist, take your cue from Barack Obama -- emote less and think more.

Conservatives and Liberals Need Each Other

I'm increasing struck by the idea that conservatives and liberals need each other. As I see it, you need some people who take patriotic pride in their country, but you also need them to be balanced by people who take personal pride in their willingness to criticize their own country and who focus on what their country could be (not what it is now). Unbalanced and unchecked, either one of those two attitudes could lead to an ugly state of affairs. If you tend to take pride in your country and see it as a force for good in the world (more so than any other country, as I do), this can be hard to accept. But I have come to accept it.

Conservatives and liberals also differ in the degree to which they are willing to update their thinking as times change. Conservatives tend to prefer things as they are; liberals tend to more readily embrace what they perceive to be updated thinking. Again, it's hard to accept that you need both kinds of people, but my feeling is that one without the other would lead to a mistake-ridden state of affairs. That is, whereas Republicans make the mistake of not changing when they should (e.g., they once favored the status quo for women even when thinking had evolved), Democrats make the mistake of changing when they shouldn't (e.g., when the opinion polls changed, they favored surrendering to al Qaeda in Iraq at the very height of sectarian violence, despite the God forsaken genocidal bloodbath that would have ensued). The reason why you need people who think in different ways is that those on the other side will always shine a bright spotlight on the mistakes that your side would rather ignore. If you think that we could do just fine without that corrective force, then you differ from me.

I tend not think like a Democrat these days, but I don't hold their changing views against them. Having said that, I think it is fair to say that, in recent years, the Democrats have behaved in particularly unimpressive fashion by maliciously attributing their shifting views to inappropriate and immoral behavior on the part of Republicans (instead of accepting responsibility for the fact that they had it wrong and have now changed their minds in light of new evidence). This is partly because, when Democrats shift with the wind, Republicans accuse them of flip-flopping. To me, that's not a malicious accusation; instead, it's just rough-and-tumble politics. What the Democrats do to avoid this accusation, by contrast, is unconscionable.

Back when it was politically inconvenient to do otherwise, many Democrats voted to give Bush the authority to go to war with Iraq. When the war encountered difficulties and public opinion shifted, they turned against the war. That's fine. That's just shifting with the wind, and that's what Democrats do (more so than Republicans anyway). Shifting with the wind is not objectionable. However, what was objectionable was the lengths to which many Democrats went to avoid the "flip-flopper" charge. Instead of simply accusing the Republicans of being too stubborn or too bone-headed to adjust to the changing reality on the ground in Iraq (which would have been the rough-and-tumble political response), they made up a story of having been intentionally misled about pre-war intelligence. Then they went further and claimed that Bush misled not just them but the entire country in order to start a war (so that Halliburton could make money from no-bid contracts or some such thing). Because most people in America don't pay attention to the details, this malicious lie caught on and became politically advantageous to the Democrats. Politically advantageous or not, it was an unconscionable thing to do.

Anyone who pays attention to the details knows that the malicious accusation made by the Democrats about Bush is untrue. Before the war, the Democrats had the same intelligence information about Iraq's WMDs and ties to terrorists that Bush did, and they interpreted that information in the exact same way. In case you have forgotten, here is John Edwards -- Democratic vice-presidential candidate and former member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence -- telling it the way it really was (he stopped talking like this when political expediency became more important than the obvious truth of the matter):

I mean, we have three different countries that, while they all present serious problems for the United States -- they're dictatorships, they're involved in the development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction -- you know, the most imminent, clear and present threat to our country is not the same from those three countries. I think Iraq is the most serious and imminent threat to our country.
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And they do, in my judgment, present different threats. And I think Iraq and Saddam Hussein present the most serious and most imminent threat.

Edwards called Iraq an imminent threat (Bush never did, but that's another story). In another interview, Edwards was specifically asked whether or not he was misled by Bush:

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about-Since you did support the resolution and you did support that ultimate solution to go into combat and to take over that government and occupy that country. Do you think that you, as a United States Senator, got the straight story from the Bush administration on this war? On the need for the war? Did you get the straight story?

EDWARDS: Well, the first thing I should say is I take responsibility for my vote. Period. And I did what I did based upon a belief, Chris, that Saddam Hussein’s potential for getting nuclear capability was what created the threat. That was always the focus of my concern. Still is the focus of my concern.

So did I get misled? No. I didn’t get misled.

Of course he did not get misled, and the Democrats in Washington know this very well, but it doesn't matter (to them). The Democrats wanted political cover for their shifting positions on the war, but instead of simply accusing the Republicans of being too set in their old-fashioned, bone-headed ways to update their thinking based on new evidence, they pushed their "Bush lied!" story (e.g., John Kerry said: "I will not have my commitment to defending this country questioned by those who refused to serve when they had a chance and I will not have it questioned by those who misled this nation into war in Iraq"). They should have simply admitted that they once accepted the idea that an invasion of Iraq might be necessary but later changed their views about that. That would have been the honorable thing to do, but many Democrats chose a dishonorable path instead.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence conducted the most detailed inquiry into intelligence on pre-war Iraq. It was a bipartisan effort, and it was unanimously endorsed. You will not find a more authoritative document on the subject anywhere, and it contains a truth that is vastly more interesting that the "Bush lied!" nonsense. Here is the truth, in a nutshell:

The Intelligence Community (IC) suffered from a collective presumption that Iraq had an active and growing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program. This "group think" dynamic led Intelligence Community analysts, collectors and managers to both interpret ambiguous evidence as conclusively indicative of a WMD program as well as ignore or minimize evidence that Iraq did not have active and expanding weapons of mass destruction programs. This presumption was so strong that formalized IC mechanisms established to challenge assumptions and group think were not utilized.
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The roots of the IC's bias stretch back to Iraq's pre-1991 efforts to build WMD and its efforts to hide those programs. The fact that Iraq had repeatedly lied about its pre-1991 WMD programs, its continued deceptive behavior, and its failure to fully cooperate with UN inspectors left the IC with a predisposition to believe the Iraqis were continuing to lie about their WMD efforts. This was compounded by the fact that Iraq's pre-1991 progress on its nuclear weapons program had surprised the 1C. The role this knowledge played in analysts' thinking is evident in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate's (NIE) introduction which said, "revelations after the Gulf War starkly demonstrate the extensive efforts undertaken by Iraq to deny information. The revelations also underscore the extent to which limited information fostered underestimates by the Intelligence Community of Saddam's capabilities at that time." This bias was likely further reinforced by the IC's failure to detect the September 11th terrorist plot and the criticism that the Community had not done all it could to "connect the dots."
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The Committee did not find any evidence that Administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities.
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The Committee found that none of the analysts or other people interviewed by the Committee said that they were pressured to change their conclusions related to Iraq's links to terrorism. After 9/11, however, analysts were under tremendous pressure to make correct assessments, to avoid missing a credible threat, and to avoid an intelligence failure on the scale of 9/11. As a result, the Intelligence Community's assessments were bold and assertive in pointing out potential terrorist links.

Get the picture? Intelligence analysts were on guard to avoid missing threats of the kind they had missed in the past. When you are on guard to avoid missing a real threat, you'll have a tendency to mistakenly detect a threat that is not real. Generally speaking, when you guard against making one kind of mistake, you'll tend to make the opposite mistake. That's the interesting truth of the matter. Pretending instead that Bush lied is for small minds that prefer uninteresting an un-nuanced fantasy to an interesting and nuanced reality.

Today, we see the same dynamic on the issue of harsh interrogations. In the aftermath of 9/11, Democrats and Republicans alike were informed about the harsh interrogation techniques that were to be used (and that were being used). As I am sure you know, Nancy Pelosi heard all about these techniques and did not protest. Now that the political winds have shifted as a result of 8 years of safety, the Democrats are pretending to be shocked that the Bush administration condoned "torture." If you really believe that Pelosi was in the dark, read this story (and this one, too, not to mention this one). In essence, it's the same tactic that the Democrats used with respect to the war in Iraq. They were OK with waterboarding in a time of crisis (and it doesn't make Pelosi evil), but now that the winds have shifted, they've shifted, too. It is not the shifting with the political winds that is the problem; it's the malicious pretense that the Republicans misled everyone that is the problem.

Despite my complaints, I truly believe that we need a party that changes with the times (or shifts with the wind, if you want to put it that way). That the Democrats are that way (more so than the Republicans) does not seem arguable to me. In fact, that attitude extends all the way to the Democratic philosophy on how Supreme Court justices should rule. Unlike what the Republicans think, Democrats believe that the justices should shift with prevailing views (instead of being overly constrained by the Constitution). That's why, for example, the Democrats like the idea of our Supreme Court justices factoring into their decisions what European judges think about issues like the death penalty and Geneva Convention rights for terrorists. Generally speaking, Democrats embrace the concept of a living constitution:

The Living Constitution is a concept in American constitutional interpretation which suggests that the Constitution should be seen as continually evolving with the society that implements it. The idea is associated with views that societal progress should be taken into account when interpreting key constitutional phrases.[1]

While the arguments for the Living Constitution vary, they can generally be broken into two categories. First, the pragmatist view contends that interpreting the Constitution in accordance with long outdated views is often unacceptable as a policy matter, and thus that an evolving interpretation is necessary. The second, relating to intent, contends that the constitutional framers specifically wrote the Constitution in broad and flexible terms to create such a dynamic, "living" document. Opponents of the idea often argue that the Constitution should be changed through the amendment process, and that the theory can be used by judges to inject their personal values into constitutional interpretation.

A prominent endorsement of the Living Constitution concept was heard in the 2000 presidential campaign by the Democratic candidate, Al Gore. One of its most vocal critics is Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

To me, the "living constitution" is not a completely crazy notion even though it does not seem as intellectually defensible as the conservative view. The conservative view is that legal decisions about what is constitutional is dictated by what is in the Constitution and that if the Constitution needs to change with the times, you change it by the amendment process (not by taking guidance from how European judges think, for example). But, if you are liberal, you might think that the provisions for changing the constitution are too strict -- so strict, in fact, that the rights of minorities could be trampled for generations following the realization that an injustice needs to be corrected.

Democrats shift with the wind, and that's a good thing, not a bad thing. We need some Supreme Court justices to be that way, and we need others who stand on the time-invariant principle that decisions about what is and is not constitutional is dictated by what is and is not in the Constitution. After all, as sensible as it might seem that decisions about what is constitutional should be based on what is written in the constitution, many Americans disagree:

While 82% of voters who support McCain believe the justices should rule on what is in the Constitution, just 29% of Barack Obama’s supporters agree. Just 11% of McCain supporters say judges should rule based on the judge’s sense of fairness, while nearly half (49%) of Obama supporters agree.

We can't just ignore that strong current of thinking in America. This is why I am actually happy that Obama will be naming Supreme Court justices in the years to come. Souter's retirement caught me by surprise. He is a liberal, and the next two to go are also likely to be far left liberals (Ginsberg, who is 75 and has pancreatic cancer, and Stevens, who must be almost 90). The Supreme Court is fairly balanced now, and I would not want 3 Scalia's replacing these three liberals even though I tend to agree with the crisp and compelling logic of the conservative justices (whereas the reasoning of liberals often seems tortured -- precisely because such reasoning attempts to justify on constitutional grounds what is not really in the constitution).

It's not an easy thing to do (in fact, it is downright unnatural), but liberals and conservatives should work harder than they do now to accept the proposition that they are better off with each other than without.

Can Reasonable People Disagree with You about Gay Marriage?

I guess everything that needs to be said about this has been said already, but I'd just like to add my voice to those who are puzzled by the flap over Miss California's response to a judge's question in the Miss USA pageant. Basically, if you haven't heard, some gay celebrity asked Carrie Prejean about same-sex marriage, and she responded by saying that she believes that marriage should be between a man and a woman. That's it. That's the "controversy."

I do not oppose gay marriage, and I recently voted against a proposition that sought to ban gay marriage in California. I don't oppose it even though I do not resonate to the arguments favored by many on the left, who see it as an issue of "equality" or "civil rights." I don't see it that way at all, and in that respect, I am like a lot of blacks:

In a recent poll, 65 percent of blacks opposed same-sex marriage, although other surveys have shown strong support for laws banning discrimination against gays. What offends most black people is the comparison between the gay-marriage struggle and the black struggle for civil rights.

Like many blacks, I also do not equate these two struggles, but I can see how others might (i.e., I can see how reasonable people would see things differently than I do). Perhaps it is because I do not frame the issue in the way that social progressives do that I am having trouble understanding why the comments made by Carrie Prejean are even slightly controversial, much less hugely controversial. Maybe I have something wrong in my line of thinking about this issue, and if I do, I hope someone can straighten me out. Here is my line of reasoning:

1. a judge (not Carrie Prejean) came up with the question

2. Prejean answered the question honestly (not dishonestly)

3. She gave an answer that corresponds to the views of the majority of people in her home state, to the majority of Americans, and to the majority of blacks. It is also the view held by President Barack Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden (and Hillary Clinton, I believe). John McCain holds that view as well.

All that said, I don't see anything even slightly controversial here. A view that is that widely held cannot be regarded as inherently controversial. If a reporter wants to characterize it as a controversy, shouldn't an explanation be provided for those of us who don't have the liberal reflexes of the mainstream media? I guess not. In response to Prejean's answer, the media has relentlessly portrayed this as a controversy without ever saying why it is a controversy. Now, CNN is excitedly abetting a malicious attempt by some unprincipled purveyors of a web site to attract traffic by "slowly rolling out" racy photos of Prejean. That seems pathetic to me. I realize that to most reporters (most of whom hail from the left), her views on gay marriage are not just wrong but are downright illegitimate (that how it seems to people on the left), but that doesn't mean they should try to delegitimize someone with whom they disagree. Unfortunately, that's what they are doing, and I am guessing that many on the left who favor gay marriage (and who have a strong tendency to demonize their political opponents) are enjoying the spectacle.

In any case, the CNN story has this line:

The 21-year-old Miss USA contestant has been the center of controversy since she declared her opposition to same-sex marriage in a response to a question on the national pageant stage last month.

But what is the controversy, exactly? That's my question. Can anyone help me out here? Perhaps Prejean planted the question in order grandstand about her views on gay marriage. If so, then I'd understand. Or perhaps people believe that, when surprised by the question, Prejean should have lied through her teeth instead of being honest. Is that why this is controversial? I just don't know.

Unless I have my facts wrong (e.g., unless she planted the question), then CNN should have said this:

The 21-year-old Miss USA contestant has been the center of a mainstream media firestorm since she declared her opposition to same-sex marriage in a response to a question on the national pageant stage last month. Unlike most Americans and unlike the president of the United States, reporters generally consider her view to be as illegitimate as the long-discredited view that blacks do not deserve the same rights as whites.

That's what lies at the root of this "controversy," so far as I can tell.

Can Reasonable People Disagree with You about what Constitutes Torture?

With regard to interrogation techniques, all reasonable people agree that polite questioning is not torture, whereas gouging out an eye is. If you consider waterboarding (of the kind practiced by the CIA) to be torture, do you also believe that it is so transparently obvious that it belongs in that category (much like gouging out an eye) that reasonable people cannot disagree about it? If so, I can see why you'd want Bush and Cheney (and others) to be prosecuted for authorizing that method of interrogation. But it's creepy to think that people like you exist.

Let's change the topic to abortion. All reasonable people agree that a contraception method that prevents an egg from being fertilized does not amount to murder, whereas suffocating a full-term infant who was born just moments ago does. If you consider abortion to be murder (which is a reasonable position if you believe that human life begins at conception), do you also believe that it is so transparently obvious that it belongs in that category (much like suffocating a newborn baby) that reasonable people cannot disagree about it? If so, I can see why you'd want abortion doctors to be prosecuted for performing even early term abortions. But, again, it's creepy to think that people like you exist.

On the tough questions, reasonable people can disagree. That's precisely what makes them tough questions, and that's an idea that seems lost on the progressive liberal mob seeking to criminalize the actions of government officials with whom they disagree. This idea also seems lost on Barack Obama who does not just disagree with George Bush about where to draw the line when it comes to the interrogation of a few high-level al Qaeda detainees in a time of crisis; in addition, he accuses Bush and others of having "lost their moral bearings." Can you imagine Bush ever characterizing his liberal opponents of, for example, having lost sight of their moral duty to protect the American people? Of having lost their moral bearings because they support embryonic stem cell research? I can't, and in that respect George Bush was vastly more impressive than Barack Obama is today. Bush understood that people who disagree with him are not necessarily morally corrupted even if he also believes that their preferred policies will make America less safe (leading to the unnecessary deaths of many innocents) or that they result directly in the destruction of innocent human life (in the case of embryonic stem cell research). Barack Obama should consider elevating himself to that level.

It's not entirely clear where to draw the line defining when harsh interrogation becomes torture, just as it is not entirely clear where to draw the line defining when an embryo (or a fetus) becomes a human life. With regard to the former, I'd say that torture begins with interrogation techniques that are harsher than waterboarding. With regard to the latter, I'd say that murder begins with abortions performed after the onset of some criterion level of brain activity (not at conception). On both questions, my mind is sufficiently flexible to appreciate that reasonable people can disagree with me, and I never feel any desire to see my political opponents prosecuted for the crime of not seeing things my way. I'd like to think that I wouldn't experience prosecutorial fury even if a president's well-meaning stance against "torture" resulted directly in another tragedy like the one we experienced on 9/11.

If you believe that (a) waterboarding is torture (a defensible position that nevertheless seems quite wrong to me), (b) that reasonable people cannot disagree about this (i.e., that the correctness of your position is so transparently obvious that the details need not even be debated), and (c) that those responsible for the harsh interrogation tactics used by the CIA against 3 high-level al Qaeda detainees in the aftermath of 9/11 should be prosecuted, then I submit that your position is as intellectually primitive and as mentally inflexible as those who want to prosecute doctors for performing abortions. That's not where you want to be, but that's where you are.

UPDATE: Sensible lefty Kevin Drum weighs in on torture in the way that many on the left are doing these days:

I don't care about the Geneva Conventions or U.S. law. I don't care about the difference between torture and "harsh treatment." I don't care about the difference between uniformed combatants and terrorists. I don't care whether it "works." I oppose torture regardless of the current state of the law; I oppose even moderate abuse of helpless detainees; I oppose abuse of criminal suspects and religious heretics as much as I oppose it during wartime; and I oppose it even if it produces useful information.

Got it. I agree. Most people do, so the impassioned stance seems unnecessary. Nobody is talking about gouging out eyes or burning skin to get detainees to talk. Everybody is passionately opposed to using such methods (even on a few high-level al Qaeda detainees during a time of crisis and uncertainty).

But the relevant question is this: can reasonable people disagree about what constitutes torture? The question is not "should we torture detainees?" Drum (like many others) addresses the second question. No one in the Bush administration ever argued that detainees should be tortured. Instead, they argued that, in a time of crisis, harsh interrogation techniques that fall short of torture should be used on a limited number of high-level al Qaeda detainees to protect the American people from another attack like 9/11. The fact that you (or Drum) thinks that the approved techniques amount to torture does not mean that Bush agrees with that characterization or that he authorized anyone to use torture. He did not. Instead, he disagrees that the techniques amount to torture. That's why no bones were broken, no skin was burned and no eyes were gouged out. Torture was disallowed; harsh interrogation was not.

It seems to me that implicit in Drum's moral argument is the claim that no reasonable person could disagree with him about whether or not waterboarding (for example) constitutes torture -- much like no reasonable person could disagree that gouging out an eye is torture. Is that what Drum really believes? Is that what everyone on the left believes? If so, it would be helpful for them to say so explicitly. That is, not only do they believe that waterboarding is torture but they also believe (apparently) that no reasonable person could possibly disagree. As things stand, I think that's what Drum is saying, but it would be clarifying to know that I have that right.

[a further note: I somehow initially missed the following statement in the passage I quoted from Drum: I don't care about the difference between torture and "harsh treatment." But how can you not care about that distinction and then say that you are opposed to torture? Are you also opposed to harsh treatment even though you don't care about the distinction? Does the distinction not exist (as if yelling in one's ear is also torture)? I believe that is what Drum is saying. That is, there is no distinction, it's all torture, and no reasonable person could disagree. I wonder if I have that right?]