Dueling Speeches and Ragtag Terrorists
The 9/11 world is back with full force as Barack Obama makes the case for a judicious approach to terrorism, Dick Cheney argues that only bare knuckles can keep us safe and New York police stage a perp walk of petty criminals scammed into believing they could bomb synagogues and shoot down Air National Guard planes.
It’s one of those wake-me-when-it’s-over days as the overloaded mind wants only to watch an old movie on TV or hide under the covers, but the dueling speeches and the terrorist bust are part of the way we live now. There is no escape.
For someone of advanced age, there are powerful echoes of the 1950s in all this–another era of anxiety about threats to “our way of life” from evil forces and politicians eager to exploit them with an easy sell of fear.
Dick Cheney is no Joe McCarthy, but here he is attacking the Obama Administration for closing Guantanamo with a desire “to bring some of these hardened terrorists into the United States” and praising Congressional exploitation of fears that “the terrorists might soon be relocating into their states,” as if they were going to be walking the streets rather than being held in maximum-security prisons.
But Cheney’s retroactive paean to torture, which has raised his approval ratings a few points from abysmal to awful, is less relevant than the President’s attempt today to reconcile national ideals with what has to be done “to keep the American people safe.”
Obama reviewed what he called the Guantanamo “mess–a misguided experiment that has left in its wake a flood of legal challenges that my administration is forced to deal with on a constant, almost daily basis, and it consumes the time of government officials whose time should be spent on better protecting our country.”
Along with a dissection of the legal and moral issues involved, the President, who prefers to focus on the future, nevertheless acknowledged the demagoguery of “fear-mongering” surrounding the issue.
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12 Responses to “Dueling Speeches and Ragtag Terrorists”
Cheney is only attacking Obama to try to score points for the GOP. The GOP is interested in scoring political points and perhaps some money to refill their coffers.
I the GOP should let Obama do his job and not distract Obama from keeping America safe.
I don't recall any Democratic political leader giving a rebuttal to any of Bush's speeches (except the usual State of the Union). Cheney isn't even in office any longer. Cheney isn't even in office any longer. The constituentcy of one that Cheney represents is himself and his attacks are an attempt to rescue his only possibly illegal behaviour, trashing of the US Constitution, etc. Cheney has nothi8ng to lose and only everything to gain by attacking Obama and keepnig the conversation away from his own dispicable actions as VP.
Let's face it, the President messed up on his jejune and naive calls for closing Gitmo. Cheney called him on it and the [Democrat-controlled] House and Senate concurred. Obama is having his clock cleaned politically and silly talk about “national ideals” and “torture” are just political shibboleths. Bill Clinton instituted “rendition” to places like Egypt where they know Islamists better than the Soros and Obambi wings of the American populace. I'm a State Dept. Arabist and know all too well that AT LEAST one out of seven of the already-freed Gitmo types has openly rejoined the criminal RICO scams masquerading as religion. Probably a much higher percentage are now in a “mole mode” waiting for their AQ & terrorist masters to summon them from their burrows.
Cheney is right to call Obama and the best idea I've heard is to decommission Alcatraz as a “national monument” and park the Gitmo hopeless recidivists right there in San Fran Bay where Nan, Dianne and Barbara Boxer can observe them from up close and personal… BoBo is from Marin County & Feinstein was an SF DA, so the three stoogettes could all be certain these bad boys would stay put!
SB: “I don't recall any Democratic political leader giving a rebuttal to any of Bush's speeches (except the usual State of the Union).”
err, http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=756…
I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now. But you know what, Cheney is going to continue, and its only going to get uglier. The Left is going to start going crazy just as the Right did before them. The Right is essentially attacking in the same manner that the Left did and use episodes such as this to justify it. This is the problem; every single issue comes down to “Well Bush Did it Too” or “Could you imagine if Bush did this?” This is modern day politics, and probably one of the biggest reasons why no one can seem to find common ground on anything.
Hey Dave…so should we keep all American prisoners in jail if we believe they might commit another crime after they have served their time? How about the people that haven't even been tried?
Terrorism is a criminal offense and should be treated so. If we don't have anything proving these people have committed crimes then they should be let go…regardless to how dangerous they are…or someone told they might be.
If they join terror groups when they return home…so be it.
Hey Dave…so should we keep all American prisoners in jail if we believe they might commit another crime after they have served their time? How about the people that haven't even been tried? Not a relevant analogy on several levels, the most amusing of which is that the Bush Admin released over 300 Gitmo detainees after due process and sorting out. The 240 who are left are the ones Obama may set up concentration camps to detain without trial indefinitely because “the evidence against them is somewhat tainted…” which anyone who has served overseas in that part of the world knows, as Shannonlee doesn't, that hard & fast evidence necessary in US courts is rarely available. Habeas Corpus doesn't apply to war criminals, which is what these un-uniformed captives in a war zone are. Get a copy of the Hague Convention and do your homework.
And Shannonlee, why don't we give them your address as a half-way house if they don't want to “return home,” as you naively put it? It seems that at home, they will be treated much worse than at Gitmo. And if they do “go home,” and kill someone you know, I'm sure you'll be okay with that, huh?
THanks, jchem… when I said a “rebuttal” I meant a “speech v. speech” sort of rebuttal. Obviously you will have strong opinions put forth by ex-VPs.
But Cheney is trying to draw attention away from his misdeeds and has every PERSONAL reason to keep up these attacks on Obama. Gore also was not protecting his legacy nor was he trying to stay out of prison. Nor did Gore (back to my original point) schedule speeches to rebut Bush's speeches.
Gore knew the Bush administration was lying and spoke up. We've already tried Cheney's way and see where it got us.
Dave, what we did in Gitmo was wrong. It was wrong for the US to offer bounties on heads of suspected terrorists (which encourages feuding people to turn in their enemy). It was wrong to ship them off to Gitmo without attorneys. And you label them as “war criminals”. Who said they were “war criminals”? According to Bush these are “unlawful combatants”. War criminals get trials…. (Wasn't that what Nuremberg was about?) The Supreme Court has ruled that the detainees should have due process under U.S. law. Of the 500 detainees there have only been 10 trials (all military tribunals) over the past seven years. The US. Supreme Court said that Bush does not have the authority to try these men in a military tribunal. Also Bush violated the Geneva Conventions.
It was wrong to torture them. It was wrong not to give them trials. Sure Bush released some detainees, after years of being locked up and much international pressure. He released them because many of them were innocent, Many were swept up because some person they were having a dispute with half way around the world decided to get some money and get rid of their problem. Not because they were terrorists and we just couldn't get the proof. Besides, incarcerating someone without proof is not the American way of justice… until Bush came along.
So Dave
“And Shannonlee, why don't we give them your address as a half-way house if they don't want to “return home,” as you naively put it?”
I guess the only safe thing to do is just shoot em and let god sort em out, right?
SB, no argument from me on these points. However, I'm not sure that Cheney has any legacy whatsoever and he most likely knows it. Simply put, he has nothing to lose, so will come out swinging with everything he knows, much of which is confidential. And so far, Obama has been continuing many of the same policies, which has certainly drew the ire of folks such as Greenwald, Broder, and the ACLU. I think Cheney is basically trying to say “well if it was so wrong when we did it, then why are you doing it to?”
Maybe bounties were wrong, but most were probably captured flagrante delicto and the bounty suspects were examined closely to see if they weren't victims of vendettas. Attorneys have nothing to do with pre-sortment of captives [I was in Vietnam & the Gulf War & in the Nam, would interview captured VC in Vietnamese, which I spoke]. Anyone not wearing clearly identifiable insignia or a uniform is an “unlawful combatant” and most countries shoot these people on immediate capture. Nuremberg doesn't apply here. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War and has been praised for it. Mutatis mutandis, GWB has done the same thing. Bush has not violated the Geneva Conventions and the SCOTUS hasn't made definitive rulings on the detainees despite the tendentious drivel the NYT puts out about this being the case.
He released them because many of them were innocent, Ha ha. So innocent that several killed themselves as suicide bombers and of the three hundred freed, about forty-five have been recaptured fighting with AQ or other jihadist organizations. Is that what you call innocent?
Now Obama is for all intents and purposes reneging on his campaign promises and even his post-election proclamation that he is closing Gitmo. He is talking about indefinite “preventive detention” without trial and no amount of special pleading can say that isn't the same as a concentration camp. As for the American way of justice, incarcerating someone without proof was something Lincoln and FDR [Japanese Amcits in internment camps] did on a scale much larger than GWB. Go back to your history books and stop channelling Joy Behar.
Cheney didn't plan this speech as rebuttal- it was Obama who couldn't let Cheney's speech go without his countering it (actually it apparently requested by those in Congress who want to support him but felt that they needed cover.)
CStanley, yes, the Obama folks wanted to pre-spin the Cheney speech and therefore scheduled a “rebuttal” after Cheney had selected his time and forum. Obama's dishonesty proceeded further when he omitted the three-four years after the EITs were stopped due to the Bush Administration's internal self-monitoring and tried to portray the GWB folks as simply not examining their own legal underpinnings. Adding to this dishonest portrayal was Obama's omission of the fact that renditions were started by Clinton, continued by Bush, and not discontinued under his watch. Also, he is replicating the Bush agenda completely and trying to cover his tracks by putting out a false portrayal of what Bush did. Obama is so dishonest as to not release documents which show EITs may have worked in many cases, and releasing only the CIA documents which put the CIA and the Bush Administration in less than a positive light. He is a lawyer, cognate with the word “liar,” and is only able to get away with his prevarications because of a gullible, biased media and a subliterate [in foreign policy matters] base of his own in the Dem party and blogosphere which specializes in “The Big Smear.”
Obama is essentially continuing to keep Gitmo open, and following other Bush policies with captured terrorists, including 600 in Kabul that the pliant biased US press keeps totally silent about. And even the NYT admits of the 300 released Gitmo types, forty-plus have been caught in open recidivism. Not to mention the 250 who may still be lying low in a mole mode.