Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Dick Cheney is a Coward. And so is Obama?

“I…believe that – too often – our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight.” -Barack Obama, Thursday at the National Archives

The above quote gets to the heart of the torture issue. Dick Cheney, in his speech at the American Enterprise Institute on Thursday, made some rather provocative claims that reveal the paranoid mindset that has been driving policy for the past eight year. Cheney implied that putting Guantanamo inmates in maximum security prisons in the U.S. will somehow endanger our communities. He claimed that disavowing torture will somehow show us up as weak and give terrorists renewed opportunity to strike us. He suggested that all other concerns must be secondary to making the country even just a little bit “safer.”

All of Cheney’s ideas flow from a distinctly American kind of paranoia and cowardice. The Brits know how to respond to terrorists—with a stiff upper lip, recognition that it will probably happen again, and steely determination to try to prevent that next attack. Why must Americans resort to mad hysteria at the thought of terrorists residing in “supermax” prisons in their community? Why must we empty the shelves of ammunition all across the country when the threat level is raised to yellow? Why must we, in the wake of 9-11, resort to torture and invade countries that have nothing to do with terrorism when these drastic actions, at best, only make us marginally safer? It’s because we have been governed by a bunch of cowards—foremost among them is Dick Cheney.

Going back thirty years, Cheney has shown a remarkable ability to conjure up threats to the United States that don’t exist. He opposed detante with the Soviet Union because he imaged the Russians to be militarily much stronger than they actually were. His support for increased presidential powers (“imperial presidency”) stems from a fear that only a strong executive can act decisively and speedily to protect the country from our many (non-existent) threats. Post 9-11, Cheney convinced himself that the terrorists posed an “existential” threat to the United States. He began traveling with a full biohazard suit, convinced that a biological weapons attack was imminent. He recommended that the entire population get vaccinated for smallpox. He often worked out of the secret vice-presidential “undisclosed location.”

And now he tells us that we must torture people if we wish to remain safe. Once again, Cheney is letting his overblown fears get in the way of sound policymaking. If you, Mr. Cheney, are so afraid of terrorists that you are willing to scrap our constitution and our values in order to make us a just a little bit safer, I suggest some further lifestyle choices for you: don’t ride in airplanes, don’t visit New York City or Washington D.C., and certainly don’t ride the subway in those cities, and give some serious thought to moving to Canada or perhaps Switzerland or a Nordic country. You will then be 100% safe from terrorists, and torture will cease to be of concern to you. Meanwhile, back in American cities that will one day certainly suffer from another terrorist attack, the non-cowards who live in those cities will choose to not torture anyone. We will take on that small burden of being a little less safe. We will know that we didn’t cave in to our base, cowardly, irrational, fears; instead, we will have stayed true to our humanity and to our constitution.

As for Obama, he may be wary of making decisions based on fear, but his decision to support what he calls “preemptive detention” is rooted in just this type of irrational fear. I haven’t seen the rap-sheet on these supposedly “too dangerous to release” terrorists, but I doubt they are so dangerous that we need to forgo due process in order to protect ourselves. At some point, Obama must trust the American people to be brave enough to take on a marginal increase in risk from terrorism so that we can uphold our principles. Obama may be more afraid of the political implication of releasing terrorists than the actual implications of releasing terrorists. But either way, he is acting like a coward.

8 comments:

grill said...

Cheney can never set foot in Europe ("Nordic countries") without being tried as a war criminal. We can only hope he attempts to go hide out there.

Anonymous said...

You state, "Cheney implied that putting Guantanamo inmates in maximum security prisons in the U.S. will somehow endanger our communities."

In all fairness, that's not Cheney's concern, and you're too smart to be reciting these talking points. When you bring terrorists into the United States, they become subject to US domestic law; the US military has no jurisdiction within our borders. Therefore, the prisoners are entitled to due process under the 5th Amendment, and barring a change to the US Constitution, will have every right afforded to them in court that you or I do.

Cheney's concern is not the sturdiness of the detention facility, but the impact of conducting legal proceedings through the US system for enemy combatants (or POWs, if you prefer). If they are not indicted by a grand jury, or are found innocent of the charges against them (through lack of evidence or, more likely, the equivalent of prosecutorial misconduct), they go free. In the US. There is no process for extradition (indeed, we've been trying to pass them off to other countries for years), so they walk the streets of our cities.

If you assume approximately 200 detainees remaining, and a published recidivism rate of 1/7 (though for the remaining detainees, a case can be made for a much higher percentage - we let the ones go that we didn't think were a threat), you're looking at releasing 30 people intent on destroying the United States, with all the tools and training needed to hit us again. They'll be able to buy guns and bomb-making materials. They'll be able to re-establish contact with their terrorist networks. They'll be able to teach and train others to kill American citizens. And legally, there won't be a thing we can do about it.

You can chalk that up to the price of freedom now, but if even one of these detainees manages to kill innocent American citizens within our borders, I wonder if you'll have the courage to stand behind that thinking. Regardless of what you think of Cheney as a person, misconstruing his position as simply a concern over the height of the prison walls is its own form of cowardice.

Peter said...

Dear Anonymous,

Thanks for bringing some spirited debate to The Pickle comments section!

You are right that my above statement implies that Cheney is worried about the height of the prison walls. This implication, admittedly, is not self-evident given what Cheney said in his speech.

But let’s not make a mountain out of a mole-hill.

Cheney is still a coward. And your defense of him helps further prove that point.

If Cheney is truly worried, as you say he is, about the possibility of our legal system ultimately requiring the release of terrorists onto the streets, then he should have been brave enough to make that specific argument in his speech. But he did not make that case—perhaps because he was afraid that it would highlight his role in authorizing the use of illegal torture on many detainees, making prosecution in court more difficult.

But let’s say you are right, and that, reading between the lines, Cheney’s true “concern” is that these detainees will one day end up living freely among us. Even then, he could still be rightly accused of acting cowardly. Of overstating the danger in order to make us all afraid.

You write: “If you assume approximately 200 detainees remaining, and a published recidivism rate of 1/7…you're looking at releasing 30 people intent on destroying the United States, with all the tools and training needed to hit us again. They'll be able to buy guns and bomb-making materials. They'll be able to re-establish contact with their terrorist networks. They'll be able to teach and train others to kill American citizens.”

Sounds pretty scary. But, like Cheney, you grossly exaggerate the actual threat we would face if we were to release a few Guantanamo inmates into the United States. First off, the 1/ 7 statistic that you (and Cheney) reference is bogus and pumped up. For a full accounting of why, read “Inflating the Guantanamo Threat” op-ed in the NYTimes on May 28. Second, your characterization of the released detainees’ ability to harm Americans is overblown. You speak as if there is no FBI, watching every move they make, ready to arrest them if they so much as sneeze in the wrong direction. You paint a disturbing, but purely speculative, picture of who these detainees are: you hype their “tools and training,” and suggest without reference that they have strong connections to established terrorist networks.

And the phrases you use (“hit us again,” “destroy the United States”) are needlessly sensational. Why say the detainees are “intent on destroying the United States,” when true “destruction” of the United States can only be accomplished with numerous nuclear weapons? Their intent to destroy is a lot less scary when you realize their capacity to destroy is, in fact, quite limited. “Intent to attack the United States” would have sounded less like fear-mongering and would have served your argument just fine.

You and Cheney are either needlessly terrified, or you are cynically trying to terrify everyone else into thinking we are far more helpless and vulnerable than we really are. Releasing a few detainees into our communities would be an action with some risk, yes. But it would certainly not be the dire threat you make it out to be.

And one last note. I don’t mean this to sound nasty, but I can’t resist suggesting: next time you write something that accuses another person of “cowardice” I recommend you use a different pseudonym, other than “anonymous.” Just saying.

Anonymous said...

Peter,

I don't dispute the fact that I'm a coward. Nor did I intend to suggest that you are one. You put yourself and your opinions out in public for everyone to see, while I have the luxury of picking apart a nit in a well-reasoned argument, coupled with an ability to run away from the conversation whenever I feel like it.

What I saw and responded to was the title of your post, and the fact that the content below it didn't support the assertion. Just as you are, Cheney has been very public in voicing his own opinion, in the face of (arguably meaningless) threats of criminal prosecution from some in the political opposition, and from many in foreign countries. Standing up publicly for what you believe is the opposite of cowardly by my definition, and I don't see anything "brave" about Cheney making my argument rather than his (to preempt one line of disagreement here, I'll concede that other actions of Cheney's can certainly be construed as cowardly).

Post continued below. Sorry for the long response

Anonymous said...

I would also make more of a distinction between fear-mongering (which Cheney and I - somewhat facetiously - certainly do in our arguments) and cowardice than you. There are two points here. First, every executive we've ever had has engaged in some sort of fear-mongering. Even those on the far left of the environmental movement admit that "An Inconvenient Truth" contains a significant amount of exaggeration. It's also hard for any economist to support Obama's assertion that we are in the "worst recession since the Great Depression," especially when he initially made the claim back in September. Both have used fear-mongering to great success, but I don't consider either to be cowards.

Secondly, those on the opposite side of the debate are engaged in downplaying the risks, which is something I see as equally dangerous. Some on the right respond to Al Gore by arguing that Global Warming has no human component, and/or poses no risk to civilization, both of which are responses that, if translated into policy, could have disastrous effects on our world. I see you and Luvh doing the same thing in your responses.

You argue the 1/7 figure I provided is "bogus and pumped up," yet you cite an opinion article to prove your assertion. If you can credibly argue that none of the people currently living in Guantanamo want to harm the United States, fine. If not, releasing them here is still potentially a problem.

You also claim that, upon release, the FBI would be "watching every move they make,ready to arrest them if they so much as sneeze in the wrong direction." Luvh makes a similar argument by claiming "We can still police them. Seems like we’d have probable cause in spades." Unless laws in this country change drastically, neither of these statements are true. The FBI is not allowed to monitor the phone calls domestically, let alone track every move of an individual. Probable cause requires evidence that someone is about to commit a crime; you can't do it based on a person's history. Without that, these 200+ people get to disappear, and our ability to track them will be no greater than that for the millions of illegal immigrants currently living in the United States. This is an aside, but I find it curious that some of the same people who raised such a stink over the CIA monitoring international phone calls are now calling for far more intrusive violations of privacy for those who would have been acquitted by a jury.

This whole situation is a really nasty problem, with no right answers. I don't think it does us any good to resort to name-calling or completely discounting the concerns of the other side. My point is that what happens when we bring these people into our system of law is that we must examine and be prepared to deal with all the consequenses that that entails, which means, as I said before, giving these people every right afforded to us under the Constitution if they are found innocent. We can't afford to, as Luvh states, say that what happens in these hypothetical situations is "something to be sorted out." That's how Guantanamo came into existence, and a huge reason we're in the mess we're in now.

Peter said...

Anonymous,
Thanks for your thoughtful response.

And I agree with much of what you said. Most importantly, in the absence of fear-mongering, it seems now we can get down to an real conversation about the issue—which is, as you say, a very nasty one with no obviously right answers.

Luvh and I may be overplaying our hand a bit when we say the FBI can just police these guys. Although, in all fairness, neither one of us says that releasing them would be without risk. We are up front about that. The thing is, when the opposing side of the argument is yelling from the mountaintops that the apocalypse is just around the corner unless we torture, wire-tap, and lock these guys up forever, I think it is entirely excusable that Luvh and I lean a little bit towards the “these guys are really not that bad” side of the spectrum. Truth be told, no one outside the government knows who these guys are or what they can do. The rhetoric flies and no one thinks. When the two sides can meet in the middle, really take a sober, clearheaded look at who these guys are, then the best decision will be made.

Politically, of course, the fear-mongers have won already. And that is shameful, and a source of anger for those of us who are very concerned with protecting civil liberties.

Of course you are right that those of us who strenuously oppose wire tapping can’t just say that they expect the FBI to “watch every move they make.” It’s a fair point. Similarly, conservatives need to be up-front about the fact that their opposition to gun-control laws makes it easier for potential terrorists to, as you say, “buy guns and bomb-making materials.”

On the issue of Cheney’s cowardly-ness: when someone like him has such a track record of fear-mongering, of pumping up threats, of overreacting to events...at some point we must seriously think that this guy simply may be scared of a lot more things than the average person. Which is cowardice.

To lump all fear-mongering into the “cowardice” category is definitely unfair. Much fear-mongering is just political and cynical and not based in someone actually being afraid. In other words, it is just “mongering,” without much fear. If fear-mongering is a product of some amount of “fear” and some other amount of “mongering,” the ratio of motivation will be different depending on the person and the issue. But the person who is the loudest of all fear-mongers, and the person who is the most consistent fear-monger on all issue, must also be suspected of having the most fear, and therefore of being a coward. That is Cheney. (But certainly not you.)

And for the record—I don’t condone global warming fear-mongering, by Al Gore or anyone else. Unfortunately with that issue, the right-wing side of the argument is so far in denial about global warming that sensibly meeting in the middle to talk soberly about yet another very thorny topic seems impossible.

Anonymous said...

Fair points, and a good discussion. Thanks!

Luvh said...

Aw, man, you guys are already in peacemaking mode and I just got to the party.

Couple points. I actually don't think I am overplaying my hand with the "we can still police them" idea. I should have been clearer - I didn't mean that we could/ought to staple radio tags to their ears and secretly monitor their library cards. I meant, we still have an interdiction infrastructure that they'd have to contend with, one that we normally rely on to protect us against domestic threat-makers who haven't been to Guantanamo.

The second point concerns the awaiting extradition detention issue. I offered this only as a practical consideration, as what I imagined it would actually look like if we processed the terrorism suspects through our homeland legal system. Extradition specifically is what I said would have to be "sorted out" - that's a far cry from secret forever prison. Personally, I think if they're acquitted then they're free on the spot, although it would be a little weird to have shanghaied them from a poppy field in a faraway land and set them "free" here.