Shepard Smith Condemns Torture

Just fascinating. Sometimes Shepard Smith just surprises me.

And this:

On Prosecuting Bush’s Team of Torture Lawyers

From the New York Times Editorial page:

At least Mr. Obama is not following Mr. Bush’s example of showy trials for the small fry — like Lynndie England of Abu Ghraib notoriety. But he has an obligation to pursue what is clear evidence of a government policy sanctioning the torture and abuse of prisoners — in violation of international law and the Constitution.

That investigation should start with the lawyers who wrote these sickening memos, including John Yoo, who now teaches law in California; Steven Bradbury, who was job-hunting when we last heard; and Mr. Bybee, who holds the lifetime seat on the federal appeals court that Mr. Bush rewarded him with.

Few, except the Obama administration itself, would quibble with what the New York Times is advocating. An official investigation followed by prosecution of those who authorized the use of torture should take place. But the question is when and by whom.

After all, President Obama has an ambitious wish list of legislative priorities inspired by the weight of several crises competing for his attention. That means that pursuing a high profile and public investigation into the abuses of person would almost certainly create a Congressional atmosphere so partisan that it would jeopardize his chances of passing a climate change bill, a health care reform bill, overhauling education No Child Left Behind, immigration reform, in addition to dealing with a likely Supreme Court vacancy even as he and his team struggle to nurse an ailing economy.

Of course, this does not preclude Congress itself from conducting its own low profile investigation while encouraging more open source reporting on the matter. Nor does it prevent certain state bar associations from disbarring the very lawyers who used legal fictions to circumvent the law.

In other words, Obama could allow others to make the case for him based on the record provided thus far over the course during the next few years. Over time pressure by certain Bush officials will mount and cause some of them to flip either because of the level of scrutiny involved, their pariah status within their respective fields, or maybe their conscience will eat at them.

That way provided there’s sufficient pressure from Congress and if the public develops an appetite for prosecuting senior Bush officials, which does not quite exist yet, the Obama administration could go in for the easy kill by appointing an independent prosecutor.

At minimum, it could set the stage for the creation of a Commission of Inquiry, as proposed by Chariman of the Senate Judicary Patrick Leahy. Certain individuals intimately involved in the torture regime could cooperate with the commission’s inquiry in exchange for some immunity.

Perhaps it would not satisfy many human rights advocates who want everyone responsible prosecuted now, but it would afford us an opportunity to learn from our mistakes.

Homeland Security Sees Uptick in Hate Group Recuritment

A Department of Homeland Security report on the rise of right wing hate groups and extremism was leaked this week. The DHS report is called “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.”

Unsurprisingly, the report found that the spike in undocumented immigration, the current economic downtown, and the election of the first African American president have spurred their efforts in winning new recruits.

Not exactly news to many of us, but its different when you see this documented by the government.

Of course, much of the controversy surrounding the report has focused on how these groups recruit disgruntled military veterans that find it difficult to readjust to civilian life, but that’s far from the report’s central focus. And anyone who takes time to read it would soon discover that himself.

But even if some civil libertarians and conservatives raising concerns about whether or not the government should be monitoring political beliefs, I think this presents many civil and human rights advocates with an opportunity to to promote greater awareness about the rise of hate crimes and their clear, though often overlooked, relationship to hate speech. That’s not to say we should go out of our way to criminalize intolerant speech, but being vigilante about countering intolerant speech can be critical to reducing hate crimes.

The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crime Prevention Act, which seems like it will be introduced this session of Congress, would provide local authorities with more resources to combat hate crimes and give federal government jurisdiction over processing hate crimes in states where the current law is inadequate.

In my opinion, I think the key findings in the report include:

• Over the past five years, various rightwing extremists, including militias and white supremacists, have adopted the immigration issue as a call to action, and recruiting tool. Debates over appropriate immigration levels and enforcement policy generally fall within the realm of protected political speech under the First Amendment, but in some cases, anti-immigration or strident pro-enforcement fervor has been directed against specific groups and has the potential to turn violent.

• In contrast to the early 90s, the advent of the Internet and other information age technologies s has given domestic extremists greater access to information related to bomb-making, weapons training, and tactics, as well as targeting of individuals, organizations, and facilities, potentially making extremist individuals and groups more dangerous and the consequences of their violence more severe.

• Lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent rightwing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States. Information from law enforcement and nongovernmental organizations indicates lone wolves and small terrorist cells have shown intent—and, in some cases, the capability—to commit violent acts.

• Most statements by rightwing extremists have been rhetorical, expressing concerns about the election of the first African American president, but stopping short of calls for violent action.

• Historically, domestic rightwing extremists have feared, predicted, and anticipated a cataclysmic economic collapse in the United States. Conspiracy theories involving declarations of martial law, impending civil strife or racial conflict, suspension of the U.S. Constitution, and the creation of citizen detention camps often incorporate aspects of a failed economy.

Also, see Department of Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano’s statement on the report here.

Justice Ginsberg on Foreign Law

From Jefferey Toobin at the New Yorker:

It looks like Harold Koh, President Obama’s nominee for legal adviser at the State Department, may turn out to be the first real confirmation fight in the new Administration. The controversy has been mentioned in a handful of newspapers, but there’s plenty of Internet fire on the anti-Koh, and pro-Koh, side.

The heart of the attack on Koh, who is now the dean of Yale Law School, is that he believes in “transnationalism,” which purportedly is the notion that American courts should honor and apply the laws of other nations in our courts.

I wonder if the so-called controversy over Koh’s transnationalism can be explained away by simply saying that if citing international law is good enough for the Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, then it should be good enough for a legal adviser to the U.S. State Department. The Court has cited international law, which is not the same as being bound by it, in cases involving gay rights and the death penalty and the sky did not fall, though it did anger the right.

Adam Liptak reported in the NYT on Saturday that Justice Ruth Ginsberg thinks the debate concerning international is sorta ridiculous.

In her remarks, Justice Ginsburg discussed a decision by the Israeli Supreme Court concerning the use of torture to obtain information from people suspected of terrorism.

“The police think that a suspect they have apprehended knows where and when a bomb is going to go off,” she said, describing the question presented in the case. “Can the police use torture to extract that information? And in an eloquent decision by Aharon Barak, then the chief justice of Israel, the court said: ‘Torture? Never.’ ”

The message of the decision, Justice Ginsburg said, was “that we could hand our enemies no greater victory than to come to look like that enemy in our disregard for human dignity.” Then she asked, “Now why should I not read that opinion and be affected by its tremendous persuasive value?”

My sentiments exactly.

Side note: Toobin, apparently has not been following the battles over President Obama’s other executive nominees fight that closely, since he seems to think that Koh would be the first real confirmation fight.
Dawn Johnsen, Obama’s nominee to head the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department, has come under attack from the far right for being a lawyer for NARAL at one point and her unsparing criticism of Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program and use of torture to extract intelligence information from detainees. Republicans are threatening to filibuster her nomination.

Another nominee, Thomas Saenz, was in the pipeline, though never formally announced, to be Obama’s top civil rights enforcer at the Justice Department until the anti-immigrant right sunk his nomination for his work on successfully challenging local ordinances banning day laborers from city streets and of California’s Proposition 187, a 1994 ballot measure that prevented undocumented immigrants from taking advantage of certain social services.

Obama and the War on Terror

Check out my post on Obama and his rejection of the Bush era war on terror frame at Deft Mag. Here’s an excerpt:

Many have welcomed Obama’s sharp break from the Bush administration as a significant shift in the posture of American foreign policy, but it should also be viewed as Obama’s desire for the rule of law, whether at home or abroad, even in the face of formidable and elusive threats.

Much of this was also affirmed in President Obama’s inaugural speech. “They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint,” he said.

This kind of specificity of purpose and principled understanding was utterly absent from George W. Bush’s definition of the war on terror and manner in which he exercised executive power.

Consider the history. George W. Bush first used the phrase “war on terror” to a joint session of Congress in the wake of the 9/11 attacks On September 20, 2001, Bush declared, “Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”

Amb Susan Rice Wants to Engage

At her first presser yesterday as the newly minted United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice raised eyebrows when she said she looked forward to “engaging in vigorous diplomacy, that includes direct diplomacy with Iran.” To many, this sounded as if President Obama was willing to sit down and have tea with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions. But this is very unlikely to be the case.

Ambassador Rice was probably referring to the need to engage Iran on a number of fronts including their support for Hamas in the Palestinian Territories, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Shiite factions in Iraq. Who knows maybe how they might be helpful in eliminating a resurgent Taliban, in Afghanistan, a persistent irritant to the government in Tehran well before the American invasion.

For his part, President Obama himself in an interview with Arab television network Al Arabiya noted that while Iran has not always behave in ways “conducive to peace and prosperity in the region” it is still important “for us to be willing to talk to Iran, to express very clearly where our differences are.” He also went on to say, “And as I said during my inauguration speech, if countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us. So, it seems for now the president is content with simply keeping the lines of communication open in laying the ground work for more robust diplomacy.

Ambassador Rice also took time to remark on the on the war in the Gaza strip. Ambassador Rice prefaced her remarks regarding the ceasefire with expressing concern for the humanitarian situation in Gaza. “…with respect to Gaza, let me say that you have heard the President speak very forthrightly about his grave concern about the current humanitarian crisis,” she told the UN press corp.

Perhaps this seems small but its important to note that her comment did not begin with reiterating the already broadly accepted and frequently invoked claim that Israel has a right to self-defense. Instead she began discussing the humanitarian situation and calling for a “durable cease fire” that would ultimately lead to “border crossings to open and be available for humanitarian as well as day-to-day economic development imperatives.”

This is a striking different tune that what Bush administration has and have said. Amb. Rice’s predecessor, Bush appointee John Bolton, recently argued out-going Secretary of State Condi Rice at the UN Security Council should have vetoed instead of abstaining from voting on the cease fire measure, which would have killed its passage. Anything short of a veto would have been an abdication of our “international leadership role.”

Interestingly enough, Ambassador Rice was not asked whether or not the U.S. will participate in the World Conference on Racism, also known as Durban II or about the U.S. joining the U.N.  Human Rights Council. She was, however, asked about it at her Congressional confirmation hearing earlier this month.

According to the transcript, Senator Bill Nelson expressed his disappointment with how the Durban Conference “got sidetracked on attacking Israel rather than dealing with human rights” only to further complicate Mid-East politics in general. He also commented on how the U.S. should be prepared to reassess its participation in the Human Rights Council if certain countries are going to use that body, along with Durban itself, as “a tool to beat up on one of our allies or if it becomes an objective to undermine U.S. policy.”

In her reply, Dr. Rice astutely sidestepped making any specific remarks about Durban and simply sought to reassure Nelson that she and everyone else in the incoming administration took Israel’s security seriously. She then quickly pivoted to strongly criticizing a resolution on a Gaza cease fire that originated in the Human Rights Council, which enjoyed the support of many African and Arab countries, but not much from Western nations.

News reports say that the Human Rights Council resolution mainly focused on human rights violations in Gaza by Israel and encouraged the UN to do fact finding regarding those abuses. Rice said the resolution was “a classic example of the utterly imbalanced and reprehensible kinds of resolutions that have, too often, emerged from the Human Rights Council.”

(Note: the Human Rights resolution that passed on Jan 12th is different from the UN Security Council resolution that passed on Jan 8th almost unanimously save the lone abstention by the U.S.)

By the same token, it was clear that Rice errs on the side of engaging in the UN process even if the problems seem intractable. Referring to the outcome of the resolution, Rice said at the hearing it “just begs the question of what might have been different with U.S. participation and leadership. It seems to me hard to imagine that we would not have sought to work with, and indeed prevail upon, many of our allies to stand with Canada and with us in opposition to such a resolution.”

Obviously, engagement does not mean going along with anything member states favor at the U.N., but being apart of the process and taking it seriously.

Clearly, Ambassador Rice is optimistic about the future of U.S.-U.N. relations.  Perhaps this is the dawning of a new era of American liberal internationalist foreign policy.

Misreading the Bush Doctrine in the WaPo

On Sunday, the Washington Post published a story with the following headline: “Bush Doctrine Stalls Holder Confirmation.” Now I understand that headline writers have quite a bit of leeway in deciding what they title certain articles, but there’s a difference between being creative and misrepresenting the main idea of a story.

The lead in the article says, “Even as Senate Republicans seek assurances that new leaders at the Justice Department will not prosecute former government officials over national security abuses, one of the highest-profile investigations of the Bush era is grinding to a close.” The rest of the article describes how Senate Republicans want to assurances from Eric Holder that he will not seek to investigate and prosecute those who may have tortured or otherwise abused detainees under interrogation and the destruction of tapes recording those sessions. That has nothing to do with the Bush Doctrine.

Simply stated, the Bush doctrine holds that the U.S. has a right to extinguish national security threats with the use of military force against a country or nonstate actor as preventive measure. That is to say, we may wage preventive war to anticipate threats before they blossom into full blown eminent threats. This is a radical idea because international law calls for threats to at least be eminent before claiming to wage an attack in self defense against an enemy. Otherwise, there is no way of truly distinguishing a war of choice from a war of necessity.

By contrast, the WaPo article on Senate Republicans stalling the confirmation of Eric Holder as Attorney General has to do with pressuring him not to investigate officials interrogating war on terror suspects, not his views on what constitute the judicious use of military force. One is a question of who to prosecute and what for, whereas the other has to do when we should go to war against or at least strike an enemy.

Its hard to imagine that the folks at the WaPo thought that making these kind of distinctions do not matter.

Republican Pushback on Gitmo

Apparently, President Obama’s series of executive orders to shut down Gitmo and the network of secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency within a year has not gone over well with many Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Representative Steven King has made the case that Obama’s plan amounts to granting terrorists a path to U.S. citizenship and a free pass to strike again. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham still wants to preserve the option of detaining of at least some war on terror suspects or enemy combatants indefinitely.

House Republican Leader John Boehner has even gone so far as to suggest that the well documented abuses at Gitmo are somehow exaggerated. Earlier this week, the Ohio Congressman told the Politico, “I don’t know that there is a terrorist treated better anywhere in the world than what has happened at Guantanamo.”

He also went on to say, “We have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build a facility that has more comforts than a lot of Americans get. … I believe they have been treated fairly.”

That of course does not square with a recent bipartisan Senate Armed Services report which concluded:

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques for use at Guantanamo Bay was a direct cause of detainee abuse there. Secretary Rumsfeld’s December 2, 2002 approval of Mr. Haynes’s recommendation that most of the techniques contained in GTMO’s October 11, 2002 request be authorized, influenced and contributed to the use of abusive techniques, including military working dogs, forced nudity, and stress positions, in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But its important to understand the human dimension of all of this and why this chapter of the Bush administration’s legacy needs to be closed. In the January 15th issue of the New York Review of Books, Georgetown law professor David Cole quotes the U.S. Army log describing the tortuous interrogation of Mohammed al-Qahtani, the alleged 20th 9/11 highjacker, at Gitmo. The descriptions of the brutality are nothing short of harrowing.

Detainee began to cry. Visibly shaken. Very emotional. Detainee cried. Disturbed. Detainee began to cry. Detainee butted SGT R in the eye. Detainee bit the IV tube completely in two. Started moaning. Uncomfortable. Moaning. Turned his head from left to right. Began crying hard spontaneously. Crying and praying. Began to cry. Claimed to have been pressured into making a confession. Falling asleep. Very uncomfortable. On the verge of breaking. Angry. Detainee struggled. Detainee asked for prayer. Very agitated. Yelled. Agitated and violent. Detainee spat. Detainee proclaimed his innocence. Whining. Pushed guard. Dizzy. Headache. Near tears. Forgetting things. Angry. Upset. Complained of dizziness. Tired. Agitated. Yelled for Allah. Started making faces. Near crying. Irritated. Annoyed. Detainee attempted to injure two guards. Became very violent and irate. Attempted to liberate himself. Struggled. Made several attempts to stand up. Screamed….

Thankfully, 53 percent of the American public support using a different system for handling detainees than the military commissions process at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Another 58 percent support an complete ban on using torture as a interrogation technique, according to a recent ABC News poll.

Sure, Obama himself admitted that shutting down Gitmo “is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize” and that many of the so-called enemy combatants are still dangerous enough to pose a threat, but we can still try them in our own civil system or in the military courts-martial system for war crimes.

As Obama noted earlier this week, the U.S. will win this fight and “We are going to win it on our own terms.”

Undoing Gitmo

In just days after the nation welcomed him as its newly inaugurated president, Barack Obama swiftly moved to undo some his predecessor’s legacy in shutting down the prison at Guantanamo Bay and the network of secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency.

President Barack Obama began by signing an executive order instructing military prosecutors to seek a 4 month delay of the military commissions process in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the site of a U.S. naval base and prison camp.  The Obama administration will use the 120-day period to “undertake a thorough review of both the pending cases and the military commissions process” to further the “interests of justice.”

A military judge granted the request for the delay on Wednesday.

In choosing to halt the trials of Gitmo detainees, experts believe President Obama wants to either try detainees in federal courts as criminal defendants or in a courts martial or even create a specialized system where the accused are accorded a a greater measure of due process rights and end the use of abusive interrogation practices.

During Bush’s tenure, many prisoners at Gitmo were held indefinitely without charge, tortured by CIA officials, had secret evidence used against them to justify their detention, and in the vast majority of cases could not challenge the legality of the very incarceration.

A key Bush administration official, Judge Susan J. Crawford, recently told the Washington Post she did not refer certain cases at Gitmo for prosecution because she believes the U.S. tortured certain detainees while interrogating them, rendering their confessions inadmissible. Also, a recent bipartisan Congressional report, found that former Secretary of Defense “Donald Rumsfeld’s authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques for use at Guantanamo Bay was a direct cause of detainee abuse there.”

Even Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a Bush appointee who currently serves in the same post, urged the outgoing president to shut down the prison this summer because it also diminished U.S. standing in world. “I think that despite the fact that in many respects Guantanamo has become a state-of-the-art prison now, early reports of abuses and so on unquestionably were a black eye for the United States,” Gates said this summer.

On November 13, 2001, President Bush signed a military order to create the military commissions. The commissions were designed to try, treat and detain non-U.S. citizens in an effort to prosecute and interrogate so-called war on terror suspects and enemy-combatants, a class of fighters that are not quite conventional soldiers, but were captured on the battlefield by American troops.

In 2006, a Republican controlled Congress passed the Military Commissions Act. The law gave Bush with the authority that the Supreme Court said he could not usurp with an executive order alone to set up his own court system that escaped scrutiny from other branches of government and suspended a prisoner’s right to contest his own imprisonment.

But Barack Obama is now moving with all deliberate haste to change course.

As the 44th president noted in his inaugural address on Tuesday, the framers of our constitution “understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please.  Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.”

So, in many ways these initial steps signify a break with the old regime and yet an embrace of America’s oldest traditions that happens to “reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.”

Dr. Susan Rice Tapped for US Ambassadorship to the UN

News is circulating fast of Dr. Susan Rice becoming emerging as the leading candidate for the next U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Like others, I think this is a good thing. Dr. Rice – not to be confused with current the Secretary of State Dr. Condi Rice – is a rising star in the foreign policy world with expert knowledge on such issues as the challenges posed by weak and failed states, transnational threats from criminal and terrorist networks, the destabilizing effects of climate change and the importance of multilateral institutions.

Dr. Rice deep knowledge on African affairs will also be an indispensable asset to any ambassador to the UN in light of the fact that, according to UN Dispatch, “about 2/3rds of all discussions at the Security Council are about situations in Africa.”

For some, it might seem a  bit odd for the candidate of change to install another veteran of the Clinton administration – she served at the State Department and as a deputy at the National Security Council – at such a high level post. But such criticism is short-sighted. Like many other Clintonites on team Obama such as former National Security Advisor Tony Lake, Dr. Rice joined  the Obama campaign early on and quickly emerged as one of its most effective advocates while also playing a key role in crafting the campaign’s foreign policy.

As some have already noted, if Obama goes ahead with this appointment, its a sign that he is taking U.S.-U.N. relations very seriously, given how Dr. Rice has been within his inner circle of advisors since day one.

By the same token, however, observers such as Steven Benen pointed out that Dr. Rice could be even more effective in the White House as deputy national security adviser creating policy under retired Marine General James L. Jones who reportedly already has the national security adviser gig all locked up.

But Obama could still opt convert the UN ambassadorship to a cabinet level post while empowering her to take the diplomatic lead on the U.S. response to genocide in the Sudan, the failed state in Somalia, and other regional problems in Africa, along with leading U.S. efforts for reforming the UN system. In time, the former Rhodes Scholar could then assume another high profile role with even more responsibility and greater access to the president, such as becoming Secretary of State.

Check out Dr. Susan Rice get her wonk on while on MSNBC.

We Fight on that Lie

Ta-Nehisi Coates sums up John McCain’s posture on Iraq in very stark terms.

There is no sense here that one may have other reasons, short of cowardice, for wanting out of Iraq. But this is like being back on the block. Your man tells you that he got jumped by some cats from across the tracks, so you and him go to war. The beef lasts for months, and then you find out he never got jumped to begin with. But when you pull out, he calls you a chump.

This reminds me of a scene in The Wire when Slim Charles shares some of his wisdom on the Art of War with Avon Barksdale. Charles wanted to retaliate against a rival gangster Marlo Stansfield for the latter’s presumed involvement in murdering a close associate of the Barksdale set.  Even when Barksdale the righleader informs him Marlo had nothing to do with the murder Charles still presses the point. “It don’t matter who did what to who at this point. And now there ain’t no going back. Once you in it you in it. If its a lie, then we fight on that lie. But we gotta fight,” implores Charles.

Check it.

Samantha Power Makes Her Case to the Dems

In a piece that read more like a campaign memo crammed into a book review, Samantha Power made an impassioned plea for Democrats in the New York Review of Books to “seize the advantage the polls show they could have on security issues” by “talking early and often about national security and going on the offensive by strongly presenting the foreign policy plans already devised, whether by members of Congress or by the Obama campaign.”

To Power, the Bush administration’s bungling of foreign policy and its support among Republicans in Congress has contributed to such profound public dissatisfaction with the GOP on security issues that the once unassailable advantage the GOP held over Democrats has virtually been erased, going from double digit leads, including among independents, to single digits.

But the Harvard professor and Pulitzer-prizing winning beauty says this does not mean that Democrats have more or less successfully neutralized that once edge the GOP had over them, and therefore should avoid discussing security issues because Americans have routinely said the war on terror consistently ranks low on their list of priorities. (Also see Pew poll)

To the contrary, Power argues, it presents a once in a generation opportunity to gain a better foothold in the voting public’s imagination about who is better equipped to deal with the worlds increasingly complex security and policy challenges. Power tells us:

Democrats can break with their reputation for squeamishness about national security issues by showing their ease and confidence in dealing with these topics. Instead of changing the subject when national security issues arise, they should look forward to taking part in detailed foreign policy discussions that allow them to show their new strength.

To be sure, Samantha Power does make a compelling argument in her piece. This election does present Democrats a unique opportunity to redefine themselves as the party of responsible and sober thinking on security matters and foreign affairs generally. But it should also be noted that Senator John McCain, despite wishing to be portrayed otherwise, is widely identified as a strong supporter of the more President Bush’s foreign policy, particularly the misadventure in Iraq, and still holds a substantial lead in the polls over Obama on terrorism and who would make a better commander-in-chief. In fact, according to an ABC News poll, only 48 percent of Americans said Obama would make a good C-in-C, whereas a whopping 72 percent said the same of McCain. And even most Democrats polled concede this point.

By the same token, the public seems split on Obama’s versus McCain’s approach to the war in Iraq, 43 percent each according to one Gallup poll. This suggests that the better political strategy here is to focus on how the war in Iraq is emblematic of the larger failures of Bush’s foreign policy, though not necessarily a reason to make national security one of the signature issues of the Obama campaign. Just because it jibes well with the McSame as Bush theme, does not mean Obama should talk about security issues at the expense of kitchen table issues. With 6.5 mortgages projected to fail during the next 3 years and gas at more than $4.00 a gallon, and a spike in unemployment numbers, this election will largely be decided by economic insecurity issues, and deservedly so. Of course, this does not preclude Members of Congress and other surrogates from stumping on security issues for Obama.

Curiously enough, despite Samantha Power’s impassioned appeal for Democrats to take the “offensive” and project “strength” on national security, her recommendations for achieving exactly that are almost entirely made up of soft power concerns. With the two notable exceptions of advocating for a reduction in nuclear weapons and championing long overdue benefits for service men and women, Power rattled off a list that included tackling global warming, promoting cooperation among nations, shutting down Gitmo, investing in the development of rule of international law especially in underdeveloped states. All of which are worthy goals worth promoting, but don’t necessarily project “strength.”

In fact, I was a bit surprised that Power did not emphasize the reduction of the proliferation nuclear arms, or growing the size the army or squelching conflict in failing and collapsing states before they sow the seeds of regional conflagration. All of which are issues she has discussed in detail while evangelizing for Obama before abruptly having to quit the campaign for an inartful comment about Senator Hillary Clinton in the wake of the Ohio and Texas primaries.

Oh how I miss seeing Samantha out there mixing it up with critics.

I’ve Seen this Movie Before

Earlier this week the McCain campaign pounced on Barack Obama’s praise of the recent 5-4 Supreme Court decision in Boumediene v Bush. A narrow majority on the court ruled terrorist suspects at Gitmo have the right to challenge their detention, which is not as radical a notion as many conservatives would have us believe. The writ of habeas corpus has been a time honored principle of our legal tradition since the Magna Carta of 1215.

But the McCain campaign seems to think Obama’s endorsement of the decision provided a good opportunity to illustrate the Illinois Senator’s so-called “September 10th mindset” and how “naive” he is about the gravity of the terrorist threat.

Randy Scheunemann a foreign policy advisor to the McCain campaign reportedly said:

Barack Obama’s belief that we should treat terrorists as nothing more than common criminals demonstrates a stunning and alarming misunderstanding of the threat we face from radical Islamic extremism. Obama holds up the prosecution of the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 as a model for his administration, when in fact this failed approach of treating terrorism simply as a matter of law enforcement rather than a clear and present danger to the United States contributed to the tragedy of September 11th.

I think I have seen this movie before in 2004. It starred President George W. Bush and Senator John F. Kerry. Bush and his cohorts set up a false dichotomy by splitting the national security world with respect to the war on terror into two types. On one side, there were those who championed the use of military force, and perhaps using “harsh techniques of coercion” to obtain information, in order to defeat the “evildoers” and to project power more effectively. On the other side were those who believed in gathering intelligence and an investigatory approach to capturing or killing actual terrorist organizations.

In the 2004 movie, George Bush campaigned as the embodiment of the former and John Kerry tried to dodge being depicted as the latter even as he defended the approach. As a result, George W. Bush impress voters as the candidate who may be strong and wrong, but is better than someone who may be weak and right.

We all know how that turned out.

And now we see that same narrative being invoked to portray Obama as candidate of a September 10th world, given how he is for the rule of law and a smarter approach to containing terrorism. But things have changed since then. Even President Bush in a rare reflective moment confessed to regretting his tough talk on Iraq and other war on terror generally in a 2006 press conference. He also specifically mentioned Abu Ghraib.

Watch it.

Its interesting to see the McCain campaign engage in some of the tough talk that the even George Bush has tried to distance himself from in the past, albeit unconvincingly. Perhaps, the McCain campaign and Republicans generally are still looking for an opening here to wage another Swiftboat like mini-campaign. Of course, Abu Ghraib and Gitmo present different problems, but I do think that the connection between what happens to those who are held indefinitely and larger security concerns in this context is a solid one.

And even if the President chose only to acknowledge the relationship in Abu Ghraib and ignored it in the Gitmo case demonstrates more to the contorted logic that guides the Bushies than it does highlight true differences.

If anything, the principle applies may apply with even greater force to Gitmo detainees, since at least the prisoners of Abu Ghraib are mostly, thought not all, Iraqi fighters captured in Iraq itself as an actual war is being waged. Gitmo, however, contains detainees from various parts of the globe being detained on considerably weaker evidence.

At any rate, Obama refused to concede anything to th McCain campaign this point and forcefully stood his ground on this point. In an interview with ABC News blogger Jake Tapper Obama said, “Habeas Corpus is not designed to free prisoners, what it’s designed to do is make sure that prisoners who are being held, have at least one shot to say, ‘I’m being held wrongly.’”

He also went on to say:

And my position on this, and a whole host of other issues related to battling terrorism has always been clear. And that is that we don’t have to treat these folks as US citizens. We don’t have to treat them in the same way that we would treat a criminal suspect in the U.S., but we should abide by the Geneva conventions. We should at least follow through on the same principles we followed though when dealing with Nazis during Nuremburg, that is not only the right thing to do but it also actually will strengthen our ability over the long term to fight terrorism.

On the merits this is a brilliant point, but I wish Obama made a much tighter connection between how our lack of fidelity to the rule of law only serves to makes us less safe and actively undermines our credibility in the world while fanning the flames of extremism.

Consider what former Navy general counsel Alberto Mora told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week:

[T]here are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq — as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat — are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

Watch it.

Critics of the Supreme Court’s ruling, including John McCain, need to consider the type of compelling, if somewhat indirect, cause and effect relationship Mora just alluded to in his testimony when they claim the courts decision and those who support it will embolden terrorists.

That said, while it is true that McCain has remained, for the most part, against torture, indefinite detention, and has recommended that the Bush administration shut down Guantanamo, he’s certainly not above playing politics with this issue.

Some Republicans and Israel PM Disagree with Bush and McCain on Appeasement

In 2006, former secretary of state James Baker under George H. W. Bush provided an instructive tutorial as to why any presidential administration would want to talk to one’s allies in addition to seemingly implacable foes. “You don’t appease them. Talking to an enemy is not in my view appeasement,” said Baker.

In particular, Baker noted that “at the time when Syria was on the list of countries who were state sponsors of terrorism. On the 16th trip, guess what, lo and behold, Syria changed 25 years of policy and agreed for the first time in the history to sit at the table with Israel, which is what Israel wanted at the time”

Watch it.

In an exchange with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at an defense appropriations hearing yesterday, Senator Arlen Specter publicly criticized President Bush, and by implication John McCain, for saying simply talking to one’s enemies amounts to appeasement.

Watch it.

And now we learn that within the last 24 hours or so that Israel and Syria, who like Iran, has supported such groups as Hezbollah and Hamas, have been in peace talks at least since Monday.

The talks are being mediated by Turkey, a U.S. ally, who refused to offer support for American military forces during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

So perhaps Obama was right to ask what is it that George Bush and John McCain so afraid of?

McCain’s Double Talk on the Middle East and Obama’s Response

In an interview in 2006 with former assistant secretary of state during the Clinton administration James P. Rubin, Senator McCain urged the Bush administration and others to acknowledge new realities in the Middle East, including the ascendancy of Hamas as governing power in the Palestinian territories.

And when asked if American diplomats should engage Hamas, McCain said, “Their the government and sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them one way or another.”

He also noted that while he understood the antipathy that they inspire among so many people because of their use of violence, “its a new reality in the Middle East and I think the lesson is that people want security a decent life and a decent future then they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that.”

(Fatah is the largest political party in the Palestinian territories and an organization founded by Yaser Arafat and other Palestinian nationalists. Among Western nations, its was and still is the preferred party to negotiate with when compared to Hamas and Islamic Jihad.)

Watch it.

This of course sounds like a very different tune than what McCain has been singing these past few days and weeks where he has more than suggested that Obama would appease Hamas, Iran and Syria by engaging them diplomatically.

But it does not stop there. Max Bergmann at the Huffington Post also notes that McCain defended then-Secretary of State Colin Powell’s trip to Syria in 2003, despite the over hyped criticism from the right, and said, “Colin Powell is going to look Bashar aside in the eye and say, look, you know. You better clean up your act here. It’s a new day in the Middle East. And I think it’s entirely appropriate to do that.”

He also went on to say “I think it’s very appropriate that Colin Powell is going to Syria. I think we should put diplomatic and other pressures on them” even though he conceded that Syria was “sponsoring and harboring terrorists.”

Sidenote: Of course, none of this really serves to illuminate our foreign policy debate, and I do feel kinda guilty for participating in some of this gotcha criticism, but hopefully we can appreciate the fact that this is complicated stuff and that name calling only impoverishes our understanding of America’s place in the world.

By the same token, I doubt that once this dust up is over we will have no real debate as to whether or not U.S. has over invested itself in Israel and the associated cost of doing so. The same can be said about what the best containment strategy is with respect to Iran or how to improve our relationship with the Muslim world, and what intelligence reforms are needed to prevent future attacks.

I guess election season tends not to breed sober thinking.

Update: Watch Senator Obama’s response to President Bush’s and McCain’s attacks.

I especially like the fact that Obama tried to contextualize his criticism of President Bush’s counterproductive policies in the Middle East while at the same time putting the onus back on McCain to distance himself from Dubya.