by Tina Grazier (with a little help from my friends at NRO)
President Obama delivered his speech, “Cleaning Up…a Mess” with his usual competence and smooth, lofty charm. These traits are more than enough to bedazzle his followers but others found his speech to be self-serving, contradicting and defensive. I certainly did, starting with his title. I’m immediately compelled to ask, does he think he’s the first president in our history to enter the White House with unfinished business awaiting him at his desk? Does he think he will be able to get away with blaming the former administration for the very full plate of his presidency indefinitely? Does he honestly believe he can get away with chastising others for finger pointing while he engages in extreme finger pointing himself? “Cleaning up the mess” is part of his job. It’s reasonable to assume he knew exactly what he was getting into when he chose to run for the office. An adult would simply roll up his sleeves, get to work, and graciously stand on the shoulders of those who have come before him. Not so this president.
From his choice of venue to his grand words about the moral underpinnings of our founding documents, Obama cloaked himself in patriotism and sought to sound authoritatively presidential. Although I was happy to see him acknowledge our founding documents and underscore the freedom and morality they represent it was a bit disconcerting to see him use them as a weapon with which bludgeon his predecessor:
** From Europe to the Pacific, we have been a nation that has shut down torture chambers and replaced tyranny with the rule of law. That is who we are. And where terrorists offer only the injustice of disorder and destruction, America must demonstrate that our values and institutions are more resilient than a hateful ideology. *** After 9/11, we knew that we had entered a new era — that enemies who did not abide by any law of war would present new challenges to our application of the law, that our government would need new tools to protect the American people, and that these tools would have to allow us to prevent attacks instead of simply prosecuting those who try to carry them out. *** …Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions. **
That is an absolute mischaracterization of the care that was taken by the Bush Administration to adhere not only to our laws but also to international law. Decisions were not made in haste but with careful deliberation. As with any endeavor of this size and scope miscalculations and missteps occurred along the way but in the end America was kept safe and a great deal was accomplished to bring democracy to the Middle East. The best evidence of the overall successes of the Bush approach is Obama’s choice to retain key personnel and strategies with only minor changes. He has retained the right to use extreme rendition under certain circumstances. He has discovered that closing Guantanamo is not as simple as he once thought. He has determined that some military tribunals will be necessary. He is literally standing on Bushes shoulders and calling upon that famous audacity of his to “point fingers” at the former president at the same time. The campaign rhetoric continues:
For the first time since 2002, we are providing the necessary resources and strategic direction to take the fight to the extremists who attacked us on 9/11 in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We are investing in the 21st-century military and intelligence capabilities that will allow us to stay one step ahead of a nimble enemy. We have re-energized a global nonproliferation regime to deny the world’s most dangerous people access to the world’s deadliest weapons, and launched an effort to secure all loose nuclear materials within four years. We are better protecting our border, and increasing our preparedness for any future attack or natural disaster. We are building new partnerships around the world to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida and its affiliates. And we have renewed American diplomacy so that we once again have the strength and standing to truly lead the world.
If Obama wanted to pursue a different strategy going forward he was free to do that but to pretend that his strategy is totally different from his predecessors, or that the Bush policies were ineffective, is disingenuous, insulting and inaccurate as explained by the very smart editors at National Review:
“The Buck Stops Elsewhere,” by the Editors – NRO
** In point of fact, the Bush administration’s counterterrorism campaign was anything but ad hoc. It was extraordinarily effective, and it is entirely sustainable — which President Obama has shown by sustaining its major elements… *** Bush’s counterterrorism work can be regarded as ineffective only from the standpoint of the ACLU, whose metric is the quantum of due process accorded to terrorists who recognize no law or treaty. From a sensible point of view, the measure of success is the incidence of terrorist attacks — and we have not had one in eight years. By adopting a war-fighting paradigm (the paradigm on which President Obama must rely, lest his assassinations in Pakistan be deemed a violation of international law), President Bush expanded geometrically our intelligence on the enemy, decimated and dislocated the top tiers of al-Qaeda’s hierarchy, and killed and captured thousands of jihadists. At the same time, enforcing laws enacted in 1996 to enable the government to disrupt terrorist cells before their plots could come to fruition, the Bush Justice Department assembled an impressive string of convictions for terrorist conspiracy and financing. **
Words like the following are petty, unhelpful, and pure fiction:
** Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions. And I believe that those decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people. But I also believe that — too often — our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight, and all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions. Instead of strategically applying our power and our principles, we too often set those principles aside as luxuries that we could no longer afford.**
We deserve more from our president than tired (inaccurate) campaign rhetoric. If he’s going to presume to know the motivations of his predecessors he should at least offer some evidence that what he says is valid. For instance, I saw no evidence that the Bush administration was motivated by fear. Instead, I saw an administration motivated by a strong desire to ensure that another 9/11 didn’t befall us and determined that the American people would go forward with strength and steadfast resolve. In his speech following the 9/11 attacks he quoted from the 23rd Psalm “…and yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” This was not only an assurance to the American people but spoke words of great power and determination directly to the enemy.
Attempts to disparage the former president and alter history make Obama appear small, weak, and ineffective. Instead of inspiring confidence he invites disdain. A smug attitude may garner favor from his Bush hating base but it will wear thin with others, in particular the allies who worked closely with Bush for eight years and know him to be a man of honor. Smug superiority will not be taken as a strength by enemies who were thwarted and defeated during the Bush years.
Obama goes on to make similar accusations about the legal/moral underpinnings of Bush policies:
** There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America’s strongest currency in the world. Instead of building a durable framework for the struggle against al-Qaida that drew upon our deeply held values and traditions, our government was defending positions that undermined the rule of law. Indeed, part of the rationale for establishing Guantanamo in the first place was the misplaced notion that a prison there would be beyond the law — a proposition that the Supreme Court soundly rejected. **
This is disingenuous in spirit and part of it a downright lie. The decision to establish Guantanamo was made with the intention of legally and humanely handling the enemy combatants we captured during the going war. If a “durable framework” was needed it was for a situation not before faced by any nation in the world. A great deal of legal investigation went into the decision and none of the decisions were intended to establish something “beyond the law…that is a lie. To this day there are many Constitutional lawyers and scholars that disagree with both the accusations being leveled at the president and at least part of the Supreme Courts rulings. But beyond these differences of opinion is the fact that following the Supreme Court decisions the Bush administration acted immediately to work with Congress to address the courts concerns. To infer that the Bush administration was careless in terms of legal or ethical values is strictly a matter of opinion (and politics).
Quoting once again from the piece by the editors of NRO:
** True to his September 10 philosophy, President Obama declared on Thursday that the civilian courts were “tough enough” to convict terrorists. That has never been the question. The problems are that the criminal-justice system cannot apprehend many terrorists (only 29 terrorists, mostly low-level, were prosecuted during the eight years of attacks leading up to 9/11), and that the few trials it manages become intelligence troves for the many thousands of terrorists remaining at large. Bush’s counterterrorism policies, particularly as supplemented by Congress in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the above-mentioned Military Commissions Act of 2006, afforded captured alien combatants an unprecedented degree of due process — far beyond that accorded at the Nuremberg Tribunals that President Obama is fond of citing as a testament to the “rule of law.” This due process includes a right of appeal to the civilian federal courts. (which was expanded in 2008 by the Supreme Court’s wrongheaded Boumediene decision). *** So it was strange to hear President Obama on Thursday, castigating the military-commission system that he has chosen to revive with only cosmetic changes. It is true, as the president points out, that the commission system has convicted only three terrorists of war crimes, but this is in no small part because the trials have been endlessly delayed by legal maneuvering from some of the very lawyers who now hold important positions in Obama’s administration. Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, for example, represented Osama bin Laden’s confidant Salim Hamdan in the Supreme Court case that derailed the commissions until Congress reversed the Court. Harold Koh, the attorney Obama has nominated to be State Department legal adviser, filed an amicus brief in behalf of the detainees in the same case. Attorney General Eric Holder’s old firm has represented at least 18 enemy combatants. Because of the thick web of relationships between terrorism suspects, Holder, and other like-minded lawyers he has recruited, the Justice Department has been forced to set up elaborate protocols for recusing prosecutors, including the attorney general himself, from various national-security cases. *** And it was President Obama himself who delayed commissions for 21 terrorists back in January — some of whose trials were imminent. But instead of reinstating those proceedings, the president is delaying them still further, while his administration makes trivial procedural tweaks that will allow him to pretend his policies constitute a real departure from those of his predecessor. ** (all above emphasis mine)
Citing evidence of the errors in Obama’s speech becomes itself an exercise in “cleaning up a mess.” The spin and glitter of his razzle dazzle routine is tedious…I barely scratched the surface.
So have at it pilgrims. Next up…the Cheney speech.