Moderation v. Extremism--Continued

It's true, as Brooks writes, that some of Cheney's overreach was a result of understandable panic after the 9/11 attacks.
-
Well, maybe, just as it's understandable, in the sense of being comprehensible, why Germans resented Jews in the 1930s. But that's no excuse.
-
We elect leaders to respond like statesmen to difficulty and tragedy (and to prevent it in the first place). Cheney was, and is, a panicked little boy hiding behind a bully's veneer.

abetted by the President's lack of interest or mortal dimness.
.
Joe,
.
Don't you mean "MORAL dimness"? Because what happened is most definitely a moral failure on his part.

Opinion shaping, crossing the political spectrum from the right to the far right.

Kudos for this entry.
.
Viewing the world through the particular lens I do means that I'm still very concerned about the 'fifth" category of prisoner that Obama referenced in his speech. After all, by definition, if someone can't be tried for any crimes but can't be released because they are dangerous then they are in essence, being held for their thoughts.
.
The distopian possibilities are endless.
.
You also mention a very important item that everyone seems to be forgetting. Many of the worst BushCo abuses were gradually rolled back as time went on. I am curious as to how tightly the timeline between our discontinuing the waterboarding and Jack Goldsmith's rescinding of the Yoo memo's correspond. It strikes me as an underexplored connection.
.
In short, I'm very concerned that Obama is continuing a very specific policy that is legally indefensible, I'm very curious how he's going to go about creating a legal framework for it, and I see the potential for future abuse as a BIG problem. But I agree wholeheartedly that to use these concernes for a basis to claim that Obama is no different than Bush is to descend into utter idiocy.

RE: Cheney –

Q: What do you call a person whose primary motivator is fear?

A: A coward.
.
afguy: Either one works. Bush was certainly morally dim in extremis, but "mortal" in the sense of "fatally injuring" would apply to his cluelessness as well.

Cheney's twisted belief that the Constitution confers on the President near-dictatorial powers, especially in a time of war.
.
Actually, having been around during Watergate, I think Cheney believed that the President had those powers ALL OF THE TIME. The war was just a convenient rationale for trying to recover those that (in his opinion) had been improperly taken away as a result of Watergate.
.
Cheney haa always had the same beliefs that Nixon was unwise enough to state explicitly in his interview with David Frost.

Either one works. Bush was certainly morally dim in extremis, but "mortal" in the sense of "fatally injuring" would apply to his cluelessness as well.
.
FlownOver,
.
Point taken. Thanks.

I try to cut Obama some slack by remembering that while I know that Cheney and Bush f*cked things up, I don't know just how badly they f*cked things up. I'd like to see both of them, and their henchmen, dangling from gallows (and I mean that literally), but Obama is probably doing a better job than I would of actually fixing the country.
Still, it's frustrating to see justice not done. It's also a little embarrassing
to find a smarmy creep like David Brooks sounding sensible (although I agree with Elvis that the "understandable panic" excuse is BS).

PD:
.
I've ben conflicted about this new (or, rather, continued) approach, but there's this: We convict and confine people for conspiracy to do harm rather than waiting until after it's done – if we have sufficient proof of a single individual's intent to do harm should we be precluded from acting, solely because there is no agreement with another to take the harmful action? The proof must be something more than the vision of some precog in a sensory dep tank, but if someone persists in making threats to do harm should we be prohibited from letting him carry out an otherwise-credible threat?
.
And yes, I know, in the wrong hands there's a massive potential for abuse of such a power. Still, you just don't let a guy loose if he's vowing to blow up a hospital and has access to the means to do it.
.
I'm pretty sure the ACLU will want my card back. Also.

Oops. "Make that "prohibited from preventing…"
.
It's early yet, and the caffeine is just kicking in.

@FO,
I keep thinking that one of the easier ways out of the dilema would be to go ahead and declare war. The fact that we rely on AUMF's which don't adequately specify who our enemies might be or what a cessation of hostilities might look like is a big reason why this legal limbo exists.
War cheerleaders keep comparing Guantanomo detainees to spies in WWII but the fact of the matter is that 'Nation States' and uniforms are themselves artificial constructs and that the actual organizion of the political world is changing faster than our traditions can keep up with.
Add to that all the irrationality around phrases like "sworn enemies" and the degree to which other people's presumed mental states are used to justify their wholesale slaughter and it starts to become clear just what a maze through a minefield that Obama has indeed inherited.

Leftist loon Klein asserts: "... doing far too much, too brutally--in a way that only creates more terrorists--a path that Cheney pursued to our great national detriment."

-

"[C]reates more terrorists"? Will Klein and Time magazine be providing any evidence to support that allegation? The numbers of alleged "create[d]" "terrorists"? The names and locations of the alleged "create[d]" "terrorists"? Does anyone at Time magazine know what evidence is? The clueless, feminized, anti-military community organizer made the same boilerplate allegation yesterday in his latest "America Sucks and We Must Appease the Terrorists" speech.

it is easy to forget that the war on terror is not against the Americans only. If only some people can pull the cloud of egos off their face and work things out for the security of everybody.
oh i forgot thats being a socialist. lmao

re: Paul Dirks Says:
Friday, May 22, 2009 at 10:31 am

I keep thinking that one of the easier ways out of the dilema would be to go ahead and declare war.

Yeah, but, against whom would we be declaring war ? That debate, well, actually more at discussion, since RWers generally don't debate, was carried out early on in our little adventures post-9/11. Declaring war against an idea, or 'terrorism', is simply wingnutty.

Declaring war against an idea, or 'terrorism', is simply wingnutty.
.
Which is why having collected POW's in said 'wingnutty' AKA non-existent war is now a huge problem.

Let's all sit around and talk about how bad we hate Bush and Cheney. The rest of the world is out looking for jobs, so let's sit in our offices and run our gobs the live-long day while re-hashing the same garbage over and over.

I had a 12 oz authoritarian steak for dinner last night. It was indeed profound. So on that matter Cheney's right.

No, jacksonsheppard, I have a better idea-- let's talk about people talking about foreign policy! Wheee!

...and just like that, the high sheriffs fix the typo. I kinda liked it the old way.

Excellent job, JK. Two additional points:

Nearly simultaneously with accusing everyone else of hypocrisy by using language Cheney disagrees with, he also insists on calling torture 'enhanced interrogation techniques.' In other words, euphemisms are OK if they serve the fascist neocon cause, otherwise, they help the terrorists win.

Second, everyone needs to understand exactly what drove Cheney insane. 9-11 WAS ALL HIS FAULT. Dealing with A-Q and OBL et al was explicitly delegated to him by Bush in early '01, and Cheney put it off, focusing instead on his still-secret energy meetings, despite the 'hair on fire' warnings from Tenet and Clarke leading to the presidential briefing of August 6. Granted the buck stops with C Plus Augustus, still, if you delegate a thing to the #2 executive, and they do nothing and it blows up, the strongest argument is that the #2 guy is responsible. Cheney should have resigned on 9-12, period. The record on this is crystal clear and it is beyond opinion.

I once saw Barak Obama jump through a brick wall. Honestly, didn't even wrinkle his Dockers. Just jumped through the thing like hot butter...if you were to build a wall of hot butter that is. God, that would be difficult to build, a wall of hot butter.

But for truly legal arguments about detention and applicable legal processes (which are best left to Constitutional lawyers), the basic Obama v Cheney debate is only a continuation of the age-old scuffle over the nature of man. Obama and his acolytes believe that mans' benign nature will triumph when his surroundings are made pleasant. Cheney and many older Americans hold a less optimistic view of human potential.

Like President Obama, many of those who blame George Bush and Gitmo for our standing in the world also blame white Anglo-Saxon protestant cartography, country clubs and widespread caloric adequacy in the U.S. for all human misery, including Islamist rage. As Professor Churchill and Rev. Wright said even more colorfully than has the President, Caucasians deserve the chickens that are coming home to roost.

Muslim fanatics who killed thousands of Americans and their employees across the world for the 30 years prior to September 11, 2001 did not do so because we invaded Iraq or because Gitmo held detainees. Terrorists, common criminals (and elected officials) who have done harm to our lives and property did so (and will do so again) because they chose to do so rather than because George Bush and Gitmo weren't as nice as is Barack Obama and....Gitmo?

Joe Klein:
.
It's true, as Brooks writes, that some of Cheney's overreach was a result of understandable panic after the 9/11 attacks.
.
Understandable because that's why the American people elect tough, hard-nosed, strong on national security leadership --so that such iron-jawed leaders panic when we're attacked?
.
Don't you really mean that it's "understandable" because you, Brooks, Ignatius and the rest of the Village all simultaneously wet your pants?
.
Don't you really mean to say that it's understandable because you people panicked...while the rest of us who live in Manhattan got up, got coffee from the Egyptian (Muslim) guys in our delis as usual, and then got to work?
.
You may remember a time of "understandable panic", Joe Klein, because you weren't amongst the folks like us lower Manhattanites who were saying hello to each other on the street, looking warily at the sky and going about our business with quiet resolve. You may remember pervasive cowardice amongst your set of acquaintances, but I remember a relatively brief time of shock, and then a substantial time of determined normality, when folks like us somehow got it into our heads that situations like these required ordinary people to be patient, care about our neighbor, and try our best to do our duty to be as brave as we can be.
.
Despite Brooks' desperate desires, it's simply not "true" that Cheney's post-9/11 bed-wetting is "understandable", except in the sense that it's comprehensible that, when the American people elect cowardly and corrupt fools to run their government, that's what kind of behavior we can expect. It's also not "true", in as much as Brooks assumes a strangely un-conservative belief in government bureaucrat Cheney's immaculate good faith, and doesn't seem to consider the obviously plausible notion that "Cheney's overreach" might be truly understandable in terms of rank ideology and opportunism.
.
To examine such theories questioning the motives of elite leadership might undermine confidence in the system of leadership as a whole, though, right? Is that why it's far, far better to admit that, while the citizens of New York put on their Battle of Britain faces, our elites in government and political media proved themselves to be shamefully acquiescent in Cheney's assumption of illegal and dictatorial authority as "a result of understandable panic after the 9/11 attacks", Joe Klein?

When did George Will start commenting here?

It has never been the case that "Obama and his acolytes believe that mans' benign nature will triumph when his surroundings are made pleasant." Obama's just savvy enough to realize there's no uniformity to human nature – we need to encourage the better behavior and deter the worse. It's Bush and his misanthropic brain trust that foolishly – and criminally – tried to impose a simplistic "Kick 'em in the nads" approach to nearly every issue.

I don't if I should be embarrassed about not following the links before commenting or congratulating myself for commenting on-topic when I didn't know what the topic was.....

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=1e733cac-c273-48e5-9140-80443ed1f5e2&p=1