A Distasteful Debate

The ongoing debate between liberals and conservatives about how best to protect the country against acts of terrorism is very distasteful to me.   I would like to think this subject is so important that those with different political perspectives could find common ground and could work together to do what is best for the country.    But it is becoming increasingly clear that it is naive to expect politicians to work together even when the goal is to protect the country and save lives.    Instead, politicians cannot resist the opportunity to take jabs at each other and to use every issue, including the subject of national security, to try to score points against their political opponents.   

The debate about how to protect the country against acts of terrorism was in full display yesterday when both President Barak Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney delivered major speeches on the subject.   I have read the full text of both speeches and encourage you to do so.   You can easily find the full text of both speeches by doing a Google search on the internet.   Reading the speeches in their entirety is much more instructive than listing to sound bites on television or the radio or reading excerpts in the newspaper. 

The two speeches demonstrate clearly that grace and courtesy are no longer objectives for either side when it comes to political disagreements.    Perhaps they never were.   Former Vice President Cheney’s speech clearly violates what I used to think was an unwritten rule that it was inappropriate for former Presidents and Vice Presidents to criticize a sitting President.  Of course, former Vice President Cheney was not the first one to violate this rule.   The protocol against criticizing the sitting President was violated on numerous occasions during the eight years of the Bush Administration by former President Jimmy Carter, former President Bill Clinton, and former Vice President Al Gore.   Do you remember Al Gore screaming at the top of his lungs, “He betrayed this country?”    The protocol died on that day if not before. 

As for President Obama, his speech demonstrates his blatant hypocrisy and his continuing ability to talk out of both sides of his mouth at the same time.   President Obama continues to say he wants to look forward rather than backward.  He said again yesterday he does not want to spend his time “relitigating the policies of the last eight years,” but he then proceeded to criticize virtually every major policy implemented by the Bush Administration to protect the country against terrorism.  It seems that President Obama cannot open his mouth without looking backward and indicting his predecessor.   He is obsessed with disdain for everything that President Bush did.   Yesterday’s speech was full of harsh criticisms of the tactics and techniques used by the Bush Administration to keep the country safe.    President Obama gives no credit to the Bush Administration for actually keeping the country safe.   Even though I do not like the fact that former Vice President Cheney is being so openly critical of the current Administration, I cannot blame him for wanting to defend his record and the record of the Bush Administration in the face of unrelenting criticism from the current President.  

If you read the two speeches, there is only one thing on which President Obama and former Vice President Cheney seem to agree.  They both agree the country still faces a significant threat from terrorists who want to kill Americans.   President Obama said, “We know that al Qaeda is actively planning to attack us again.  We know that this threat will be with us for a long time, and that we must use all elements of our power to defeat it.”   He also said, “Right now, in distant training camps and in crowded cities, there are people plotting to take American lives.  That will be the case a year from now, five years from now, and—in all probability—10 years from now.”   Former Vice President Cheney said, “We understand the pressures that confront a president and his advisers.   Above all, we know what is at stake.   And though administrations and policies have changed, the stakes for American have not changed.”     These comments from two people who have both received highly classified security briefings and who disagree on almost everything imaginable should be chilling to all of us, especially those with short memories who have long forgotten September 11, 2001 and the following days and weeks. 

During last year’s campaign, President Obama promised that, if elected, he would bring a new tone to Washington, D.C.    There was no evidence of a new tone in his speech yesterday.   He maintains that President Bush’s policies “weakened our national security,” “served as a recruitment tool for terrorists,” and “increased the will of our enemies to fight us.”   He said President Bush “went off course,” “made decisions based on fear rather than foresight,” “trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions,” and “set back the moral authority that is America’s strongest currency in the world.”   These are only some of President Obama’s accusations against his predecessor.   After making these accusations, President Obama, without realizing the contradiction, observed with remorse that there is a “tendency in Washington to spend our time pointing fingers at one another,” and he then repeated his assertion that an “extended relitigation of the last eight years” will “distract us from focusing our time, our efforts, and our politics on the challenges of the future.”   It takes a smooth politician to criticize what he himself is doing while he is doing it.      

All of us are products of our life experiences.    This is clearly evident in former Vice President Cheney’s speech, which serves as a vivid reminder of the circumstances that existed when the Bush Administration adopted the policies that President Obama is now criticizing.   The former Vice President recalled his personal experience on the morning of 9/11, when he was rushed into a fortified White House command post while the nation was under attack.   With respect to the days following 9/11, former Vice President Cheney said, “We could count on almost universal support back then, because everyone understood the environment we were in.  We’d just been hit by a foreign enemy, leaving 3,000 Americans dead, more than we lost at Pearl Harbor.  In Manhattan, we were staring at 16 acres of ashes.  The Pentagon took a direct hit, and the Capitol or the White House were spared only by the Americans on Flight 93, who died bravely and defiantly.   Everyone expected a follow-on attack, and our job was to stop it.  We didn’t know what was coming next, but everything we did know in the autumn of 2001 looked bad. … And foremost on our minds was the prospect of the very worst coming to pass—a 9/11 with nuclear weapons.”  

The former Vice President is not the least bit apologetic about the policies implemented by the Bush Administration.   In his speech, President Obama said the enhanced interrogation techniques that have been so widely criticized were not effective and did not produce useful information.   Former Vice President Cheney says these techniques were “used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed” and were “legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do.”      He added that, “only detainees of the highest intelligence were ever subjected to enhanced interrogation.  You’ve heard endlessly about waterboarding.  It happened to three terrorists.  One of them was Khalid Sheikh Muhammed—the mastermind of 9/11, who has also boasted about beheading Daniel Pearl.   …  We didn’t know about al Qaeda’s plans, but Khalid Sheikh Muhammed and a few others did know.  And with many thousands of innocent lives potentially in the balance, we didn’t think it made sense to let the terrorists answer questions in their own good time, if they answered them at all.” 

Former Vice President Cheney flatly rejects the argument that enhanced interrogation techniques served as a “recruitment tool” for terrorists.  He said this argument “excuses the violent and blames America for the evil that others do.  It’s another version of that same old refrain from the Left, ‘We brought it on ourselves.’”   He also rejected the view that America had lost its moral values when he said “no moral value held dear by the American people obliges public servants ever to sacrifice innocent lives to spare a captured terrorist from unpleasant things.  And when an entire population is targeted by a terror network, nothing is more consistent with American values than to stop them.” 

In the final analysis, former Vice President Cheney supports the policies of the Bush Administration—and is proud of them—because they worked.   “After the most lethal and devastating terrorist attack ever, seven and a half years without a repeat is not a record to be rebuked and scorned, much less criminalized.  It is a record to be continued until the danger has passed.”     President Obama thinks the same policies weakened our national security and made the country less safe. 

The speeches yesterday covered in detail many aspects of the Bush Administration’s policies relating to the war on terror, including the enhanced interrogation techniques, the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, and the question of how to deal with the cases pending against the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.     There may never be a way to know conclusively who is right and who is wrong with respect to the effectiveness and usefulness of some of the Bush Administration’s policies.    With respect to at least one policy, however, the American people deserve more information than President Obama, who frequently talks about the importance of transparency, is willing to let them have.   Although President Obama has previously declassified and released the legal memos written by attorneys for the Bush Administration that provided the legal justification for the enhanced interrogation techniques, he has refused to release other documents that former Vice President Cheney says will show the enhanced interrogation techniques provided valuable information and saved lives.    It seems to me that the most damaging and sensitive information—the memos outlining the techniques that were used—has already been released.    Having released the memos outlining the interrogation techniques, I can only think of one reason why President Obama is refusing to release the documents showing whether the techniques produced valuable information.   These documents could show that former Vice President Cheney is right and that President Obama is wrong.   

I am disgusted by the never-ending debates and the continuing bitterness between those on the left and those on the right and between those who supported the Bush Administration and those who now support the Obama Administration.    Each side instinctively objects to and criticizes everything the other side says or does.     Even though I don’t like it, maybe these debates are useful.     If we are willing to pay attention, we will see a clear difference in philosophy, and we may ultimately realize which philosophy best protects the country and its citizens.     Perhaps the policies of the Bush Administration went too far in some respects, but we know they kept us safe.   We can only hope and pray that the policies of the Obama Administration, although different, will be just as effective in providing for our safety and security.   God help us if they are not.