Category: National Security

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Barack Obama Foreign Policy Iran National Security Politics Videos

Biden Says Talks With Iran To Go Forward

[digg-reddit-me]

On this morning’s Meet the Press, Joe Biden said that the Obama administration has made the decision to go forward with talks – despite the administration’s clear doubts about the fairness of the election.

I thought Biden made this point particularly well:

[T]alks with Iran are not a reward for good behavior. They’re only a consequence if the president makes the judgment it’s in the best interest of the United States of America, our national security interests, to talk with the Iranian regime. Our interests are the same before the election as after the election, and that is we want them to cease and desist from seeking a nuclear weapon and having one in its possession, and secondly to stop supporting terror.

The Obama administration’s approach to these elections has been – in my opinion as an informed amateur – nearly flawless. They have made clear that they are prepared to talk with Iran – regardless of how the elections went, rather than giving the Iranian people or leadership an ultimatum; they have declined to endorse a side in the election, letting the Iranian people decide themselves; they have been clear about their principles, but circumspect in their goals; and they have extended a clear hand in friendship – which most reports suggest the Iranian people desperately want to grasp. By refusing to give our rhetorical support to the opposition, the Obama administration is frustrating the Iranian regime’s desire to paint this uprising as an American creation – as Ayotollah Khamenei  preemptively sought to blame unrest after the election on “the enemies [of Iran who] may want to spoil the sweetness of this event … with some kind of ill-intentioned provocations.”

The Obama administration’s approach has been praised by Iranian human rights groups, as one was quoted in the Huffington Post:

The Obama administration’s approach to the election — keeping its comments low-key and not signaling support for any candidate — was exactly the right approach. While tempting, empty and self-serving rhetorical support for Iranians struggling for more freedoms serves only to aid their opponents. History has made Iran wary of foreign meddling, and American policymakers in particular must be sensitive to giving hardliners any pretense to call reform-minded Iranians foreign agents. That’s why Iran’s most prominent reformers, including Nobel-laureate Shirin Ebadi, have said the best thing the U.S. can do is step back and let Iran’s indigenous human rights movement progress on its own, without overt involvement from the U.S-however well intentioned.

As Andrew Sullivan explained:

This is not about us. It’s about them. And any interference would only backfire to the regime’s advantage.

The Obama administration realizes what Bush never did – that democracy cannot be imposed by force or ultimatum; that it must be taken by the people; that fine words extolling democracy are not enough – but a hand extended in friendship can destabilize a regime propped up by its demonization of us.

And so, the outreach to Iran and its people goes on.

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On this morning’s <em>Meet the Press</em>, Joe Biden said that the Obama administration has made the decision to go forward with talks – despite <a href=”http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/31353317#31353317″>the administration’s clear doubts about the fairness of the election</a>.

I thought Biden made this point particularly well:
<blockquote>[T]alks with Iran are not a reward for good behavior. They’re only a consequence if the president makes the judgment it’s in the best interest of the United States of America, our national security interests, to talk with the Iranian regime.  Our interests are the same before the election as after the election, and that is we want them to cease and desist from seeking a nuclear weapon and having one in its possession, and secondly to stop supporting terror.</blockquote>

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Barack Obama Foreign Policy Iran National Security

Iran’s Green “Revolution”

There have been several positive indicators in the Middle East and surrounding regions since Obama’s Cairo speech – from the survival of the pro-Western government in Lebanon to the growing opposition of ordinary Pakistanis to the Taliban. It seems in both places – as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan – that the best strategy taken so far has been George W. Bush’s unintentional one of letting Al Qaeda win – and then stepping in to clean up after the fact once people have become disillusioned. But so far, the issue that has gotten the most attention has been Iran’s election.

Still, I’m not quite sure what to make of Iran’s election tomorrow. International newspapers seem to be hyping Mir Hossein Mousavi as Iran’s answer to Barack Obama. He is – it seems – an individual who has come to personify “change” and engagement with the world at large standing against a radical, polarizing, religious right-winger. At the same time Mousavi has close relations with the establishment of Iran – which allowed him to run. But he, like Obama, is not comfortable being a populist. His main opponent, Ahmadinejad, is. As Cameron Abadi described Mousavi’s defects in the Foreign Policy:

He talks only in generalities about his plans, his emphasis on competence and “scientific management.” He’s made promises to loosen restriction on personal freedom, but his ire is more drawn by Ahmadinejad’s “dictatorial” flouting of the checks and balances of the Islamic Republic’s constitution. Mousavi promises change, but no one would mistake him for Barack Obama. He might not even qualify as a Michael Dukakis.

But somehow this establishment technocrat continues to routinely elicit rock-star receptions across the country. In the run-up to the election, much of grayish Tehran has been draped in green, the official color of the Mousavi campaign. The police and khaki-clad national guards have been forced to watch every day as Tehran’s youth — Iran’s baby boom generation of the 1980s — assemble in giddy pandemonium, distributing green bracelets and banners of protest against Ahmadinejad’s presidency, proselytizing to undecided pedestrians and whenever in doubt shouting taunting cries of “Ahmadi, bye-bye!” At night, the chorus of chants and laughter and hastily written campaign songs mingle with the din of car horns…

“We’ve never seen this before,” she said with a tremble. “This is our revolution.” [my emphasis]

Other reports have focused on Ahmadinejad’s large and boisterous crowds – and the excitment propelling him. Some have likened Ahmadinejad’s place in Iranian politics to Sarah Palin’s.

One recurrent theme in the reports on the Iranian election is that economic rather than foreign policy issues will determine the result. The downturn in Iran’s economic fortunes has brought to the forefront festering social issues such as the “marriage crisis” in which many Iranian men are being “priced out” of the marriage market and the ambiguous role of women in Iranian society (as they are more educated – 60% of university students are women – yet much more likely to be umemployed – as only 15% of the workforce is female.)

It’s not clear which way this election will go – and even if Mousavi wins in a landslide, it will not change the power structure in Iran significantly – as the power is concentrated in Khamenei’s hands.

But a hopeful sign is not something to be dismissed – and the desire for change moderately expressed can bring about a better world than most revolutions.

[Image by Shahram Sharif licensed under Creative Commons.]

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Barack Obama Law National Security Politics The War on Terrorism

Closed-Door Hearings

Last week, at a closed-door Intelligence Committee hearing, Republican members claim they were told “the truth that enhanced interrogation of detainees is effective.” The members did not offer details as to what they learned – but by speaking about this, they clearly violated the closed-door policy. As Democrat Oversight and Investigations Chairwoman Jan Schakowsky said:

“I am absolutely shocked that members of the Intelligence committee who attended a closed-door hearing … then walked out that hearing — early, by the way — and characterized anything that happened in that hearing. My understanding is that’s a violation of the rules. It may be more than that.”

This reminds me of the recent controversies regarding Nancy Pelosi and the allegations of abuse of the Gang of Eight process. Wikipedia describes it:

[T]he President may elect to report instead to the Gang of Eight when he feels “it is essential to limit access” to information about a covert action.

They are all sworn to secrecy and there is no vote required.

In each of these circumstances, the power of legislators to do their job – and check the executive branch – is curtailed by secrecy. This is a situation crying for judicial oversight – or for political courage. Either immunity could be offered for Congressmen and -women – allowing them immunity from prosecution for what they reveal of classified information; or perhaps, they could create some judicial process to force classified information to be revealed.

This would help counteract the increasing trend to classify every document possible.

Categories
Barack Obama Foreign Policy National Security Politics The War on Terrorism

The Cairo Rapprochement

Obama’s Cairo speech is an excellent beginning of a rapprochement with Muslims around the world.  Here’s a few brief comments on a few passages in the speech:

So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed.

Very respectful tone here. But, to my mind, theologically problematic. Obama is no theologian – but if he is a Christian, then does that not mean he rejects that Islam was revealed? It’s one thing to speak in a respectful tones about another religion – but another to accept that religion’s premises that supersede your own as true.

America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire. The United States has been one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known. We were born out of revolution against an empire. We were founded upon the ideal that all are created equal, and we have shed blood and struggled for centuries to give meaning to those words – within our borders, and around the world. We are shaped by every culture, drawn from every end of the Earth, and dedicated to a simple concept: E pluribus unum: “Out of many, one.”

This is something Obama has done so well – to preach the exceptionalism of America. And in many ways, his own story is a symbol of this. This idea of American exceptionalism is rejected as toxic though by most opponents of America – as well as many leftists in America. At best, it is seen as a kind of crude nationalism – and at worst as a sociopathic indifference to great crimes. There are two schools of American exceptionalism – the one which suggests America is inherently better than other countries and empires – and the other which states that America’s exceptionalism can be found in how it has dealt with its ideals and its power. Obama, clearly, belongs to the second category.

For we have learned from recent experience that when a financial system weakens in one country, prosperity is hurt everywhere. When a new flu infects one human being, all are at risk. When one nation pursues a nuclear weapon, the risk of nuclear attack rises for all nations. When violent extremists operate in one stretch of mountains, people are endangered across an ocean. And when innocents in Bosnia and Darfur are slaughtered, that is a stain on our collective conscience. That is what it means to share this world in the 21st century. That is the responsibility we have to one another as human beings.

Here Obama touches on the idea of the increasing interconnectedness of the world today – and in which he seems to be suggesting an alternate explanation than greed and empire for America’s involvements around the world, as well as a collective responsibility of all to create a better world.

…more than any other, they have killed Muslims…

I wish Obama had brought this up a few times – as this is such an important point. Al Qaeda and other violent extremists (the term Obama adopted, at least for this speech) have – while speaking most about attacking America – killed mainly fellow Muslims. In a recent editorial in Dawn, Pakistan’s leading English-language newspaper, columnist Nosheen Abbas quoted a man who lived in Swat before the Taliban took over:

These hooligans come and tell us they are here to bring Islam. What? Are we not Muslims?!

This is why the most effective counterterrorism strategy that the Bush administration was able to find was to let the extremists win for a while – and let their intolerance alienate the population.

Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It’s a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.

Although this might be the right thing to say – given our interests – I am not sure this is historically accurate. It’s a rather dangerous idea – that “Resistance through violence and killing is wrong.” Clearly – Obama is not saying that with any act of violence, one cedes one’s moral authority – for then he would be condemning the police whose authority is based on their implicit ability to do violence as well as our own military – which are even now engaged in violence with various forces in the Middle East. What he is instead referring to is violent resistance – by which he clearly is referring not to violence which supports the status quo, but which opposes it, or alternately, the violence of the weak against the strong. It’s an odd thing to condemn on moral grounds – and I’m not sure how this case can be made. There are many other instances in history when resistance would seem to justify violence – the Nazi occupation, the various genocides, slavery. What I could accept is that in recent history, it has been found that peaceful mass resistance has proven to be a far more effective tool in overturning the status quo, in empowering the weak over the strong.

Too many tears have flowed. Too much blood has been shed. All of us have a responsibility to work for the day when the mothers of Israelis and Palestinians can see their children grow up without fear; when the Holy Land of three great faiths is the place of peace that God intended it to be; when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed (peace be upon them) joined in prayer. [my emphasis]

I am not certain – but I feel as if this passage will be cited most of all – and will be the most influential, especially the idea of Jerusalem as “the place of peace that God intended it to be.”

So let me be clear: no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.

That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people. Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people. America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election. But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere…

No matter where it takes hold, government of the people and by the people sets a single standard for all who hold power: you must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party. Without these ingredients, elections alone do not make true democracy.

This is almost exactly what I had hoped Obama would say. Democracy activists in the region had already expressed disappointment that Obama was going to Egypt, implying an endorsement of the regime. And some – in the aftermath of the speech – continued to complain that he had given up on Bush’s democracy promotion. Realists continue to assert that we shouldn’t bother with such niceties as democracy promotion – seeing it as mainly a destabilizing element. The neoconservatives on the other hand correctly pointed out that a great deal of the instability and resentment in the region came from the fact that most of the nations here are authoritarian. Obama is attempting to “thread the needle” here – and to my mind, did it perfectly. He adopted what I understand to be Philip Bobbitt’s understanding of a state of consent being in direct opposition to a state of terror. Accepting this formulation puts Obama’s foreign policy on stronger ground than Bush’s.

Likewise, it is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit – for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We cannot disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretence of liberalism.

Am I wrong to see this as a swipe at France here?

Overall, an excellent speech – and one that was apparently well-received. The follow-up is crucial – and it remains to be seen how Obama’s focus on nations that “reflect the will of the people” differs from Bush’s democracy promotion. But the change in emphasis is key – and itself does a great deal of good.

Categories
Barack Obama National Security Politics The Bush Legacy The Opinionsphere The War on Terrorism

“Nobody’s going to wage a tough political battle to give up power.”

Yglesias makes a good point about the odd dynamic Republicans are creating on the national security front:

Part of why it’s so problematic for congressional Republicans to be so busy attacking the Obama administration as too hesitant to torture people and so forth is that the natural order of checks and balances is totally turned on its head when the opposition is urging the executive to seize more power and become less transparent. Nobody’s going to wage a tough political battle to give up power.

I’ve stated before that I believe it is primarily the job of the Courts and legislature – and even of individual citizens to the extent they are able – to provide a check on the Executive branch – as not only can one not expect a president to give up power – but for him to do so unilaterly serves to strengthen the power of the executive in the future. If the Courts or the Congress forces him or her to give up power, then the system of checks and balances is working – and the executive is seen to be subject to them in the future.

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National Security Politics The Bush Legacy The Opinionsphere The War on Terrorism

Irony Watch: Cheney on Euphemisms

From Yglesias:

Benjy Sarlin, over email: “Dick Cheney, who brought us the phrase ‘enhanced interrogation methods,’ is currently railing against those who use ‘euphemisms’ to obscure the debate over national security.”

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National Security Politics The Bush Legacy The Opinionsphere The War on Terrorism

A Truth Commission

While not rejecting the idea of prosecutions for clear cases in which the law was broken, there seems to be a growing consensus about the necessity of a truth commission. It has become more and more clear that the fault lies within our system as much as it does in particular individuals. Jeffrey Record reviewing Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side [pdf] for the Army War College journal, Parameters quotes Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis whose insight points towards both why we need a truth commissin of a type – and why prosecution is not the most effective option (h/t Tom Ricks):

[T]he greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

This goes to the argument that Bush administration apologists keep making – that these officials were acting in good faith, were panicked, and though they may have broken some rules, they did so to protect American lives. But this is precisely what Brandeis saw was the most serious danger to liberty. 

Tom Ricks gives his opinion of what we need – basing his argument on military strategy – rather than the protection of our way of life:

Just because you have an embarrassing problem, you shouldn’t try to hide it, because dealing with it may prepare you for an even bigger challenge down the road. So let’s get the torture and interrogation situation straightened out before the next big terrorist attack. My preference, as I’ve stated before, is for a truth and reconciliation commission that offers an amnesty period during which people would be invited to step forward. Anyone not ‘fessing up during that time would face the possibility of prosecution. Again, I think this effort should target those who departed from American history and made torture national policy.

Maureen Dowd has also come around – and she too is looking at the perverse effect on our system of checks and balances that not following up on this matter is having:

I used to agree with President Obama, that it was better to keep moving and focus on our myriad problems than wallow in the darkness of the past. But now I want a full accounting. I want to know every awful act committed in the name of self-defense and patriotism. Even if it only makes one ambitious congresswoman pay more attention in some future briefing about some future secret technique that is “uniquely” designed to protect us, it will be worth it.

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Barack Obama Foreign Policy Israel National Security

Stephen Walt’s Insights

Due to a website outage for most of the day, none of my posts went up today.

So for your national security/politics/etc fix today, I suggest you look to Stephen Walt – whose blog I just discovered, although I’ve been familiar with his work for some time. Some thought-provoking excerpts from the past week or so in Walt bloggery:

On which president’s foreign policy Obama seems most similar: Nixon…

In short, he’s trying to deal with Bush’s legacy by cutting losses, resolving conflicts, and getting help from our allies, in order to buy time for economic and military recovery. Sounds almost Nixonian (or maybe Kissingerian).

On his favorite topic, Israel:

Some readers may think that Hastings is employing a double-standard, or that he is “singling Israel out” for criticism. They could point out that Israel’s adversaries have often lied or prevaricated too, and that they have done plenty of brutal things themselves. They could also remind us that Israel’s neighbors are hardly models of tolerance or open discourse and that there is a far more open debate about these issues within Israel than there is in Jordan or Saudi Arabia or Syria. I agree, and the willingness of some Israelis to confront the past honestly and to question its present policies remains an admirable feature of Israeli society.  

But there is no double-standard at work here, and comparisons with states whose behavior may be worse miss the point. Israel’s actions are not being judged against the conduct of a Sudan or Burma, but by the standards that people in the West apply to all democracies. It is the standard Americans expect of allies who want to have a “special relationship” with us. It is the standard Israel imposes on itself when it tells everyone it is “the only democracy in the Middle East.” Israel is being expected to behave like Britain or Canada or France or Japan and not like some one-party military dictatorship, and it is certainly expected not to deny full political and civil rights to millions of Palestinians who now live under its constant control.  These other democracies eventually gave up their colonial enterprises; Israel is still trying to consolidate its own. 

On the most effective imbalance of power:

Unlike Preble, I still think a margin of superiority is a good thing, but I agree that we’ve got a much bigger margin than we need and we often use it in the wrong way. Instead of exploiting our favorable geopolitical position and acting like an offshore balancer, and playing hard-to-get so that other major powers will bear a greater share of the burden, the United States has declared itself to be the “indispensable power” and decided that it’s got to take charge nearly everywhere. The result, as you may have noticed, has not been all the salutary. Instead of stabilizing the key strategic areas of the world — something we used to be pretty good at — in recent years the United States has been an activelydestabilizing force. And instead of spreading U.S. values, we’ve ended up undermining them here at home and discrediting them abroad.

Moreover, as Preble notes, excessive U.S. dominance encourages others to act irresponsibly. To use Barry Posen’s apt terms, states either “free ride” on Uncle Sam (think Japan, or much of Europe), or they engage in “reckless driving” (think Israel, Georgia last summer, or maybe Pakistan), because they are confident we’ll bail them out if they get into trouble.  

Categories
National Security The Bush Legacy The War on Terrorism

We Are All Guilty

[digg-reddit-me]We are all guilty.

Because we live in a democracy.
Because we did not ask enough questions.
Because we did not stand forthrightly for American values.
Because we were afraid.

As figure after figure from the Bush administration has pleaded 9/11 when confronted by the facts of their administration’s wholesale and preemptive surrender of American values – as they instituted programs of lawless imprisonment, torture, illegal spying, and a misbegotten war justified under a profoundly un-American theory of the Presidency  – as Americans see how profoundly our nation went off course in the years after September 11th and are justifiably outraged – with all this, I honestly cannot say that I would have seen then as clearly as I see now what a betrayal, what a cowardly decision it was, to abandon our way of life and our Rule of Law. I am not sure I would have the moral clarity, the strategic vision to say, “It is not about them. It is about us [pdf.]” ((This quote is not exactly what McCain said. He said, “But this isn’t about who they are. This is about who we are” – but my version is snappier.)) To declare that “I would rather die fighting than give up even the smallest part of the idea that is America.”

I’d like to think I would have seen what was going on with clarity – but I know as the fear of terrorism was fresh within me, and the anger – I know I did not ask enough questions. I felt safer knowing those in power would do everything possible to keep America safe.

But the fact that I realize my own sinful nature – imperfect, flawed – does not absolve those men and women who instituted these policies – of cruelty, torture, of an executive held above the law. If it is clearly found that any individual broke the law, they should be brought to justice.

I am also aware of the ancient ritual of scapegoating – as a society which fears its own sins places the blame for their collective miseries and flaws upon an animal or person. Whether one likes it or not, it is also certain that most Americans would have condoned torture among other transgressions in those years after September 11 – without a cultural memory of what the cost would be. The men and women of the Bush administration were acting on our behalf – with our implicit consent – when they committed these war crimes, these unconstitutional acts.

This is why I believe it would only be marginally more just to punish John Yoo than Charles Graner. Both men are guilty – but punishing them does not absolve the larger community or resolve our societal dilemma.

What needs to happen – what is more essential than justice – is for our nation to come to a consensus on how we will deal with terrorism. The biggest mistake Bush ever made was to fight a War on Terror on the “Dark Side.” In doing so, we chose to fight on the terrain most familiar to our opponents. And by unilaterally choosing to engage in a secret war without consulting with or even informing the American people on many issues – and even lying to them about what was being done – “We do not torture.” “We do not wiretap without a warrant.” – he undermined the very democracy he wanted to protect.

Armed with a theory of a unitary executive, he chose to protect our liberal democracy by acting as a benevolent (but elected) tyrant (on issues of national security) – eschewing all the advantages a democratic system, in which consent is freely given by people fully informed, in favor of the cheap, short-term advantages of a tyrant acting in secret asking people to trust his actions are to their benefit.

Rather than discussing what freedoms needed to be given up, whether our nation should give up it’s historical aversion to torture, what price we were willing to pay as a society in order to keep our way of life – he chose the path with the least resistance in the immediate term. George W. Bush had tragically learned the wrong lesson from September 11.

Yet even as he acted in secret – if we truly are a democracy – we are still responsible. We should have known. Maybe neither you nor I could have done anything – but together, we had the responsibility to. And if we’re honest, in the time after September 11, we may have even made the same flawed, awful decisions that that overmatched man did.

What we need today is to engage in that discussion that George W. Bush did not deign to – about whether American values are still relevant in a world threatened by terrorism. And we need to reach a consensus before we are attacked again. For if we do not, we will be less prepared to protect our way of life in the aftermath than we were on that Tuesday morning.

This is why we need a truth commission – charged with finding out who ordered what, who knew what when, what worked, what didn’t. We need a consensus, if our way of life is to survive.

Categories
Criticism Iraq National Security The Opinionsphere The War on Terrorism

Contra Taibbi: Fighting Them Over There So We Don’t Need to Fight Them Here

The thing is, we’ve been listening to this stuff for so long that when we hear it, we don’t recoil in confused disbelief anymore — we’re so familiar with these arguments we’ve forgotten that they don’t make any sense. It’s similar to that other Bush-era standard: “We fight them over there, so we don’t have to fight them here.”

I never understood what the hell that was all about. The best I could figure is that the people who were saying this think of the world like a big game of Risk, and they think that if we commit a big force to some place like Iraq, the “other side” will have to leave all his forces over there or something to keep us from moving through Eurasia. This might make sense in a real war, in a war-between-nations war, but it’s completely absurd in a conflict where the “other side” is actually hundreds if not thousands of different/unrelated actors and can successfully attack a country like the U.S. using just a few people at a time. Sending 160,000 troops to Iraq does absolutely nothing to prevent a terrorist group like al-Qaeda from sending over a couple of “exchange students” to dump botulinum toxin into the Akron reservoir.

That’s Matt Taibbi in a recent blog post. Given his explanation, he clearly is missing something.

One understanding of terrorism holds that acts of terrorism are a reaction to the fact that many people in the world have no say in how they are governed. They realize that who Americans elect as their president has a more of an impact on their lives than their local leaders. Yet – they have no vote in this matter – and few ways to affect what America does. Those who are especially frustrated and determined and who value life least see there is a way they can impact America – how they can make their views matter. They can commit an act of terrorism against America – or American interests.

This understanding of the root cause of terroism is implicit both in many liberal critiques of the War on Terror and in Bush’s democracy promotion. Liberal critiques tended to see our doubling down in our support of tyrants in the region as kong as they were anti-terrorist as contributing to the sense of alienation. The neoconservatives saw democracy as a kind of safety valve in which these frustrations could be channeled – which is why they were so focused on promoting it in the Middle East. 

If terrorism is the means by which people whose views are not represented make themselves heard by those who have the power to change their lives, then allowing them to fight us over there does make it less likely we will be attacked at home. It provides an outlet in which they can channel their displeasure – killing American soldiers. It’s easier to travel to Iraq or Afghanistan than to America – and to participate within structures already set up while attacking outsiders – than to work undercover in an American sleeper cell, plotting against the people with whom you have contact every day.

Taibbi is right that leaving ourselves vulnerable over there doesn’t preclude them from attacking us here – but that mis-states what the “fighting them over there” idea is about. The fact that we can be attacked over there provides a release valve for frustrations – in a way similar to having a democracy where people could vote anti-American politicians into office would. 

I’m not sure if I buy this theory. And it’s not clear that even if it is true, that the overall approach is effective – because after all, by responding to attacks on us, we probably create more ill-will than we have allowed to be “released.” But there is a coherent view behind this – and mocking it doesn’t make it less so.