[digg-reddit-me]Thanks to Tony for the link.
Update: Thanks to amstrdamordeath for pointing out that this piece was not found in the public record until 2001, and that there are no records of either Caesar or Shakespeare writing or saying it.
Still, it kind of hits you…
To demonstrate my previous point that:
“[T]he Republican position is this: the terrorists have won. The terrorists’ ideas and actions make America’s liberal democracy irrelevant. We must take what steps are necessary to protect the public safety; civil liberties are only for those who deserve them. Although the President took an oath to defend the Constitution, he now must defend American lives at the expense of this old document.”
Vince Flynn has written a novel he has ironically titled Protect and Defend. (See footnote if you miss the irony.) Apparently, it is now the top fiction bestseller on The New York Times, and the author is going on a promotional tour. Glenn Beck has said that Mitt Rapp, the hero of Flynn’s thriller, makes “Jack Bauer look like a puss”. Here a taste of what the novel is like from an exchange towards the end of chapter 45 during which the President of the United States, the Attorney General, and the hero Mitch Rapp are on a conference call in a crisis situation that perfectly illustrates my point:
“Mitch, [Attorney General] Pete Weber here. We all know you and [CIA Director] Irene are close but you really need to take a few steps back and remember that you took an oath, an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. We all took that oath and that means that none of us is above the law, including you.”
There was a long pause and then in a voice filled with frustration Rapp said, “You have got to be kidding me!”
Rapp’s stark response caused everyone in the room to take a quick look at each other.
“Excuse me?” the attorney general asked defensively.
“The Director of the CIA was just kidnapped and her entire security detail was wiped out and you want to lecture me about an oath and a two hundred year old piece of paper?”
“Our entire country is based on that piece of paper,” Weber responded defensively.
“You may have been thinking about defending a piece of paper when you took your oath but I was thinking about protecting and defending American citizens from the type of shit that just happened. I apologize for my language, Mr. President, but this is ridiculous.” [my italics]
There are so many things to find wrong with this: the fact that Rapp misrepresents entirely the oath of office and mocks the rule of law; the fact that he deems the legal document that is supposed to be a check on his actions irrelevant; or the fact that Dick Cheney and President Bush have been reputed to have made similar statements about the Constitution and about the rule of law.
A contempt for the rule of law
The overwhelming feeling you get from the book is one of complete disregard for law and morality. Throughout the novel – which I have read – no American character ever objects to torture or law-breaking or murder on moral grounds. The only character who in some way thinks about morality is the Iranian intelligence chief who eventually works with the Americans because he knows that what his country is doing is wrong. But as the novel’s hero cuts off a prisoner’s testicles, mutilates dead bodies, and kills a Democratic Party strategist, there is explicitly no remorse. Flynn actually makes a point of saying that Rapp has no remorse or twinges of conscience over these actions. (It is also suggested the hero, acting with the CIA, killed the Vice President in a previous book: the rationale for the murder of the Democratic strategist and Vice President is that they orchestrated a terrorist attack in order to win an election. As Flynn says in the book and interview: too often politicians put their own party’s interest ahead of national security.)
The odd thing about this rejection of laws and constitutions and any traditional sense of morality is that while Flynn portrays his character’s actions as rational, they are clearly driven by visceral feelings more than pragmatism. Again and again, the “liberal” characters suggest that the hero is too emotionally caught up to think straight and do his job rationally – and Rapp admits it. Yet, knowing this, the President of the United States gives Rapp “carte blanche“. Flynn makes it clear that Rapp would do all of these things while not emotionally involved, but, perhaps to keep the audience sympathetic, keeps mentioning how emotional Rapp is. Any time any limit on Rapp’s actions and power is suggested, he reacts viscerally, with one example shown above. The strongest feeling in the novel is a contempt for law and ethics and the rule of law and conscience are considered “niceties” that are only practical in times of peace. If you doubt the current administration shares these feelings, I suggest reading Charlie Savage’s new book Takeover. The fact is that these visceral feelings are informing Republican policy – both in Vince Flynn’s imaginary world and in our own.
This contempt for the rule of law and for conscience, and the policies and actions stemming from this feeling, represent nothing less than the preemptive surrender of American values in order to try to preserve American lives. What ever happened to “Live free or die” or “Give me liberty or give me death!”? Benjamin Franklin warned, “Those who would surrender precious liberty in exchange for a bit of temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Now we have a president, a number of presidential candidates, and a few literary characters who believe liberty is only worth the paper it is protected by, who believe the rule of law does not apply in times of war, and who believe that we are in a war that will be fought for “generations”. If these men and women are right, we have reached the end of the American experiment. If the president is not constrained by the rule of law; if the balance of power between the branches of government is not respected; if the Constitution is merely an “old parchment” (to use Dick Cheney’s dismissive phrase); if the government has the right to torture and imprison and spy on American citizens in violation of Congressionally sanctioned law; if the president assumes tyrannical powers, even if he exercises them judiciously and is allowed to do so, what is left of our nation “conceived in liberty”?
I believe an Obama presidency would take the first steps to restore American values to our government. But no matter who you support, you must realize this election is of historic importance. Yet despite this, many Americans, especially, those of my generation, the post 9/11 generation are disengaged from power. We cannot afford this disengagement, ironic or otherwise, any longer.
A prescription for change
Vote and vote in large numbers and vote even if it doesn’t seem like it makes a difference. Sign up to vote today if you haven’t already. Vote for change. Vote to tackle the issues that matter. Campaign, volunteer, and throw your support behind the candidate you think is the best. Even more, and in addition, we must work in our local communities, on the web, and through our entrepreneurial efforts to start changing our society.
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
We must engage with power. We must try to revive this corrupt system. We cannot wait until 2012 for real change. Our moment is now. We cannot let this election slip by. Sometimes, in the midst of trying times, all we have is the audacity of hope and our seemingly insignificant powers as individuals. We cannot decide what obstacles we will face. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.
From the New York Times a few weeks ago by Anthony Lewis reviewing Dead Certain and The Terror Presidency, a comment which better defines the Bush administration’s actions and failures than most else:
In an interesting comparison with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s sweeping power in World War II, Goldsmith says Roosevelt relied on persuasion, bargaining, compromise. “The Bush administration has operated on an entirely different concept of power that relies on minimal deliberation, unilateral action and legalistic defense. This approach largely eschews politics: the need to explain, to justify, to convince, to get people on board, to compromise.”
Olivier Roy, a research director at the French National Center for Scientific Research and a lecturer for both the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences and the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations last week. Roy has written a number of works about Islam and secular Western societies and the inherent conflicts between the two.
In his presentation last week entitled “The Future of Radical Islam in Europe”, he made a few comments about Islam that presented the issue in a way I had not thought of it before. Regarding terrorism and islamism, he said:
…for me it’s a generational phenomenon. It’s a youth phenomenon. It’s not the expression of a traditional society. And it’s why — for example, I compare this with the wave of [student unrest] in the West during the ’60s and ’70s.
I am surprised that I never thought of islamism his way before. It certainly makes sense though. It does not make terrorist attacks any less dangerous, but it has profound consequences for dealing with islamism oth tactically and strategically. It also is worth noting that Roy is basing his statements on the French student unrest which was far more destructive and radical than the American equivalent. But in both cases, the young rebelled against their parents’ hypocrisy, some in violent and radical ways. In America though, as well as in other countries, an opposing and slightly younger movement emerged from the same generation opposed to the hypocrisies of both their fellow youth and of their parents. If Roy is correct, we should look out for this counter-movement.
More important though: if the bulk of those men (and theoretically women) whose terrorist threaten America are disaffected youth embracing a self-shattering and self-promoting understanding of religion, doesn’t it flatter them to declare war on them? If our enemies are primarily motivated by our foreign policies or domestic policies, by who we are, or by a desire to purify the world of kafir, our options are stark. But if instead, islamists are primarily young people who are disaffected with the world and, in seeking to lash out, use our foreign and domestic policies and other elements as excuses to attack us because they feel they must attack someone, our strategy must be substantially different.
[digg-reddit-me]Know Thy Enemy
Sun Tzu wrote that one must know one’s enemy in order to ensure your victory over him. This is the fundamental flaw in the War on Terrorism: we do not know our enemy; and worse than mere ignorance, we are confused about who our enemy is. If we examine the problem that confronted us on 9/11, we see two distinct issues that combined on that day to devastating effect:
Neo-conservatives have portrayed our opponents as the Islamic world itself. They have declared the conflict civilizational, as a war that will last generations, as a cancer within the religion of Islam that has affected the majority and infected a large minority. They see opponents driven by an Islamic ideology and determined to create an Islamic caliphate spanning the Middle East. But if Roy is right, then the conflict is instead generational and our opponents are the disaffected youth who, not knowing quite where to direct their anger, direct it at us as the predominant power in the world. He sees the roots of the conflict in a rebellion against the compromise that has dominated the Islamic world of their parents.
Certain leaders from the older generation have ridden to power on this discontent, stoking it and guiding it. But in the end, these youth are more confused than ideologically driven. Our best policy is to do what we can to avoid radicalizing them. In this, our policy so far, has been a disaster. By torturing detainees, invading Iraq, occupying Iraq, reducing civil liberties at home, and propping up dictators around the world, we play into the hands of those leaders who seek to radicalize the young.
I do not mean to play down the serious threat that terrorism poses to our society or even to say that islamist terrorism is somehow less significant. Rather, as Sun Tzu said, we must understand our enemy and determine how best to undermine him. So far, our actions have united our enemies and galvanized the islamist movement. Perhaps it is time to consider that there is something flawed in our original reasoning.
If the current batch of radicalized islamists more closely parallel the the Weathermen or the more radical European terrorist groups of the 1960s than the Nazis and Communists, then we need to re-think our strategy.
A better tactic than trying to transform or wage war on a civilization, would be to undermine the leaders who are attempting to radicalize the disaffected youth. This doesn’t solve all of our problems, but it would be a better approach than our current one.
Robert E. Lee
Eve Merriam
From here.
José Narosky
Abraham Lincoln
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dick Cheney
G.K. Chesterton
As an historian specializing in the Renaissance, Anthony Grafton muses in The New Republic about the efficacy of torture:
Torture does not obtain truth. Applied with leading questions, it can make most ordinary people–as it would certainly make me–say anything their examiners want, if they can only work out what that is. Applied to the extraordinarily defiant, it may not work at all.
Dahlia Lithwick, by far, my favorite Slate columnist, wrote this piece today about Michael Mukasey’s supposed “independence” as proved by his understanding of what torture is. It all depends on what the meaning of the word is is.
From the New York Times’ review of Robert Draper’s Dead Certain and Jack Goldsmith’s The Terror Presidency this weekend:
In an interesting comparison with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s sweeping power in World War II, Goldsmith says Roosevelt relied on persuasion, bargaining, compromise. “The Bush administration has operated on an entirely different concept of power that relies on minimal deliberation, unilateral action and legalistic defense. This approach largely eschews politics: the need to explain, to justify, to convince, to get people on board, to compromise.”
This arrogance is the defining characteristic of the Bush administration.
[digg-reddit-me]Behind the debates, votes, and bureaucratic battles of the past few years over civil liberties, torture, Guantanamo, terrorist tribunals, the Patriot Act, and domestic wiretapping, are two different views of how to respond to the threat of terrorism. Republicans and liberals each frame the question differently, asking two basic questions that lead them to diverging answers about the same issues.
A. Republicans
B. Liberals
While Republicans have often deflected Question B by answering Question A, their response to Question A indicates that they do not believe the two questions are related. I don’t know how many times I have been told in debates on the issues that I shouldn’t worry about them unless I am a terrorist. To consider the effect of our government’s actions gets you called a “fellow traveler” with the jihadists or more charitably is labeled “pre-9/11 thinking”. This is the essential idea of the books published by Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity, of countless columns in the National Review and Wall Street Journal, and of a large part of the Republican’s electoral success in the 2002 and 2004 elections.
Politically, Question A confers great advantages. It offers easy answers. It comforts us – “If I’m not a terrorist, what do I care?” It seems a tougher approach. Most important though, it emotionally charges the issue. “Why should we confer the rights our society guarantees on those who have no respect for these rights and who will exploit them?” It separates them from us. Question B leads to a rational, reflective discussion and no easy answers. It’s a much harder sell and has been portrayed as a sign of weakness.
Despite the political rhetoric, both questions are merely different ways of phrasing the same problem. In fact, the disagreement between Republicans and liberals centers around a single point of controversy:
Do terrorists have rights?
Within the Republican framing of the issue is a single, absolutely frightening idea that undermines the very basis of our nation and freedoms: that the government confers rights upon people rather than that rights being inherent in each individual. This is a profoundly unconservative idea – a radical one more generally associated with Communism than with any American ideology. You can see this idea at work listening to the chief prosecutor for Guantanamo defend his treatment of prisoners there, in Cheney’s defense of the terrorist tribunals, in Rudy’s defense of “enhanced interrogation”, in Bush’s defense of domestic wiretapping.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…”
The problem with the Republican position is that it denies the very basis for American government, one of the cornerstones of our Constitution. If you believe in the ideals encapsulated in the first collective document produced by the American nation, in the reason for the revolution that created our country, in the ideals that animated the Founders in creating the Constitution, then terrorists have rights, inherent, inalienable, and God-given. If you reject this idea and believe instead that the government grants us rights which we can then exercise – to a fair and speedy trial, to a jury of peers, to not be tortured, to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, to free speech, to freedom of assembly, to an expectation of privacy – then you have negated the very basis of our founding. This is self-evident.
What then is the rationale for the Republican position?
Simply, the Republican position is this: the terrorists have won. The terrorists’ ideas and actions make America’s liberal democracy irrelevant. We must take what steps are necessary to protect the public safety; civil liberties are only for those who deserve them. Although the President took an oath to defend the Constitution, he now must defend American lives at the expense of this old document.
Clearly all Republicans do not believe this; and many who have mouthed these lines are merely reacting emotionally and have not thought through the clear consequences of their rhetoric. This is why I believe there is still hope for this country. There are many details liberals and conservatives can work out about the balance between protecting the public and protecting each individual, between liberty and safety. But to frame the issue as the Republicans have is truly radical, and it should be recognized as such. And to act as the Bush administration has done, based on the assumption that rights are granted rather than inherent, has clearly undermined everything America stands for.
In this piece in the New York Times tomorrow, Obama discusses what his approach to Iran would be. Not much news made in the interview in my opinion. Along with some criticisms of Iran’s actions of late, Obama stated that he would:
“engage in aggressive personal diplomacy”…and would offer economic inducements and a possible promise not to seek “regime change” if Iran stopped meddling in Iraq and cooperated on terrorism and nuclear issues.
His conciliatory approach to Iran seems like part of a smart strategy at this point given the Iranian people’s overall anger towards their own governement and affinity for American culture, as well as general demographic trends and tactical considerations in the region. I think his approach would be similar to Hillary’s – with the Senator from New York moving more slowly and putting in less effort, and probably posturing to try to ward off attacks from her right – but I truly appreciate the fact that he is telling the country now what he plans to do instead of running a campaign based on fear of Republican demonization.
