9/11 and Electoral Politics 9/14/06
With September 11 coming less than two months before Election Day every year, and immediately after the Labor Day launch of the campaign, it may be too much to hope that politicians would refrain from using it as a rallying cry to get voter support. Sure enough, on the fifth year anniversary of the bombing of the World Trade Center, Election Day politics got intertwined with memorials and remembrances and warnings against terrorists.
Tuesday morning, Dan Balz and Michael Abramowitz of the Washington Post summed it up: “President Bush's Oval Office speech last night was the culmination of two weeks of efforts to rally the nation behind his policies and presidency by summoning the memory of Sept. 11, 2001.” (President Tries to Win Over a War-Weary Nation, 9/12/06)
Bush’s efforts were about rallying support for the war, as the Post points out, but they were also an attempt to set the agenda for the election campaign. The Republicans would much rather have people talking about the September 11 attacks and national security, issues on which they poll relatively well, than about a war that headlines remind us daily is not going as promised.
Last week, for instance, Bush gave a speech in which he dramatically tried to change the terms of debate by turning some of the most damaging criticisms of his administration into positives. (R. Jeffrey Smith and Michael Fletcher, Bush Says Detainees Will Be Tried, Washington Post 9/7/06) He has been criticized in the past by both Democrats and Republicans for overreaching his powers as an executive by setting up military tribunals to try terror suspects, for ignoring the Geneva Conventions, for incarcerating prisoners in Guantanamo bay, Cuba, without due process, for allowing the CIA to operate clandestine prisons around the world, for condoning the torture of prisoners of war and for permitting the NSA to eavesdrop on the conversations of Americans.
In his speech last week he tried to turn those negatives into positives by declaring that his actions were necessary to keep American safe. He admitted that the US had had held terror suspects secretly and subjected them to controversial interrogation techniques (Bush doesn’t call it torture.) He defended his administration’s actions and said he was transferring 14 prisoners accused of perpetrating the 9/11 attacks to Guantanamo Bay and was asking Congress to give him the authority to order military trials of the sort the Supreme Court had called a halt to in June. Following his speech, Republicans said they intended to bring his proposals to a vote as soon as possible, hoping to force Democrats into either voting to support Bush or casting a vote against prosecution of the terror suspects, which would help to brand them weak on national security.
Debate on that vote is currently going on in Congress. Today (Thursday) Colin Powell, Bush’s former Secretary of State opposed the creation of military commissions for the purpose of trying prisoners, saying that “"The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism." (William Branigin, Powell Opposes Effort to ‘Redefine’ Geneva Provision, Washington Post, 9/14/06.) At the same time, despite Bush’s personal visit to Capitol Hill to lobby for the passage of his bill, the Senate Armed Services Committee rejected Bush’s proposal that would deny some key rights to prisoners in favor of one that grants them more protections. (David Stout, Senate Panel Defies Bush on Detainee Bill. New York Times, 9/14/06) Four Republican senators (McCain, Warner, Graham and Collins) joined with all of the Democrats on the committee to reject the president’s version of the bill.
If the Republican strategy is to drive a wedge between the two parties, it may not work if a bipartisan group continues to oppose Bush’s bill. At issue are whether prisoners have a right to see the evidence that is being used against them and whether statements obtained through torture can be sued as evidence. Part of the wider debate is whether the U.S. engages in torture, and what actually constitutes torture. See this video for Bush’s views as expressed to journalist Matt Lauer.
Although we do not address the issue of torture directly, we discuss the conflicts involved in protecting civil liberties and national security on pp. 157-158 of KTR. How do you respond to the criticism that if we torture prisoners and deny them their rights, we have become little better than the people we seek to protect ourselves against?