Keeping the Republic Blog

State of the Union 2007 -- 1/24/07

Last night was President Bush’s State of the Union address and that seems to be the focus of all the papers today.  President Bush’s  2007 State of the Union Address, 1/23/07 

The general consensus seems to be that he didn’t say much new, made some domestic policy proposals, but saved his real energy for rallying Congress to get behind him on the escalation in Iraq, though he intends to go ahead (and in fact has gone ahead) with or without them.  You can read some analysis here (Dan Balz, “The State of the President: Beleaguered,  Washington Post, 1/24/07), and here (Kate Zernike, A Shift in Power, Starting with ‘Madam Speaker,’” The New York Times, 1/23/07.) 

Freshman Senator Jim Webb from Virginia gave the Democrats' response with some economic overtones, but mostly focused on a war he thinks is wrong.  As Reagan’s Secretary of the Navy and a former Marine himself whose son is serving in Iraq right now, Webb’s credentials make it hard for the Republicans to paint him as soft on terror or as lacking support for the armed forces. (Michael D. Shear, “Va’s Webb Offers a Blunt Challenge to Bush,” Washington Post, 1/24/07) 

Bush gave this speech with approval ratings matching his lowest (for a sum of recent polls, see this), and facing a Democratic Congress for the first time.  But on the issue that is causing almost all his trouble, he and his administration are unrepentant.  See, for example, not only his speech, but this Wolf Blizter interview with the Vice-President from this afternoon.   

In the last post I asked what is at stake in the issue of the war.  With more and more Republicans starting to side with the Democrats (John Holushna, Senate Panel Opposes Troop Increase in Iraq, 12-9,” Washington Post, 1/24/07)   the war is taking up all the air left in Bush’s presidency, and setting the agenda for the 2008 presidential race.

That race is starting to shape up, with two new Democrats (Clinton and Richardson) in this weekend, and John Kerry out as of this afternoon, and another Republican (Sam Brownback) joining in as well.  More on all that soon.

The Costs of War -- 9/28/06

A couple of things to note with regard to the Iraq war.

First, as I noted below in discussing the compromise between the White House and the Senate on the interrogation bill, it looks like Pres. Bush is getting much of what he wants, including quick passage of the bill so that he can sign it before Republican congresspeople go home to campaign against any Democrats who vote against it.  The House voted on the bill yesterday and the Senate, having voted down Democratic amendments to beef up detainee rights, is set to do so today. (Charles Babbington, House Approves Bill on Detainees, 9/28/06)  

An editorial in the more liberal New York Times is solidly against the bill but so is one in the usually-supportive-of-the-Iraqi-war Washington Post. 

Andrew Sullivan, a conservative libertarian critic of a war he once supported, has a link on his blog to a YouTube of military, religious, and intelligence experts testifying before Congress on the harmful effects of the behavior that this bill will allow the military and the CIA to engage in.  Sullivan’s blog is kind of eccentric since he covers a variety of issues, but it is the go-to place for anti-torture links and debate on the subject.  He often gives a hearing to his critics, so it is not just one-sided (though there is no doubt about where he stands.)

Jonah Goldberg, in the conservative National Review Online, is one of Sullivan’s critics, claiming that he fails to consider some of the reasons why we engage in coercive interrogation techniques and thinks we are too quick to call them torture. (When Push Comes to Torture, NRO, 9/27/06) 

As you read this stuff, think about the issues raised in Chapter 5 of KTR (p. 157) on the trade-offs between security and freedom.  Thomas Hobbes showed what kind of government fearful people would choose – a Leviathan that protects them but demands all their rights in exchange.  Anything short of that demands debate about how much freedom, how much security.  By urging the quick passage of this bill as an election ploy and threatening to stop all interrogations if it isn’t passed, Bush is silencing the debate that should accompany any decision to reduce the liberties America values.  Even Goldberg concludes his essay with these words:

“In the recent debate over torture, everybody decided to kick the can down the road on what torture is and isn’t. This argument will be forced on us again, no matter how much we try to avoid it. We’ll be sorry we didn’t take the debate more seriously when we had the chance.”

~~~

Another issue to follow today is the partial release by Pres. Bush, yesterday, of the NIE (National Intelligence Estimate), a report prepared by the US intelligence community that basically says that the Iraq war has had a negative effect on US safety.  (Mark Mazzetti, Backing Policy, President Issues Terror Estimate, 9/26/06)

The report, issued in April, was leaked to the New York Times last weekend. Amid calls from Democrats that the report should be made public, Bush declassified a few pages of it, and now the two parties are both trying to spin the results their way.  Most analysis seems to support the Democratic contention that the report paints a grim picture of the war and the impact it has had in breeding new supporters of terror.  Here is the New York Times’ take, but you can find similar views in the rest of the mainstream media: David Sanger, Study Doesn’t Share Bush’s Optimism on Terror Fight, 9/26/06) 

 If Republican members of Congress plan to go home and campaign on Democrats softness on terrorism, the Democrats are headed home to complain that the Republicans’ policies are increasing it.  Hold on to your hats and get ready for a wild ride to Election Day.  The NYT has a nice piece on the increasingly negative campaign commercials that candidates are airing this season: Adam Nagourney, Theme of Campaign Ads: Don’t Be Nice, 9/26/06 

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?

Civil Liberties: Moussaoui's, Al Qaeda's and Ours -- 3/16/06

Good morning, everyone.  Spring Break here at I.U. – hope yours is good wherever it finds you.

A couple of stories to follow this week. 

First, there is the curious story about the FAA lawyer in the Moussaoui sentencing trial. The lawyer, Carla Martin, seems to have single-handedly undermined the federal government’s effort to get the death penalty for 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. In opposition to the expressed orders of the judge in the case that the witnesses should not be exposed to the trial proceedings so that they could not alter their testimony, Martin sent emails to seven witnesses, strategizing about what they were going to say on the stand. (Adam Liptak, Crossing a Fine Line on Witness Coaching, NYT, 3/16/06.) The judge called her behavior “egregious,” and  said that the federal case against Moussaoui had to proceed without the testimony from the witnesses. Prosecutors say this deals their case a death blow, and have asked the judge to reconsider. (Jerry Markon, Prosecutors Scramble to Salvage 9/11 Case After Ruling, WaPo, 3/16/06.)

Since Moussaoui has pled guilty, it is hard to see what the fuss is about here. What is at stake is not whether he gets off free (he won’t) but whether he faces the death penalty or life imprisonment. It will help to understand what is happening here if we apply the procedural/substantive distinction we lay out in Chapters 1 and 2 of KTR (pp. 10-11, 47-48). We explain that often in procedural cultures (like ours) it is more important to ensure that the rules are followed properly than to achieve some particular substantive outcome. We put our faith in procedural due process, to be sure that the rules treat everyone fairly and impartially, and trust that fair results will follow. We could of course say, “Well, we know Moussaoui is guilty, he has confessed after all, so what difference does it make if we ignore this witness tampering at the sentencing stage. What the judge in the case has to grapple with is the fact that because our system guarantees fair rules to everyone, to deny Moussaoui his rights will jeopardize the rights of all of us. If they can be waived for him, they can be waived for anyone.

This issue throws into relief the ongoing scandal of the American treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and at Guantanamo Bay. Some have tried to claim that because the stakes are so huge here (preventing a future terrorist attack) or because these prisoners are not on American soil or are not American citizens, that American procedural guarantees do not apply. Others argue that we are bound by the Geneva Convention and by our own standards of morals and decency to protect the human rights of those we take prisoner. Perhaps the most compelling reason against the torture, offered by critics such as Senator John McCain, himself a former prisoner of war of the Vietnamese, is that to treat the captives as we fear they would treat us sinks us to their level and endangers the American democratic ethic which is what we want above all to protect. The online journal Salon.com has excellent in depth coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal and has just put up on its site an archive of 279 photos and 19 videos of the abuse, obtained form the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command. (Joan Walsh, The Abu Ghraib Files, salon.com.) 

Take a look at those photos and ask yourself what difference it makes if the United States engages in torture of its prisoners. Is this kind of substantive behavior (treating people as if they are guilty without a trial and taking an “ends justify the means” approach) ever justified? In the Abu Ghraib case, who is responsible for maintaining American standards of behavior – the people on the ground or the people in charge? Does the Abu Ghraib situation shed any like on the judge’s ruling in the Moussaoui trial?

***

Other stories to follow this week. President Bush is issuing a document today reaffirming the “Bush Doctrine” of preemptive war that we discuss in Chapter 18 (pp. 811-812). (Peter Baker, Bush to Restate Terror Strategy, WaPo, 3/16/06.) Essentially, the document will recommit the U.S. to the strategy we embarked on with the war against Iraq in 2002. Should that commitment be tempered by any of the events of the last three years?

Finally, take a look at the NYT article about how Republicans are seizing on Senator Russ Feingold’s efforts to censure President Bush over the NSA spying issue. With Bush’s approval ratings at new lows in the polls, Republicans need to rally their base to get them to turn out in the November congressional elections. Declaring that it is necessary to vote Republican in order to hold off censure or even impeachment proceedings gives them a way to excite voters who are frustrated with the previously popular president’s performance since he was reelected. (David D. Kirkpatrick, Call for Censure is Rallying Cry to Bush’s Base, NYT 3/16/06.) Feingold’s efforts have not been met with any marked success – far more senators voted to censure President Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky scandal than have stepped forward to support Feingold on this civil liberties issue. Why?

Cartoons, Hunting and U.S. Port Security -- 2/22/06

Sorry for the long time between posts. We were traveling and then dealing with a very sick dog.

While a number of events have taken place in the last two weeks, the three that have gotten the most air time by far are the worldwide protests about the Danish printing of cartoons depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad, the Cheney hunting accident and, most recently, the hullabaloo over the transfer of the control of six American ports from a British owned company to a company owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates.

The Danish cartoon story is a complex one, and it doesn’t really have to do with American domestic politics so I won’t cover it in any depth. It’s a good way to understand the concept of political culture we discuss in Chapter 2, however, (especially the clash between procedural societies in the west and more substantive cultures in the Arab world) and it illuminates some of what’s at stake in the melting pot versus crazy salad controversy. It also may help us think about a few issues that arise in Chapter 5 on civil liberties. One is freedom of religion. We see in the chapter (pp. 165-172) how Americans have struggled to find a balance between allowing religious freedom, but not permitting the state to establish or endorse a religion. A variation of that conundrum arises in the Danish cartoon case. Does religious freedom, with the toleration and respect that that implies, require all people to observe the strongly held religious norms and proscriptions of each religion? Another issue is freedom of the press. Does the fact that the press can print what it likes mean there are no limits on what it should print? This may not be a constitutional question, but an ethical one, that is, it raises issues not of what is legal, but of what is right. This ties into a third civil liberties issue that the Danish cartoon story raises – what is the role of self censorship in a democratic world? Revisit the discussion of free speech on campus (pp. 180-181) and ask yourself if there are any parallels between the political correctness issues raised there and the issues being debated with respect to the Danish cartoons.

About Cheney, I want to say only this. What is interesting to me from a political scientist’s perspective is the way the story developed “legs” and refused to go away despite the Vice President’s best efforts to make it do so. Lots of important stories fizzle for lack of public and media interest, and lots of trivial ones stick around forever. How come? The best analyses of this I have seen argue that it is not because what happened was of such earth-shaking importance (except, of course, to the people involved) but rather that it fit so well with the views many people already held about the Vice President, what political scientist Larry Sabato, who has studied the anatomy of such scandals, calls playing into the “subtext.” People already thought that Cheney was secretive and that he set his own rules, so his behavior over the hunting accident only reinforced that. Other than to weaken his own popularity ratings, however, there is probably minimal fallout from what Sabato calls the “feeding frenzy.”

Finally, this morning all the papers are abuzz with Bush’s declaration that he would veto any congressional legislation to halt the deal his administration has made to turn over control of 6 U.S. ports to a company owned by the United Arab Emirates. (David E. Sanger and Eric Lipton, NYT Bush Would Veto Any Bill Halting Dubai Port Deal, 2/22/06.)

Not only Democrats but many Republicans including House Speaker Denny Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist are calling on Bush to stop the deal since they fear it will endanger U.S. security to have our ports out of our control. Bush, who has not yet vetoed a bill (KTR, pp. 334-335) says he will veto one interfering with this deal and argues that Congress and the American people should trust him.

An editorial in the Washington Post (Port Security Humbug, 2/22/06) takes Bush’s side here, pointing out that the ports are already managed by a foreign-owned company (in Great Britain), that the UAE are allies, and that port security is currently and will continue to be controlled by the U.S. Coast Guard.

Nonetheless, Bush is getting clobbered by liberals and conservatives alike on this one, and in that sense he is probably reaping what he has sown. Since 9/11 he has emphasized that national security should take precedence over even such essentials to the American system as civil liberties and checks and balances. His detractors are simply using the same issue frame (a term borrowed from the media chapter, KTR p. 659) that the administration has polished over the years. He has yet to make a convincing case to the public that the port control issue does not present a case of “business as usual” trumping security concerns.

Boehner Elected as House Majority Leader -- 2/3/06

A couple of last items in a busy news week. As we noted earlier, the House Republicans held their elections Thursday to replace Tom DeLay as House Majority Leader. You can see the previous leadership in the chart on p. 295 of KTR. The leading candidate for the slot was Roy Blunt but he was beaten yesterday after two ballots by John Boehner (which, as all the papers tell you, is unexpectedly pronounced -- "BAY-ner").

The papers generally see this result as a) surprising, since Blunt was DeLay's protégé and had been telling everyone that he had the votes to win and b) a sign that Republicans are spooked by the scandals that have plagued them of late and wanted a candidate not associated with them. However, Boehner, while not part of these particular scandals, has a history of his own, when he was a part of the leadership structure under former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (see the profile in Ch. 3). And, even now, his relationship with lobbyists is, as he puts it, "cozy" but not "unethical." He seems to have been a compromise between Blunt, who promised business as usual, and a more genuinely reform candidate, John Shaddeg, who lost early on. Everybody covers this, but the two best analyses are in the WaPo, which has lots of insider details (Jim VandeHei and Shailagh Murray, Post-Abramoff Mood Shaped Vote for DeLay's Successor, 2/3/06) and the NYT (Adam Nagourney, A Cry of Concern by Republicans at Voter Unease, 2/3/06).

Also, all the papers note that the Bush administration has asked for $120 billion more for military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, $70 billion of that through 2006. That figure is not part of the $439.3 billion Defense Department budget they are requesting for 2007, a five percent increase over the previous budget; the war expenditures are funded independently. See, for example, David Cloud, $70 Billion More is Sought for Military in War Zones (NYT, 2/3/06).

Domestic Surveillance by the National Security Agency -- 1/16/06

The last of our three catch-up posts. This one is a complicated story, with lots of threads, but mostly it is about presidential power and civil liberties. In a nutshell, this is what happened. (James Bamford, The Nation: Private Lives; The Agency that Could Be Big Brother, NYT, 1/25/06--subscription required.)

In the days after September 11, 2001, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency (NSA), a part of the U.S. intelligence community (see KTR, p. 818), to conduct eavesdropping operations within the United States without first stopping to get a search warrant from a special court set up for that purpose called the FISA court (for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that established it.) 

The domestic spying came to light in a NYT article on December, 16, 2005. (James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers without Courts--subscription required.) The NYT had known about the surveillance activity for a year, but had kept quiet at the request of the Bush administration (raising a storm of questions about free speech and the role of the press in holding politicians accountable. Even the NYT's own public editor was critical. (Byron Calame,  Behind the Eavesdropping Story, a Loud Silence, 1/1/06.)  When the Times decided to publish their information, Bush accused them of aiding the forces against the United States.

Bush claims that he was empowered to bypass the step of obtaining search warrants because of the need to provide national security and that Congress had basically authorized him to do so with legislation passed immediately after 9/11. Tom Daschle, who was Senate majority leader at the time, says that the Senate specifically did not give Bush that power. (Tom Daschle, Power We Didn't Grant, WaPo, 12/23/05). Other critics of the administration, including some people in the president's own party, claim that Bush overstepped his executive authority and infringed on civil liberties of Americans who are supposed to be protected against unreasonable searches and seizures (i.e., searches without a warrant). The Senate Judiciary Committee plans to conduct hearings into the legality of Bush's authorization. (Douglas Jehl, Specter Says GOP Will Scrutinize Domestic Spying, NYT, 1/15/06.) 

As we point out in KTR (pp. 157-158), there is always a tradeoff between civil liberties and national security. We could be completely safe in a locked down state, but not very free. On the other hand, total freedom carries all sorts of dangers and security risks. Drawing the line between security and liberty is a tricky political task. We argue in the book that nonauthoritarian governments are limited in the rights they can take away because citizens in a democracy will be outraged at the loss of freedom. (Katherine Shrader, Poll: Americans Want Warrants for Spying WaPo, 1/11/06.)

Things to think about here:

Are the American citizens outraged at the loss of freedom? How do the polls say they make the tradeoff between freedom and security? Who should decide where to draw the line--the president? Congress? The courts? Public opinion?

Similarly, what obligations does the press have to inform the public (or to keep silent) about issues like this? How do we balance freedom of the press and national security?

What are the long term costs of allowing Bush the kind of strengthened executive authority he is claiming to have here? How do his actions affect checks and balance, given the other ways that the administration has acted to shore up executive authority (see KTR, pp. 319-320; 368, and also the discussion of executive power and “signing statements” in the Alito post, 1/11/06).