Bush: confirm-Mukasey-we’re-at-war.
Yesterday President Bush invited reporters into the Oval Office for a preview of a speech he gave later that day at the Heritage Foundation. He’s annoyed by how long the Mukasey confirmation is taking. Implying that the United States is at risk in the “war on terror” while operating without an attorney general, Bush again took the opportunity to remind us that “we’re at war.” Apparently operations in Iraq and Afghanistan can’t continue unless the acting attorney general is replaced with an official one. Or perhaps the president is wondering how he’s going to justify his “enhanced interrogation” program without an attorney general to provide legal cover.
The president was repeatedly asked about waterboarding, and he gave the tired response he and his people have been offering for far too long:
Q What is your own view about waterboarding?
THE PRESIDENT: I’m not going to talk about techniques. There is an enemy
out there. I don’t want them to understand — to be able to adjust one way
or the other. My view is this: The American people have got to understand
the program is important and the techniques used are within the law, and
members of the House and Senate know what I’m talking about, they have been
fully briefed.
Sorry, but if the president is being honest here (and I have my doubts), he is radically underestimating Al Qaeda. Like anyone who reads newspapers or has Internet access, Islamic terrorists know that the United States has authorized waterboarding (PDF). The enemy may be crazy, but they’re not dumb. So why pretend we’re up against half-wits instead of the cunning enemy we really face? Because the administration knows that admitting to waterboarding is admitting to torture, and torture is against international and U.S. law.
Grant:
Great take on the President’s disingenuousness and on the fact that Al Qaida is a cunning enemy. I think, however, that you may be implicitly conceding the rhetoric about being at war and the necessity of said war. Rather than abate terrorism, as the Rand Corp. has continued to show, we are radicalizing a whole generation of Muslims, especially Arabic Muslims.
The fundamental question, therefore, remains whether this so-called and nebulous “war on terror” is a good idea. Most U.S. citizens feel it is not.
It is shocking how Bush has used 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to as tools to get whatever he wants.
Below is a link to an interesting bit of commentary on the issue of Mukasey’s unwillingness to say waterboarding is torture. Briefly, it’s not (he says) that it would put at risk of prosecution the people within our government who have previously authorized waterboarding and used it in the “interrogation” of detainees. They have some kind of immunity. It’s that everybody knows waterboarding is torture and that the United States has employed it, and Mukasey would be saying that Bush, Cheney, and anyone else in the administration who claims the United States doesn’t torture are liars
It seems to me that waterboarding is so clearly torture that to say, as Mukasey has, “If waterboarding is torture, then it’s illegal,” is much like saying, “If applying electricals shocks to the genitals is torture, then it is illegal.” The only possible motive, it seems to me, is to declare that the administration gets to define what is and isn’t torture, and whatever technique it wants to use will be defined as not being torture . . . . because the United States doesn’t torture.
I would vote against Mukasey.
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/11/judge-mukasey-and-groucho-marx.html
Scott: I don’t think Commonweal has ever run the phrase “war on terror” without enclosing it in quotation marks. I’ve never endorsed the president’s definition or execution of the “war on terror.” That said, I do think we face a grave threat in the form of Islamist terrorists–that’s part of why I find his policies so disastrous. They have imperiled the United States.
By playing the fear card in a highly partisan fashion before his choir, Bush only undermines his own argument in the general ;ublic.
What’s sad is that we truly need new and strong leadership in the AG’s office. The nominee has some real assets, but he needs to have a strong independence streak that Gonzalez sorely lacked – and the torture matter is a clear indication of how independent her could be.
I never thought a president of the US would ignore the Geneva Convention. Just on that ground he should have been impeached. There seems nary a word on torture from the Ethics and Public Policy Center except to defend Blackwater. http://www.eppc.org/ You can’t evil google ‘torture”on that site.These are the magisterium’s leading Catholics, who show little mea culpa for supporting the Iraq war. The EPPC is almost interchangeable with former or future Bush administration workers.
Let the Senator know you support him opposing the nomination.
Senator Charles Schumer
Phone: 202-224-6542
UPDATE: Bush again today declared that Mukasey had to be confirmed to protect the country from terrorism. He is playing this fear card again, and if anyone doubt that it is a fraudulent–as well as base tactic, check out the WaPo’s front-page story from yesterday on Runmsfeld’s “snowflakes”–the jotted memos that he sent out by the dozen every day while in office.
The memos are extraordinary in their bald-faced effort to manipulate the public by using scare tactics.
Read all about it: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/31/AR2007103103095.html
Scoitt:
Are you so certain that Americans oppose the War on Terror itself? Americans tend to support successfuyl military action and oppose only unsuccessful wars … thus, the invasion of Iraq was quite popular when things were going well, and only became unpopular once the insurgency picked up and the American body count started to rise.
Also, the War on Terror includes our actions in Afghanistan where the Taliban had given Al Quaeda the sanctuary and state support (palces for training camps, access to passports, etc.) that enabled them to grow and travel. There ought to be no question about allowing the Taliban ever to regain power in Afghanistan–something that isn;t all that hard to achieve. While the Taliban is hiding in the mountains and conducting hit-and-run attacks they are hard to pin down and destroy, but if they ever actually seize and hold territory, that territory can then be attacked by coalition forces (if the Taliban seizes a town, we then have a target easy to bomb).
Also, regarding the Rand studies you mention, does anyone truly believe that the insurgents/militants/terrorists are really otherwise nice and peaceful Muslims who–barring America’s actions in Iraq–would have stayed at home building better lives for their families and their countries? Certainly not–these are truly evil people for whom the violent ideology of militant islam is the attraction, not any actions on our part. Remember: there were no US troops in Iraq or Afghanistan when militant muslims attacked the Khobar towers, the USS Cole, the African embassies, or when they planned and exectued the Sept. 11 attacks … and as far as radicalizing Muslims, do not forget that a frighteningly large number of Muslims (according to every poll on the subject) still refuse to believe that Muslims carried out the Sept. 11 attacks–they think it was done by the CIA and Mossad and are unwilling to accept reality.
Look at how every minor slight–carttons, speeches, false stories about the Koran–causes Muslims around the world to react with an insane level of violence. In all truth, if it wasn’t Iraq, it would likely be something else that set them off. Fortunately, we are now aware of their potential for violence, and should never be caught offguard again as we were in 2001.
Robert said: “Also, regarding the Rand studies you mention, does anyone truly believe that the insurgents/militants/terrorists are really otherwise nice and peaceful Muslims who–barring America’s actions in Iraq–would have stayed at home building better lives for their families and their countries? Certainly not–these are truly evil people for whom the violent ideology of militant Islam is the attraction, not any actions on our part. Remember: there were no US troops in Iraq or Afghanistan when militant Muslims attacked the Khobar towers, the USS Cole, the African embassies, or when they planned and executed the Sept. 11 attacks … and as far as radicalizing Muslims, do not forget that a frighteningly large number of Muslims (according to every poll on the subject) still refuse to believe that Muslims carried out the Sept. 11 attacks–they think it was done by the CIA and Mossad and are unwilling to accept reality.”
Do you think that “the violent ideology of militant Islam” sprang from nowhere? That it is a reaction to nothing? That a bunch of Muslims just go together and made it up out of nothing?
Al Qaeda has said very clearly where they came from. They didn’t like the US building military bases in Saudi Arabia. This to them was the last straw from older grievances that include the treatment of Palestinians in the Middle East and our support for Israel. You may think that they are unjustified in reacting against these things, but you can’t really say that they are not reacting to anything, unless you are arguing that they are making up these statements and that they are really reacting to nothing.
Your argument that there were Islamic radicals before Iraq and that this proves that Iraq is not producing Islamic radicals is simply silly.
Your statement about the “frighteningly large number” is also silly, since if you have been looking at these polls you will also know that a frighteningly large number of Americans think that 9/11 was caused by the US government too. Or is it different when Americans believe nonsense?
Robert said: “Look at how every minor slight–cartoons, speeches, false stories about the Koran–causes Muslims around the world to react with an insane level of violence. In all truth, if it wasn’t Iraq, it would likely be something else that set them off. Fortunately, we are now aware of their potential for violence, and should never be caught off guard again as we were in 2001.”
Lots of hyperbole here. Those crazy emotional Muslims, right? Can’t reason with them, I guess.
Islam did not go through the Reformation like we did and they have not secularized in the way the West has. Since your own Church is still debating the question of whether secularization is a good idea, you might want to think about what we would be doing in similar circumstances if we had not gone through the Reformation and had secularized. We both know of Catholic groups that react quite loudly to even minor slights that they perceive against the Church. Or if you want a parallel closer to home, I don’t see all that difference between some radical Muslim talking about the evil West and some radical American nationalist talking about both the evil Muslims and the evil West.
Just as an aside, the Pope is supposed to meet with the King of Saudi Arabia on Tuesday. I think there’s real statesmanship going on in the Vatican these days. (Probably not the American strong suit at the moment, though.)
Thanks, Grant. My post was poorly written I didn’t mean to chuck an undeserved rock. Commonweal has been outstanding in this regard. Like you, I feel that it can’t be emphasized enough that approaching the current world situation vis-a-vis terrorism as a “war” is a catastrophic miscalculation.
As to Kathy’s observation: American diplomacy is at is nadir. Whoever the next President is s/he will more than four years of work ahead rebuilding alliances and reestablishing U.S. credibility.