Fear: Keeping America Safe?

During the G.W. Bush Presidency, the master of fear was the Vice President. Dick Cheney seemed to thrive in his role as the Dark Lord of Fear. He would pop out occasionally in an interview and proceed to cast a pall over the proceedings. Never smiling and ever speaking of America under attack. Well, the batton has been passed to the next generation. While Cheney the elder is still occasionally darkening the media outlets with doom and unending scorn for the current Administration, his daughter Liz has eagerly taken over the task of keeping America cowering in the shadows.

She started by creating an organization called Keep America Safe (KAS), paired of course with a web site. The name itself hints strongly at the organization's real purpose. The name reminds me much of how now defunct East Germany used to call itself the German Democratic Republic. This was a nation that was anything but Democratic, much less a Republic, but it sounded a lot better than German Soviet Protectorate. My point is that you can name an organization or nation anything you want. There doesn't need to be any connection between terminology and reality. This is where we are with Keeping America Safe. Sounds all patriotic and noble, but the stands that this organization makes are often anything but. This is an organization that exists for one reason and it has nothing to do with keeping America safe. It exists as a mouthpiece of fear and to provide the most entrenched conservatives a steady, metronomic assault on the Obama Administration. Their Mission Statement starts out sounding reasonable.  "The mission of Keep America Safe is to provide information for concerned Americans about critical national security issues. Keep America Safe seeks to influence public policy by encouraging dialogue between American citizens and their elected representatives in order to produce legislation and executive action that enhances the national security of the United States." Which sounds great, but the next paragraph begins to tick off all the reasons America has to be scared of everything outside our front door.

This organization and Liz Cheney don't want to discuss or debate policy, this is obvious. Need a good example? How about their recent ad attacking attorneys working in the Justice Department who dared to represent Guantanamo Bay detainees, actually calling one group of them the "Al-Qaeda 7"? Let me be clear, Liz Cheney and KAS are accusing federal lawyers who counseled or defended detainees of being terrorists themselves. I'm surprised the organization didn't collapse under the weight of the colossal irony of the accusation. Think about it. KAS and Cheney are saying that lawyers counseling accused criminals/terrorists are being disloyal to America. Think about that. One of the core pillars of the US Constitution is our Judicial system. And arguably the most important tenet of our Justice system is the right to be represented by counsel. Am I the only one who thinks this is insane? By KAS's definition a lawyer representing a murderer could be accused of being an accessory to murder. See where this line of reasoning spins off the tracks? As part of what can only be called a political witch hunt, Cheney led the charge to demand information on all DoJ lawyers who ever represented detainees, then proceeded to persecute them as if she were unmasking master spies. Cheney and KAS apparently see nothing wrong with implying disloyalty and defaming the characters of Federal attorneys whose only 'crime' was upholding the most sacred traditions of America's system of Justice. It would serve them right if these attorneys filed a law suit for libel. If I were them and had any legal grounds to do so, I'd sue them to the limits of the law for attacking my reputation simply to undermine the Attorney General and the DoJ.

Need another argument? How about John Adams, one of the foremost Founding Fathers and the second President of the United States? In 1770, a confrontation in Boston turned bloody and was quickly christened the 'Boston Massacre'. The eight British soldiers charged with murder, after being unable to find a lawyer willing to defend them, asked John Adams. Though he worried about the effect it might have on his reputation, he felt strongly that these men deserved to have competent legal representation. Six of the soldiers were eventually cleared of charges and two, who did fire into the crowd, were convicted of manslaughter. Adams did this because it was the right thing to do. And it was. In actual fact, the incident was far more of an out of control gathering colliding with with panicky soldiers than any kind of 'Massacre'. But without Adams they would very likely have all been convicted out of shear vengeance. Defense lawyers are often vilified, and I admit I've done it myself, but the truth is that without them America's legal system would be far more about Conviction than Justice.

The bottom line is that Liz Cheney, like her father before her, along with the Conservative luminaries involved in 'Keeping America Safe' aren't focused on keeping America safe at all. I won't go so far as to say they don't care, as I'm sure they do, at least on some abstract level.  But if the focus was on the actual act of keeping America safe they wouldn't be tearing into the Obama Administration's anti-terror effort with such gusto. Why? Because almost nothing has changed in this policy since it was being run by the Bush Administration!!!  Yes, they are moving to close the Guantanamo Bay gulag, but even Bush talked of doing this towards the end of his term, so it's not particularly radical. There is a lot of noise related to moving the Gitmo detainees somewhere within the states, but 99% of that is purely political with no basis in logical thought. And therein lies the problem! So much of the volume is not about discussion or debate. It's about political maneuvering to hurt the opposition party and try and lay the groundwork for the next election cycle. The exact sort of thing the Bush Administration and its supporters would have called "Disloyalty" and "Treason", exactly as they did whenever they were seriously chided about Administration policies at the time. I won't cross the line and use the word Treason the way they did, but you can make a strong argument that this sort of gamesmanship has completely crossed the line. The needs of the political parties should NEVER trump the needs of the country. Yet that is what Liz Cheney, KAS and others like them are doing. While they were merciless in their attacks on anyone who dared dissent during the previous Administration, these same people see absolutely no hypocrisy in being even more publicly vicious in attacking Obama. Am I the only one sickened by this? The only one who thinks this sort of blind opportunism reprehensible? These individuals and organizations are nothing but 'fair weather' patriots. They wrap themselves in the flag and speak with reverence of the Constitution when it's convenient, then toss them in the gutter when it's not. I have no idea how much of it is pure calculated avarice and how much is simply a huge blind spot in the way they see the world. But either way they are doing anything BUT Keeping America Safe.

The Lost Art of Honesty

Since the attempted bombing of the airliner over Detroit, MI on Christmas day, a number of Republicans have risked muscle pulls running to every talk show and/or the nearest keyboard to comment to every blog and news page. What have they been saying? That's where it gets psychedelic. Most have seemed to parrot the same lines over and over, as if (insert sarcasm here) they were using the same boilerplate strategy. These luminaries, and I use the term lightheartedly in most cases, include former VP Cheney, Senator DeMint (SC), Congressman Hoekstra (MI), Congressman Peter King (NY) and Republican National Committee Chairman Steele among others.

I'll avoid another in depth examination of the hypocrisy and the truly unprofessional way Cheney has repeatedly attacked President Obama from the beginning of his term. But Cheney and the rest of these oh so vocal Republicans have found a new low. Considering the history of some of these guys, that's an accomplishment. The manner and substance of their comments are something even their most avid supporters should be up in arms about. They have regurgitated a collection of lies and hair-pin opinion reversals of staggering proportions. We're talking about verifiable lies and verifiable reversals of opinion on a nearly identical incident that occurred eight years ago.

First, according to every one of these guys, President Obama doesn't talk about terrorism enough. They seem to feel that merely speaking the word 'terrorism' acts as a sacred chant to ward off evil. They claim Obama doesn't even seem to want to use the word 'terrorism'. Uh-huh. I see. Ok, let's take a couple minutes of quick research to confirm, shall we? I'll even be fair and ignore the post Christmas day remarks.

- December 10th speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway. Terrorism, was mentioned directly twice. And this was for the Peace prize.
- December 7th remarks with Turkish Prime Minister in Oval Office. The word 'Terror' or 'Terrorist' used twelve times.
- December 1st remarks at West Point on the Afghanistan strategy. Six times.
- November 24th remarks with Indian Prime Minister in the East Room. Seven times.

Basically, anytime the President has spoken about foreign policy he has mentioned terrorism. Keep in mind that I spent less than five minutes researching this and all I did was got to the White House web site and do word searches through the President's posted speeches! It hardly takes Woodward and Bernstein to dig up this info.  And I didn't even check all of the posted transcripts for the preceding month. So this accusation is an outright lie. Obama has not stopped talking about terrorism. What he has done is stop talking in abstract terms like 'War on Terror'. This phrase, like the 'War on Drugs,' is a great slogan, but is a lousy basis for foreign policy. It's much more accurate to focus on Al-Qaida and other specific organizations. The 'War on Terror' is, like the one on drugs, unwinnable. It's a practical impossibility to catch or kill all terrorists or even all those who just want to attack America. Obama is quite correct in concentrating on the most important and achievable goal of fighting and destroying Al-Qaida and other groups like it rather than some vague, ill defined concept.

Then Obama was chided by several of these individuals for waiting so long to respond to the Christmas day attempted bombing when he didn't make a formal statement for three days following the incident. Also he was ripped for intending to prosecute Abdulmutalib in Federal Court. This is obviously a case of amnesia brought on by acute 'InTheMinoritus'. Let me refresh their memories. On December 22, 2001, Richard Reid was apprehended on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami when he attempted to set off an explosive hidden in the hollowed out bottoms of his shoes. He was arrested, tried and convicted in Federal court. He is now serving three consecutive life sentences without parole in a Federal SuperMax prison in Colorado. As you'll note from the date, this happened at the end of the first year of President Bush's first term. Reid used the same explosive that Abdulmutalib attempted to use and like the 'underwear bomber' was unable to actually get the explosive to detonate.  Explain to me why Federal court worked fine in Reid's case and faced no objections under the Bush/Cheney Administration, yet it's now considered outrageous to use it in the current and nearly identical situation? And, as to Obama's three day reaction time? Well if you want to get into that level of minutia, Bush actually waited six days to make a formal statement after the 'shoe bomber' was arrested. Does any of this make sense to anyone? The hypocrisy is so thick as to be almost a solid mass.

It's fair to question how Abdulmutalib should be treated, as it is a bit of a gray area if you look at the 'enemy combatant' definition. But to look straight faced into the camera and act shocked when eight years ago you had no problems with an almost identical situation is beginning to strain my surprise muscle. These individuals are so shameless it makes me ill. I swear that if Obama had decreed that the 'underwear bomber' be sent to Gitmo for interrogation, they would have demanded he be tried in Federal court! How do they even keep things straight with so much spin?

And in a continuation of this despicable trend we have people like Rudi Giuliani. Last Friday we had this nugget from the self styled 'terrorism expert'. "We had no domestic attacks under Bush," Giuliani said. "We've had one under Obama." Really, Rudi? Are you sure? Later, on CNN, he backpedaled. "I usually say we had no domestic attacks, no major domestic attack under President Bush since Sept. 11,  . . . I did omit the words 'since Sept. 11.' I apologize for that." Well, that's better, but you'll notice the careful use of 'domestic', then quickly narrowed even further with 'major domestic'. The reason he had to do that is because there are a whole string of incidents during Bush's tenure that were defined as terrorism, the above mentioned 'shoe bomber' being the first to come to mind. But we also have the multiple deaths from the anthrax mailings, the Muslim man who plowed his SUV into students on the UNC campus and others that all had a terrorist tone to them. Of course by pulling back so far from his original statement he has pretty much invalidated his entire point. And what's with "I usually say..."? Usually? Has he really gotten to the point where this is some scripted talking point? But Gulliani is not the first or the only one to come out with verifiable lies such as this. Back in November, former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino passionately proclaimed that "we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term in office." She even said it twice during the broadcast! Without any seeming thought to the fact that 9/11 happened on . . . September 11th, 2001, over eight months into Bush's first year in office. This sort of blinkered nostalgia that is being slathered all over the media is astonishing. It's as if the Bush years were a time of milk and honey rather than a time of sharply rising tensions, the beginning of two long and costly wars and a significant number of terrorist related incidents. Either Perino is stupid or just lacking the ability or desire to be ethical.

As I've said many times, we can differ on policies. We can argue over nuances. We can scream at each other about the correct course of action. But to actually lie and blatantly warp the facts like this is embarrassing and shows a complete lack of even the most basic ethical standards. I'm not naive. I realize that the majority of the politicians in Washington are guilty of at least some corruption and unethical behavior. What is hard to understand is this kind of transparent crap. It's especially insulting, or should be, for all the die-hard supporters of any of these men. Their supporters should be outraged to be lied to, blatantly manipulated and just generally treated like stupid lemmings who will follow wherever their 'leaders' take them. And Americans in general should not stand for it either. Sadly, I expect politicians to bend the truth, but if these guys are reduced to bold face lying they really must be out of legitimate things to rail against. My suggestion? They should just shut up unless they have something constructive to say. I suspect that would result in a long and satisfying silence.