An Ugly Lesson
The murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri and 14 others, almost certainly at the hands of Syrian agents, should serve as a wake up call to those on the left who still refuse to take the terrorist threat seriously. In
Too many on the left have convinced themselves that terrorism is a figment of right-wing imaginations. It is not. I know many reasonable people who voted for George Bush on the sole basis that they know that he takes the threat from terror seriously. Try as I might to convince my conservative friends that the Administration’s ant-terror efforts have largely made things worse, not better, even I can not go so far as to say that we would be better off with no action at all.
It is important for the loyal opposition to pay close attention to the Administration's performance in the war on terror. Where there are tactical or strategic missteps, it is our responsibility to point them out. When certain factors, such as the Administration's apparent fascination with torture, threaten the very moral fabric of our nation, then it is our duty to draw the people's attention to it.
Even so, we can never hope to regain the trust of the American people if we allow our criticism of the Administration to overwhelm our sense of the seriousness of the threat of terror. The American people have shown that they desire strong leadership on this issue, and the Democratic party has done very little to demonstrate that it is worthy of our trust. It is time for Democratic leaders to devote at least as much energy to developing a positive vision for defeating terror as they are wasting developing negative attacks on the administration.
- posted by Simon Marcus @ Tuesday, February 15, 2005
I am going to begin by saying that you are absolutely right that every administration makes mistakes and this is an important point for the loyal opposition to keep in mind during war time: we need to give the President the room and support necessary to be successful, as long as his overall approach is well organized and strategically sound.
However, you are wrong to say that I focus on small tactical mistakes. From the moment it became clear that Bush was intent on waging war in Iraq I considered it to be a huge strategic error, and I stand by that belief today. You have read my feelings about this at length, so I will not bother repeating them yet again. This is also the case with the Bush administration's decision to use warlords to wage war in Afghanistan instead of American troops, allowing Osama Bin Ladin and thousands of other terrorists to live to fight another day. These have been strategic failures on a monumental scale, with radical implications for our long-term security.
I also agree with you that any administration facing a terrorist threat would be remiss not to investigate the legal and tactical implications of torture as a method for fighting terror.
The fact is, however, that this administration has poured a tremendous amount of time and energy into "testing" the legal boundaries of torture, despite the fact that, as near as I can tell, the intelligence community is essentially united in agreement behind the fact that torture is unproductive and degrading to both morality and morale within its ranks. For more on this, see recent articles by Mark Bowden (a Bush supporter).
What is more, the focus on torture has become a major strategic problem, as tortured individuals return to their home nations to stoke increased anti-American sentiment.
I am not at all certain that Donald Rumsfeld did not set Aby Ghraib policies from the Pentagon, I think that there is a growing mound of evidence that he very may have.
Regardless of where the policy came from, I do not believe there is any other better example of the operational incompetence of this administration than their handling of Abu Ghraib. As I have noted before, here was a prison that was a center piece in Sadaam's monstrous torture network. Any half-way competent middle manager assess possible threats to his goals and does his best to neutralize them. Any half-way competent middle manager, then, would have identified this prison as a major hot-point in the post-Sadaam era, and done everything possible to ensure that this symbol of the horror of the Sadaam era was neutralized as a factor in the success of our venture there. If Rumsfeld was not setting prisoner policy for Abu Ghraib then he was terrifically negligent.
I have taken the time to refute your claim that I focus on "small tactical errors," however, the fact remains that I am much more interested in thinking about workable alternatives to the Bush approach, something that I hope to post more on in the near future.
I must address one rhetorical approach that you rely on again and again. This habit you have of belittling my comments by suggesting that I am somehow unequal to questioning the motives or tactics of my "betters," or by suggesting that I "fancy myself" this or that is getting very tired indeed.
Am I to believe that, If 130,000 votes had shifted columns in Ohio, you would have stood firmly behind John Kerry's approach to the terror problem? Of course you wouldn't have. You would have devoted yourself to undermining him in every manner at your disposal, as would everyone else on the right.
I apologize that I do not subscribe the intellectually lazy, "with us or against us," world-view that is so much in vogue right now, and that, sadly, seems to inform so much of your thinking these days.
I never hesitate to point out the administration's successes, as I did on these pages as recently as three days ago when I commended their approaches to the Israel problem and the North Korea problem. It is a wonder to me that so many on the right have succumbed to the false but easy comfort of this black- versus-white world view, it surprises me in particular that you have fallen so solidly into their ranks.
<< Home
