Moderation v. Extremism–Continued

It’s true, as Brooks writes, that some of Cheney’s overreach was a result of understandable panic after the 9/11 attacks.
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Well, maybe, just as it’s understandable, in the sense of being comprehensible, why Germans resented Jews in the 1930s. But that’s no excuse.
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We elect leaders to respond like statesmen to difficulty and tragedy (and to prevent it in the first place). Cheney was, and is, a panicked little boy hiding behind a bully’s veneer.

abetted by the President’s lack of interest or mortal dimness.
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Joe,
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Don’t you mean “MORAL dimness”? Because what happened is most definitely a moral failure on his part.

Opinion shaping, crossing the political spectrum from the right to the far right.

Kudos for this entry.
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Viewing the world through the particular lens I do means that I’m still very concerned about the ‘fifth” category of prisoner that Obama referenced in his speech. After all, by definition, if someone can’t be tried for any crimes but can’t be released because they are dangerous then they are in essence, being held for their thoughts.
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The distopian possibilities are endless.
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You also mention a very important item that everyone seems to be forgetting. Many of the worst BushCo abuses were gradually rolled back as time went on. I am curious as to how tightly the timeline between our discontinuing the waterboarding and Jack Goldsmith’s rescinding of the Yoo memo’s correspond. It strikes me as an underexplored connection.
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In short, I’m very concerned that Obama is continuing a very specific policy that is legally indefensible, I’m very curious how he’s going to go about creating a legal framework for it, and I see the potential for future abuse as a BIG problem. But I agree wholeheartedly that to use these concernes for a basis to claim that Obama is no different than Bush is to descend into utter idiocy.

RE: Cheney –

Q: What do you call a person whose primary motivator is fear?

A: A coward.
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afguy: Either one works. Bush was certainly morally dim in extremis, but “mortal” in the sense of “fatally injuring” would apply to his cluelessness as well.

Cheney’s twisted belief that the Constitution confers on the President near-dictatorial powers, especially in a time of war.
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Actually, having been around during Watergate, I think Cheney believed that the President had those powers ALL OF THE TIME. The war was just a convenient rationale for trying to recover those that (in his opinion) had been improperly taken away as a result of Watergate.
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Cheney haa always had the same beliefs that Nixon was unwise enough to state explicitly in his interview with David Frost.

Either one works. Bush was certainly morally dim in extremis, but “mortal” in the sense of “fatally injuring” would apply to his cluelessness as well.
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FlownOver,
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Point taken. Thanks.

I try to cut Obama some slack by remembering that while I know that Cheney and Bush f*cked things up, I don’t know just how badly they f*cked things up. I’d like to see both of them, and their henchmen, dangling from gallows (and I mean that literally), but Obama is probably doing a better job than I would of actually fixing the country.
Still, it’s frustrating to see justice not done. It’s also a little embarrassing
to find a smarmy creep like David Brooks sounding sensible (although I agree with Elvis that the “understandable panic” excuse is BS).

PD:
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I’ve ben conflicted about this new (or, rather, continued) approach, but there’s this: We convict and confine people for conspiracy to do harm rather than waiting until after it’s done – if we have sufficient proof of a single individual’s intent to do harm should we be precluded from acting, solely because there is no agreement with another to take the harmful action? The proof must be something more than the vision of some precog in a sensory dep tank, but if someone persists in making threats to do harm should we be prohibited from letting him carry out an otherwise-credible threat?
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And yes, I know, in the wrong hands there’s a massive potential for abuse of such a power. Still, you just don’t let a guy loose if he’s vowing to blow up a hospital and has access to the means to do it.
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I’m pretty sure the ACLU will want my card back. Also.

Oops. “Make that “prohibited from preventing…”
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It’s early yet, and the caffeine is just kicking in.

@FO,
I keep thinking that one of the easier ways out of the dilema would be to go ahead and declare war. The fact that we rely on AUMF’s which don’t adequately specify who our enemies might be or what a cessation of hostilities might look like is a big reason why this legal limbo exists.
War cheerleaders keep comparing Guantanomo detainees to spies in WWII but the fact of the matter is that ‘Nation States’ and uniforms are themselves artificial constructs and that the actual organizion of the political world is changing faster than our traditions can keep up with.
Add to that all the irrationality around phrases like “sworn enemies” and the degree to which other people’s presumed mental states are used to justify their wholesale slaughter and it starts to become clear just what a maze through a minefield that Obama has indeed inherited.

Leftist loon Klein asserts: “… doing far too much, too brutally–in a way that only creates more terrorists–a path that Cheney pursued to our great national detriment.”

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“[C]reates more terrorists”? Will Klein and Time magazine be providing any evidence to support that allegation? The numbers of alleged “create[d]” “terrorists”? The names and locations of the alleged “create[d]” “terrorists”? Does anyone at Time magazine know what evidence is? The clueless, feminized, anti-military community organizer made the same boilerplate allegation yesterday in his latest “America Sucks and We Must Appease the Terrorists” speech.

it is easy to forget that the war on terror is not against the Americans only. If only some people can pull the cloud of egos off their face and work things out for the security of everybody.
oh i forgot thats being a socialist. lmao

re: Paul Dirks Says:
Friday, May 22, 2009 at 10:31 am

I keep thinking that one of the easier ways out of the dilema would be to go ahead and declare war.

Yeah, but, against whom would we be declaring war ? That debate, well, actually more at discussion, since RWers generally don’t debate, was carried out early on in our little adventures post-9/11. Declaring war against an idea, or ‘terrorism’, is simply wingnutty.

Declaring war against an idea, or ‘terrorism’, is simply wingnutty.
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Which is why having collected POW’s in said ‘wingnutty’ AKA non-existent war is now a huge problem.

Let’s all sit around and talk about how bad we hate Bush and Cheney. The rest of the world is out looking for jobs, so let’s sit in our offices and run our gobs the live-long day while re-hashing the same garbage over and over.

I had a 12 oz authoritarian steak for dinner last night. It was indeed profound. So on that matter Cheney’s right.

No, jacksonsheppard, I have a better idea– let’s talk about people talking about foreign policy! Wheee!

…and just like that, the high sheriffs fix the typo. I kinda liked it the old way.

Excellent job, JK. Two additional points:

Nearly simultaneously with accusing everyone else of hypocrisy by using language Cheney disagrees with, he also insists on calling torture ‘enhanced interrogation techniques.’ In other words, euphemisms are OK if they serve the fascist neocon cause, otherwise, they help the terrorists win.

Second, everyone needs to understand exactly what drove Cheney insane. 9-11 WAS ALL HIS FAULT. Dealing with A-Q and OBL et al was explicitly delegated to him by Bush in early ’01, and Cheney put it off, focusing instead on his still-secret energy meetings, despite the ‘hair on fire’ warnings from Tenet and Clarke leading to the presidential briefing of August 6. Granted the buck stops with C Plus Augustus, still, if you delegate a thing to the #2 executive, and they do nothing and it blows up, the strongest argument is that the #2 guy is responsible. Cheney should have resigned on 9-12, period. The record on this is crystal clear and it is beyond opinion.

I once saw Barak Obama jump through a brick wall. Honestly, didn’t even wrinkle his Dockers. Just jumped through the thing like hot butter…if you were to build a wall of hot butter that is. God, that would be difficult to build, a wall of hot butter.

But for truly legal arguments about detention and applicable legal processes (which are best left to Constitutional lawyers), the basic Obama v Cheney debate is only a continuation of the age-old scuffle over the nature of man. Obama and his acolytes believe that mans’ benign nature will triumph when his surroundings are made pleasant. Cheney and many older Americans hold a less optimistic view of human potential.

Like President Obama, many of those who blame George Bush and Gitmo for our standing in the world also blame white Anglo-Saxon protestant cartography, country clubs and widespread caloric adequacy in the U.S. for all human misery, including Islamist rage. As Professor Churchill and Rev. Wright said even more colorfully than has the President, Caucasians deserve the chickens that are coming home to roost.

Muslim fanatics who killed thousands of Americans and their employees across the world for the 30 years prior to September 11, 2001 did not do so because we invaded Iraq or because Gitmo held detainees. Terrorists, common criminals (and elected officials) who have done harm to our lives and property did so (and will do so again) because they chose to do so rather than because George Bush and Gitmo weren’t as nice as is Barack Obama and….Gitmo?

Joe Klein:
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It’s true, as Brooks writes, that some of Cheney’s overreach was a result of understandable panic after the 9/11 attacks.
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Understandable because that’s why the American people elect tough, hard-nosed, strong on national security leadership –so that such iron-jawed leaders panic when we’re attacked?
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Don’t you really mean that it’s “understandable” because you, Brooks, Ignatius and the rest of the Village all simultaneously wet your pants?
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Don’t you really mean to say that it’s understandable because you people panicked…while the rest of us who live in Manhattan got up, got coffee from the Egyptian (Muslim) guys in our delis as usual, and then got to work?
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You may remember a time of “understandable panic”, Joe Klein, because you weren’t amongst the folks like us lower Manhattanites who were saying hello to each other on the street, looking warily at the sky and going about our business with quiet resolve. You may remember pervasive cowardice amongst your set of acquaintances, but I remember a relatively brief time of shock, and then a substantial time of determined normality, when folks like us somehow got it into our heads that situations like these required ordinary people to be patient, care about our neighbor, and try our best to do our duty to be as brave as we can be.
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Despite Brooks’ desperate desires, it’s simply not “true” that Cheney’s post-9/11 bed-wetting is “understandable”, except in the sense that it’s comprehensible that, when the American people elect cowardly and corrupt fools to run their government, that’s what kind of behavior we can expect. It’s also not “true”, in as much as Brooks assumes a strangely un-conservative belief in government bureaucrat Cheney’s immaculate good faith, and doesn’t seem to consider the obviously plausible notion that “Cheney’s overreach” might be truly understandable in terms of rank ideology and opportunism.
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To examine such theories questioning the motives of elite leadership might undermine confidence in the system of leadership as a whole, though, right? Is that why it’s far, far better to admit that, while the citizens of New York put on their Battle of Britain faces, our elites in government and political media proved themselves to be shamefully acquiescent in Cheney’s assumption of illegal and dictatorial authority as “a result of understandable panic after the 9/11 attacks“, Joe Klein?

When did George Will start commenting here?

It has never been the case that “Obama and his acolytes believe that mans’ benign nature will triumph when his surroundings are made pleasant.” Obama’s just savvy enough to realize there’s no uniformity to human nature – we need to encourage the better behavior and deter the worse. It’s Bush and his misanthropic brain trust that foolishly – and criminally – tried to impose a simplistic “Kick ‘em in the nads” approach to nearly every issue.

I don’t if I should be embarrassed about not following the links before commenting or congratulating myself for commenting on-topic when I didn’t know what the topic was…..

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=1e733cac-c273-48e5-9140-80443ed1f5e2&p=1

textee raises a good point: “[C]reates more terrorists”? Will Klein and Time magazine be providing any evidence to support that allegation? The numbers of alleged “create[d]” “terrorists”?

I can’t think of any such evidence I have come across. There was a study a while back saying Iraq war did actually increase the security risk to America instead of making us safer. But I would accept the claim of a connection between use of torture and fanning the flames of anti-Americansim as at least credible at first glance. One could argue that standing with the recognized precepts of international law is not only in line with our core values indeed but is also a good PR move. The war on terror is on some level also a propaganda war.

…………”[C]reates more terrorists”? Will Klein and Time magazine be providing any evidence to support that allegation?
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During the May 21 edition of Fox News’ Hannity, conservative columnist Ann Coulter asserted that “all liberals are saying … that Guantánamo has served as a recruiting tool for terrorists,” but “they certainly have no evidence for it.” In fact, military and FBI interrogators have stated that terrorists have successfully used the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as a recruiting device, and at least two reports have reached the same conclusion.
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For instance, using the pseudonym Matthew Alexander, an Air Force senior interrogator who was in Iraq in 2006 wrote: “I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq.”
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Moreover, as the blog Think Progress noted, in June 17, 2008, testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Alberto Mora, former Navy general counsel, said: “[T]here are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq — as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat — are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.”
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Indeed, the Center for Strategic & International Studies concluded in a September 2008 study that “the United States has been damaged by Guantánamo beyond any immediate security benefits. Our enemies have achieved a propaganda windfall that enables recruitment to violence, while our friends have found it more difficult to cooperate with us.”
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Further, a June 17, 2008, McClatchy Newspapers article reported, “A McClatchy investigation found that instead of confining terrorists, Guantanamo often produced more of them by rounding up common criminals, conscripts, low-level foot soldiers and men with no allegiance to radical Islam — thus inspiring a deep hatred of the United States in them — and then housing them in cells next to radical Islamists.”
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http://mediamatters.org/research/200905220006

rmrd
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Great counterpoint. But you do realize that textee will never accept an argument based on facts, even those facts that it asked for, right?

Bravo, SZ!
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Worth repeating:
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Don’t you really mean that it’s “understandable” because you, Brooks, Ignatius and the rest of the Village all simultaneously wet your pants?
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[snip]
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You may remember a time of “understandable panic”, Joe Klein, because you weren’t amongst the folks like us lower Manhattanites who were saying hello to each other on the street, looking warily at the sky and going about our business with quiet resolve. You may remember pervasive cowardice amongst your set of acquaintances, but I remember a relatively brief time of shock, and then a substantial time of determined normality, when folks like us somehow got it into our heads that situations like these required ordinary people to be patient, care about our neighbor, and try our best to do our duty to be as brave as we can be.
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Cheney is the ultimate bedwetter, but it’s teh Serious People of the MSM who really let us down, because they never said boo.

History is holding all the cards. It will tell you mr Klein who is a leader and who is a Jimmy carter.
Don’t forget that Bush and Cheney (who, is intelligently attacking Obama flatout)are rising in the polls, which is leaving you leftists in panic.

Joaquim,
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Jimmy Carter? Seriously? That’s your best argument?
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Being accused of panic by a panic-monger is so tautological.
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But thanks for for playing!

leaving you leftists in panic
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You mean leaving centrists like Joe Klein in panic.

Don’t forget that Bush and Cheney (who, is intelligently attacking Obama flatout)are rising in the polls

SZ, Derek and some others might call me a “spineless cenrist”, but I want to say that I think President Obama was right on target with his speech. He spoke to me and probably many tens of millions other Americans within one standard deviation of the political center of the country.

I appreciated President Obama’s thoughtful analyisis and the details he provided regarding each group of detainees. I gained additional confidence that this administration is a “thinking” administration and that makes me content, even if I don’t agree with every decision.

I have voted for the Republican candidate for president in every election since 1976 (except I voted for Ross Perot in 1992 and I did’t vote as an act of rebellion in 2008), but I am extremely comfortable with President Obama and his approach to governing. I think we have a competent administration and that makes me happy.

Joe’s title was “Moderation vs. Extremism” and I am in full support of moderation. I enjoy reading the comments on Swampland, but some of the more left wing commenters are almost as extreme as the right wing commenters. I’m not looking for some sort of Centrist Party, but we should be grateful for what I think will be an outstanding presidency if President Obama continues the way he has started.

OT, except possibly one of those signs that extremism is waning, Limbaugh is wrong, and that Powell is right:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/05/22/mississippi.black.mayor/index.html
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This is the single best example I’ve seen…

Bush and Cheney are rising in the polls huh? Which office would they be seeking?
Intelligently attacking Obama? The blue words that turn your cursor into a hand are called “links”. I suggest you click on the one above that says “reports” after the word McClatchy.
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Not as though knowing all the facts are a prerequisite for acting like you know all the facts, but whatever.

moderatelyinterested:
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I think this is what Obama is really strategizing for. I think that his “liberal” social agenda is in response to the seriousness of the times with health care and the economy.
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Foreign policy is more remote and theoretical, I think, and tends to attract lots of ideological interest. The problem is just what is in “American interests” and some will think that it’s the promoting of democracy* by any means necessary. Others are more pragmatic saying we should do what gets us the biggest bang for our efforts.
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The problem is that a flexible policy like Obamas’ is often called “flip flopping” or any number of other negatives, and it really shouldn’t be characterized that way.
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*in this sense, it’s pretty much code words for setting up pro-US governments. For a great overview of how the right sees it, see:http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm

“But the real problem, as evidenced by the Vice President’s actions in other areas (like environmental policy), was Cheney’s twisted belief that the Constitution confers on the President near-dictatorial powers, especially in a time of war. Cheney’s profound authoritarian streak, and his moral ignorance, were demonstrated once again in his speech yesterday:
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In the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground and half-measures leave you half-exposed.
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Which is utter nonsense, of course: the middle ground exists between doing nothing and doing far too much, too brutally–in a way that only creates more terrorists–a path that Cheney pursued to our great national detriment. (Add: Cheney’s speech also contained his usual heaping ration of lies and distortions, as McClatchy reports today.)”
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stuartzechman is exactly right, you are excusing your own pussilanemousness when you talk about “understandable panic”, not Dick Cheney’s paranoid sadomasochism but your own failure to recognize who and what was running the country both before and after 9/11. The DFHs were telling everyone who would listen but, once again, you refused to listen. I understand how maddening it is to know that these people are just plain smarter than you are, even in your own field of supposed expertise and with all of your self-inflating high-level access, but the plain fact is that they have been saying what you’ve just discovered for more then eight years.

Let’s all sit around and talk about how bad we hate Bush and Cheney. The rest of the world is out looking for jobs, so let’s sit in our offices and run our gobs the live-long day while re-hashing the same garbage over and over.
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All right, everyone, pack it in. Jackson Sheppard doesn’t approve of all this sitting around, jawing all the livelong day.

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Dam Froomkin on Cheney and his campaign for torture.
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This link is just as important as the McClatchy review. While McClatchy reviewed the lies and distortions in Cheney’s speech, Dan Froomkin looks at where we’ve been and what Cheney is trying to achieve.
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Five years later, they’re still at it, with former vice president Dick Cheney waging a clever campaign that would have the debate over government-sanctioned torture turn on what techniques were employed at the CIA’s secret prison — and whether they “worked.” But the national debate should be a much broader one, as there is an ever-growing body of evidence definitively linking decisions made by Bush and Cheney not just to the torture at the CIA’s black sites, but to the pervasive, inhumane treatment of detainees – many of whom were utterly innocent — at prison facilities such as Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and Guantanamo as well.
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run our gobs
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Tell me, where are these racing sailors of ours, and how may I join them?

If we launch a nuclear strike at the Verizon ad, maybe it will knock over the Borgen project.

Also.

Should I take advice from a self-described “moderate” who voted for G.W. Bush both times about where the political center is in this country?
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No.
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Also.
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I guess at 60, I’m getting old, as I tend to try and view things in simple ways. I read everyone’s comments and am delighted with the depth of analysis in them, throwing out the extremes on both ends of the political spectrum, of course. To me, W would not have even been President, if not for dad and his influence. He certainly did not have the intelligence for the job. Darth Vader was the mover and shaker, at least for the first term.
I, with some hesitation, believe Obama has been right, to date, on everything he has done, even though I would have done some things differently. Yes, Guantanimo needs to be quickly closed. No, we should not have military tribunals. Try them under our laws. If they are found not guilty, ship them back to their home country. If we find them acting against our interests in the future, just shoot them and be done with them. That way, no unlawful detentions, etc.
On torture — It is morally wrong under all circumstances. It is illegal, both under US law as well as International law, and also is against our treaty obligations. Black and white law. Period. Investigate. Prosecute. Punish. Simple.

moderatelyinterested:
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Thanks so much for taking the time to respond.
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[Obama] spoke to me and probably many tens of millions other Americans within one standard deviation of the political center of the country.
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While there are, no doubt, many tens of millions of Americans that feel comfortable politically leaning the right of, say, Rachel Maddow, there are just as many tens of millions who are right there with her. We are not a minority in this country –far from it. We are the tens of millions who have been marginalized by a centrist-centric politics and political media that unfortunately treats low-information, low-engagement, maybe-likely voters (who have no other perspective other than “moderation” just “sounding right” to them) like the holy electoral grail. We were the people who said to each other in offices and over dinner tables “Hey, I don’t know about this Iraq thing. It sounds like they’re cooking something up, and everybody’s just going along with it. This looks bad.”
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There are tens of millions of leftists, tens of millions of centrists and tens of millions of rightists in this country. Given the economic and foreign policy deterioration in this country, the policies we on the left have been advocating –what “sounds right” to us– for the past eight years (in almost total media darkness) look pretty good to even more folks these days. An alliance with one side is necessary for centrists to have any democratically legitimate political power at all. How did that “Bush is a good guy” and “Cheney knows what he’s doing” alliance with the rightists work out for centrists? You folks got way more than you bargained for, didn’t you?
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I gained additional confidence that this administration is a “thinking” administration and that makes me content, even if I don’t agree with every decision.
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The thing is, we’re not content. We have goals beyond minimally competent government. The rightists are correct, in as much as they (inconsistently) declare that we have a duty as citizens not to assume that the state –even if the people we like are in charge– is doing the right thing. This is an enormous bureaucracy with a gigantic impact on all of our lives (and a track record of miserable failure over the past decade), and if that the guy at the top inspires confidence is good enough for you, that’s super, but there are a lot of other folks who think that the government should actually do things that benefit their lives –by staying out or helping out, whichever is best. Didn’t George W inspire confidence in you, too? Isn’t it about time we didn’t use “inspire confidence” as a measure of leadership, and looked at results instead?
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Joe’s title was “Moderation vs. Extremism” and I am in full support of moderation. I enjoy reading the comments on Swampland, but some of the more left wing commenters are almost as extreme as the right wing commenters. I’m not looking for some sort of Centrist Party…
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Well, moderatelyinterested…here’s the thing: you actually do have “some sort of Centrist Party” –it’s called “The Village” by us on the left, and if there were an officially acknowledged name for it, it would be “The Washington Political-Media-Corporate-Military-Financial Establishment”. The prime tenet of this party’s ideology is that ordinary people in the rest of the country –left or right– are incapable of making good decisions for the country, and so the people’s will must be “moderated” by this set of elite institutions for everything to be in “balance”. As it happens, these people enjoy the fruits of that elite power greatly, and have turned into a sort of courtier-class that stands in the way of real, American democratic impulses.
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Do you really think that Americans are against the government providing access to quality, affordable health care to everyone? Of course we’re not.
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The thing is, “moderation” with respect to the goal of providing access to quality, affordable health care is not pragmatism, except in the political sense of the word. It’s not that “moderation” produces the best results for Americans, it’s that moderation feels comfortable a lot of the time, especially to those that are easily frightened of change. For people who think that things are going badly, for people whose lives are in crisis along with the country’s economy, for people who really do want things to change for the better, “moderate” adjustment are simply not the most reasonable course of action. For elites, power to change in the hands of ordinary people –left or right– is dangerous, and therefore always to be labeled “extreme”. For the people who populate the Beltway, “moderation” means they can count on still doing business as usual.
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The thing is, though, that there is a centrist ideology that is in many ways more frightened of people-directed change than even arch-conservatives are. This is the ideology that always declares “The truth lies in the middle somewhere!” even if that’s patently absurd –and the least pragmatic course. For these people, it means that the solution to the leftists calling for a bridge to be built, and the rightists calling for no bridge to be built is to call for half a bridge to be built, magnanimously congratulate themselves on their glorious compromise, and tell all the people who think that the situation is idiotic to shut up and go back to their little homes –and to take their “extreme” opinions on getting across the river in order to show up for work with them.
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We’ve been right about health care for decades, just as we were right about Social Security decades before that. We’ve been right about equality, as we have been for decades. We’re right about progress –we want it. We’re right about individual liberty, which is why we’re called “liberals”. We do not trust the government, we want the government to work for us. We were right about the Iraq war, about distrusting the Bush Administration, about the farcical Clinton impeachment, about the dangerous instability of our financial system, about evolution, about climate change, about abstinence-only education, about…well, a lot. If we had been proven as factually, empirically wrong as the rightist and centrist coalition have been proven over the past decade, then maybe it would be prudent for us to consider moderating our views. Perhaps centrists might consider moderating their perspectives, given the disaster they’ve helped the rightists put the country in.
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…but we should be grateful for what I think will be an outstanding presidency if President Obama continues the way he has started.
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I’m not sure what you mean. If Obama continues the way he has started, with half-measures, compromises and reversals, this will be a better presidency that Bush II’s, but not the New Deal II that the country is desperate for. My future criticism isn’t predicated on getting his every bridge built in four years that people on my side demand, but on Obama not leaving a legacy of half-built bridges for the American people to travel on.
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Thanks for reading and considering this, moderatelyinterested.

Joe got chased up the hack tree by the dirty hippies in his mind, fell down that hack tree and hit every branch on the way down.
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Conservative radio hosts gets waterboarded, and lasts six seconds before saying its torture
http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Mancow-Takes-on-Waterboarding-and-Loses.html

To stuartzechman,
Very good arguments. But, sometimes, to argue from a point of moderation, is much more pragmatic and realistic, than to argue from a point of extremes. I tend to believe that Obama will, in the end, produce much of what liberals have been asking for. But, in some areas, policy changes will come as a result of tiny victories. Sometimes little steps are more effective than giant leaps. The vast majority of Americans do not view all the arguments on issues in a complex manner. They react from a base of emotions. Which means that you sometimes need to speak to that emotional base in order to get where you want to go. Address arguments against what you are trying to achieve, while at the same time, gradually trying to marshall the votes you will need to get what you want. Patience and all things will work out, one way or another.

Stuartzechman-

I love your responses. I don’t completely agree, but I appreciate your engagement and explanations (as opposed to some responses like that one from “ifthethunder….).

You need to know something about me. I am considered a radical in the area in which I live because I support Obama (a very red state). It’s not that I agree with his complete agenda, but I really like his approach to analysis (kind of like I appreciate yours).

I don’t think there has to be an agreement in the center on all issues. But a respectful dialogue that seeks to understand a variety of legitimate opinions is extremely helpful for those of us that are only “moderately interested” (as in paying attention, but not fully engaged in political discussion 24/7). I appreciate Obama for showing that he understands and considers a variety of opinions.

Thanks for responding stuartzechman.

moderatelyinterested:
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Must run –meeting Lovely Bride downtown in few minutes– but thanks very much for your time investment in my unfortunately long commentary.
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You need to know something about me. I am considered a radical in the area in which I live
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BTW: I am considered something of a conservative by many in the area in which I live…

omgamike:
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Address arguments against what you are trying to achieve, while at the same time, gradually trying to marshall the votes you will need to get what you want.
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Unfortunately, on issues like health care reform it’s not merely the American people who need winning over –they’re already there– it’s the political class in Washington that opposes us. It’s that the health insurance industry has a “seat at the table” reserved for them by elites, while the American people are spectators.
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People don’t get what they need or want in this racket, even when they articulate it clearly –it’s called “Uh-oh, here come the pitchforks”.

“How did that “Bush is a good guy” and “Cheney knows what he’s doing” alliance with the rightists work out for centrists?”
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About as well as the “I hate that smarty-pants Al Gore,” alliance, I’d say. It really is amazing what a bunch of shallow, adolescent-like actors our entire press corp has become. I just can’t decide whether the fact that they are only capable of thinking in political terms is cause or effect.

I just can’t decide whether the fact that they are only capable of thinking in political terms is cause or effect.
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shepherdwong,
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Think “feedback loop”. One feeds the other. I’m pretty sure the inclination was always there.

People don’t get what they need or want in this racket, even when they articulate it clearly –it’s called “Uh-oh, here come the pitchforks”.
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stuart,
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I’m wondering if that’s what it’s going to take to get real change in Washington. A real, game-changing, a$$-kicking across the political spectrum or a nation-wide economic meltdown worse than what’s happening now.

Again, the focus is on Cheney (plus two conservative pundits of varying degrees of insanity), all but ignoring Obama’s discouraging decisions thus far and the left. Of course, this free pass to the POTUS and focus on Cheney & co. (red meat to liberals) would be fine if the MSM was pushing for prosecution. In fact, it’s a rope a dope leading us nowhere. As I said on MS’ post yesterday (also way past the hour when the thread was alive and well):
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Cheney’s either-or is inelegant and, in practice, terrifying, but Obama’s own binary construct is also misleading, however eloquently delivered. Compared to our home-grown Pinochet, of course the president’s speech sounds so much more sophisticated and earnest. If he’s not Cheney (i.e. evil) then he must be good, right? Dick says there’s no middle ground, the pres. says there is, but his false equivalence between the likes of Dick and the dirty left (the 2 extremes) is, how shall I put it, f@cking insulting.
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In the end, is merely carving out a politically safe area in the middle of that debate sufficient? If A) Cheneyism is wrong, b/c it’s, we can all agree, brutal lunacy, does that automatically mean that C) the middle position as practiced thus far by Obama is correct? Or is at all within the range of possibility that position B) say humanism, is simply the just and correct position.

Krauthammer’s assertion that Obama’s actions are a vindication of Bush/Cheney is a real stretch. But let’s play “if”. If Obama had been handling the crisis after 9/11, it is hightly unlikely that he would have created the mess that Bush did. But if doesn’t matter now. What matters is the mess he is left to deal with, and all of the inherent constraints, practicalities, realities, and political posturing.
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He has done a magnificant job with the sorry hand he was dealt by the Bushies. Vindication of the Bushies? In your dreams.

I am intrigued by this running commentary today, and thus have kept following it with zest.
I, years ago, made my career choice and received my BA in Politics. Not particularly relevant to today’s discussion, as my emphasis was in peace and strategic studies. Simply, I studied the intricacies of avoiding nuclear conflict in a very tense world.
So, my point. Extremism, on either end of the political spectrum, is very dangerous, to all of mankind. And as long as there are starving people in the world, there will be those we call terrorists. I wonder, two hundred years ago, did the British refer to the colonists as “terrorists”?
We must reserve extreme positions for only the rarest of extreme conditions, as when our forefathers first came to America and broke from the British.
With moderation, we can and will accomplish our goals. And this moderation, in order to succeed, will require compromises. That is the nature of the political system, the ‘beast’ we live and work with on a daily basis.
I grew up a liberal democrat in a republican home. From my first vote at my majority, I voted democrat. Up until the 2006 midterm elections. I then realized I could no longer tolerate the extreme positions of either side. I viewed the vast majority of politicians, of both parties, as corrupt and self-serving. So I changed my voter registration and became an independent. I now vote the man, not the party. So, even though I strongly disagreed with Obama on immigration, I cast my lot with him, right from the beginning. I still do not agree with the way he is trying to achieve some of his goals, but I truly admire why he is doing them. Dick Cheney truly scares me.
We all need to have faith in Obama to do the right thing for our country. He is now all our President. For that alone, we should come together, united in the hope that he can, with the aid of a recalcitrant Congress, turn our country into a new direction; help regain the moral stature our country once held with the rest of the world; bring a fair system of justice back to us that holds all to the same legal standards and metes out justice in a balanced manner to all who are brought before the bar; reestablish an economy that presents opportunities to all who are willing to work hard and strives to lift up those in unfortunate circumstances.

[...] Joe Klein interpreted Cheney’s speech in the context of his overall philosophy: I refer readers to Barton Gellman’s excellent Cheney biography, Angler, in which it is made plain that Cheney’s view of the presidency (provided by his thuggish counsel, David Addington) was eccentric at best; and, at worst, a temporary coup d’etat, abetted by the President’s lack of interest or mortal dimness. It’s true, as Brooks writes, that some of Cheney’s overreach was a result of understandable panic after the 9/11 attacks. But the real problem, as evidenced by the Vice President’s actions in other areas (like environmental policy), was Cheney’s twisted belief that the Constitution confers on the President near-dictatorial powers, especially in a time of war. Cheney’s profound authoritarian streak, and his moral ignorance, were demonstrated once again in his speech yesterday: [...]

“From my first vote at my majority, I voted democrat. Up until the 2006 midterm elections. I then realized I could no longer tolerate the extreme positions of either side.”
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Yes, those goddamn habeous corpus loving, rule-of-law upholding, Bill of Rights embracing, war-only-when necessary advocating, torture-hating, American values absolutist leftist radicals. Hard to figure out how you stood the insanity so long before you had to go halfway to the imperial presidency, war crimes and torture regime to find “moderation”.

WHY THE CHENEYS WON’T LEAVE THE SCENE: A QUESTION OF JOURNALISTIC DEONTOLOGY!
The recent appearances of the Cheneys over the media as a credible political opponent on par to the Obama administration’s policies and stances raises an issue of journalistic deontology! This is definitely of artificial making. On the one hand, we’ve got a legitimately elected President of the United States who has undergone the rigorous electoral process having to make his case to the American people and coming out successful in eliciting the policies he intends to carry out during his mandate within the confines of the American political institutional structure and process. On the other hand, we’ve got political personae (the Cheneys) who are effectively being presented by the media as a legitimate opponent on par to the Obama administration whereas they do not bear any electoral mandate whatsoever for the political views they profer and with no consequent responsiblity, stake and risk that will arise from any such mandate while the President is tied to them.
The latest case in point, is Liz Cheney’s appearance on the Scarborough Show with her critical and undermining views of the President presented in effect as critical views to the Obama speech delivered in Egypt under the disguise of expressing her opinions. For comments/expressions of opinion on the President’s policies, her views as well as those of her father have been given such a broad artificial reception by the media that runs very contrary to the expression of opinion as we’ve come to know it. These views are rather given almost the same weight and placed on par as the political stances of a legitimately elected president with a legitimate mandate for the policies he is undertaking while the Cheney’s hold no such legitimate mandate and with no accompanying political accountability whatsoever. The issue here is that such attitude by the media is contrary to what we’ve come to expect from normal implicit democratic rules. If the Cheneys had any pretense for policies they wished to be implemented after the Bush Administration, the solution would have simply been for Dick or Liz to run for president. Since they didn’t, it is artificial for the media to strive to present them as a counterweight on par to the Obama administration’s policies well beyong what will be expected for the opinion of a simple citizen that the Cheneys are now notwithstanding their previous political roles. And by the way, by extension is it acceptable that any citizen, no matter what self-righteous pretense they might have, to be artificially given a similar counterweight role on par with the President on any policy issues of the Obama administration while not holding any legitimate political mandate for which they will be politically accountable for their stances? It can be understandable, that the Cheneys can be of direct concern when it comes to matters of direct relation to political issues having to do with Cheney’s role in the Bush administration. But to raise their views on the policies and stances the administration should take on par with the President undermines appropriate journalistic deontology because as we should all know by now “elections do matter”.
What strikes the mind here is that the Cheneys have perfectly understood this “naïvété” of the media and are using this “media confusion about fairness” to artificially strive to extirpate Mr. Dick Cheney from accusations of introducing torture policies during the Bush Administration among other political accusations. Their strategy is very simple. Legally, Cheney can’t make it (they know that secretly). In all courts of law, so-called EITs are definitely torture practices. Besides, the facts as we know them are overwhelmingly against him and the Bush Administration, and Dick Cheney’s contradictions are extensive. The real strategy of the Cheney’s here is totally otherly: turn it “political”. First, saying torture works and was for the good of the country should elicit the fervour of many Americans. Afterall, all what is needed is that a substantial number of Americans polled buy to this argument, and then the issue’s legal underpinning may be undermined. Secondly, posing artificially as the right wing counterweight to the Obama’s administration policies elicits the impression and fervour in some quarters particularly to the right that he is making the President moderate and thus he is political useful. A look at this second political trick shows how the media has effectively been manipulated: knowing fairly well that in his administrative role the President will have to take practical and pragmatic postures with respect to the release of photos of abused detainees as well as on other policies, all what Dick simply have to do is to posit that he is against releasing the pictures and pretend to take critical policy issues postures on the right, making him seemingly a moderating influence on the President. Thirdly, the Cheneys simply have to claim that Obama is following the Bush Administration’s policies he criticized pointing to his strategies in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo. In this case too, the media is manipulated as they ignore the fact that the Obama administration does not have the luxury of starting from scratch as Bush had on all these issues but rather adopts a “course correction strategy” of the situations to bring them as close as possible to what he advocates. The fact is that, the underlying strategy of Dick and her daughter is to make this three steps political trick extirpate Dick from the accusations levied against the former administration. The sad thing is that the media is “naïvely” falling for these political tricks!