Writing in the NYT, Ross Douthat proses an interesting hypothetical: What if, rather than sniping at the president from the sidelines in 2009, former vice president Dick Cheney had run against him last fall?
At the very least, a Cheney-Obama contest would have clarified conservatism’s present political predicament. In the wake of two straight drubbings at the polls, much of the American right has comforted itself with the idea that conservatives lost the country primarily because the Bush-era Republican Party spent too much money on social programs. And John McCain’s defeat has been taken as the vindication of this premise.
And, says Douthat, we would have had the advantage of debating the pros and cons of enhanced interrogation techniques in the open, rather than suffer through politically motivated partial disclosures:
A large swath of the political class wants to avoid the torture debate. The Obama administration backed into it last week, and obviously wants to back right out again. But the argument isn’t going away. It will be with us as long as the threat of terrorism endures. And where the Bush administration’s interrogation programs are concerned, we’ve heard too much to just “look forward,” as the president would have us do. We need to hear more: What was done and who approved it, and what intelligence we really gleaned from it. Not so that we can prosecute – unless the Democratic Party has taken leave of its senses – but so that we can learn, and pass judgment, and struggle toward consensus.
Cheney couldn’t have won, of course – this particular thought experiment is entirely theoretical. But, having exposed in detail if not in fact our interrogation techniques – we can scarcely pretend that the term “waterboarding” joined the national lexicon only last week – we have weighed the costs to such a national security approach without attempting to understand the benefits.
But maybe that’s the point. Maybe we’d rather feel collectively good about ourselves, aspire to faint praise from foreign capitals and be willing to 1) accept the uncertain probability of a unknowable domestic casualty rate and hope it won’t affect us directly, and 2) expect that good men will do “bad” things in the shadows without the benefit of legal sanction: The Jack Bauer principle.
This is a fundamentally an exercise in feel good self-deception of course, and as morally dubious as the alternative. But we do so enjoy our myths.
No sir, this is fundamentally an exercise in the politics of destruction. The Obama administration has opened the door on this topic as a means of attacking Republicans as evil torturers. They have no intention of doing anything more than smearing their political opponents. Any open and honest discussion would lead to the widespread disclosure that powerful Democrats were on board. That’s why any discussion will not be open and honest.
“But we do enjoy our myths.”
Exactly. The story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin didn’t spring out of nowhere–but from deep within the human psyche. Of course that particular myth centered on the nature of man’s ingratitude, but was also a commentary on the extent to which the masses (in this case children) can be swayed by soothing sounds.
And it is my belief that Obama feels that if only he provides the requisite “soothing sounds” he can play out his hand–all eight years–before the bills (of ALL kinds) come due. Which is why he took great care to shield the CIA from prosecution/persecution. He needs it to keep anything from happening that would derail the Obama Express. The release of the “torture” memos thus seen as a cynical attempt to shore up his left-wing base and weaken his political rivals simultaneously, banking on the fact the CIA and the groundwork previously laid by the Bush Administration will keep America safe long enough to keep the wheels from coming off before he leaves–all the while playing to the fact that collectively both America and the West would rather whistle past the grave-yard than expend the effort (or even CONTEMPLATE same) to gird up their loins–collectively and individually–for the almost sisyphean task needed to combat the long march of Islam.
Two quick comments:
1. A Cheney- Palin ticket would have certainly come closer to bringing some serious representation for real America… and if all else failed, Cheney could have scrapped debates and challenged Obongo to a cage-death match, mano a mano, and wiped up the ring with him.
2. Waterboarding: dhimmicrats call it torture; we call it foreplay.