Charles Murray thinks that the White House is extremely prone to it:
The graph is based exclusively on non-Latino whites (because that’s who the book is about). If you want to see a visual representation of the development of the bubble that Barack Obama has been living in since he left Hawaii, that graph is it. Judging from the GSS data, every white socioeconomic class in America has become more conservative in the last four decades, with the Traditional Middles moving the most decisively rightward. But the Intellectual Uppers have not just moved slightly in the other direction, they have careened in the other direction.
They won the election with a candidate who sounded centrist running against an exceptionally weak Republican opponent. But they’ve been in the bubble too long. They really think that the rest of America thinks as they do. Nothing but the Pauline Kael syndrome can explain the political idiocy of letting Attorney General Eric Holder go after the interrogators.
On a related note, polls like the one he’s describing make me crazy. When someone asks how liberal or conservative I am, the answer is no. None of the above. I wouldn’t know how to characterize myself on that simplistic one-dimensional axis. But I don’t know how typical I am in that regard. Apparently they get a lot of people to provide an answer. And it’s not a good answer for the Democrats.
You know, this reminds me a lot of Iran-Contra. For those unfamiliar, that was the affair in which the Reagan administration was doing deals with the Iranians, giving them arms in exchange for hostages and providing financial support to the anti-Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua. Sensible people were upset over the trading arms for hostages, but the loony Dems were outraged that we were helping defeat communism in Central America, and fantasized that the American people shared their love of Danny Ortega. It blew up in their collective face in the Congressional hearings with Ollie North.
The same thing seems to be happening here. The radical left insists on prosecuting people who got valuable intelligence that probably saved American lives, destroying morale at the CIA, and probably putting us at greater risk. And they imagine that the American people share their outrage over “torture” of terrorists, and hope that they will finally get their great white whale, Dick Cheney. But the notion that waterboarding Khalid Sheik Mohammed outrages Americans is nutty. If they persist in this nonsense, the political blowback may make Iran-Contra look like a Sunday picnic. The Republican ads will almost write themselves next fall.
[Late afternoon update]
Charles Murray has a clarification of his post.
[Early evening update]
Andy McCarthy says that no one should be surprised the Holder has politicized the Justice Department:
Lots of indignation out there about Attorney General Holder’s appointment of a prosecutor to go after the CIA. Disgruntled folks include many who voted to confirm him despite the politicized Rich pardon and the politicized FALN pardons and the politicized recommendation against an independent counsel for Gore’s indefensible campaign-finance violation, etc. Lots of quiet, meanwhile, from the Republican cheering section that helped steer the attorney-general to confirmation. Put me in mind of something I wrote weeks before that happened…
Read the whole thing.
[Another update a few minutes later]
Victoria Toensing explains why it’s such awful policy:
“All volunteers step forward. We have a person in custody who is high-ranking al-Qaeda. He taunts that an attack on United States soil is imminent but laughs mockingly when we ask for specifics. We need interrogators.” Such was the threat in the summer of 2002 when the CIA asked the Justice Department for guidance on what its personnel could do to get such information from captured al-Qaeda lieutenant Abu Zubaydah.
Since then, the lawyers who stepped forward to provide carefully structured counsel have been criminally investigated and told that, even if they are not prosecuted, their conduct will be turned over to their state bars. The interrogators who stepped forward were promised in early spring by President Obama that, even if they erred in judgment while protecting our country, the president would rather “move forward.” However, in late summer, they are under criminal scrutiny.
Even though an earlier investigation by career prosecutors reviewed the same conduct and refused prosecution of all but one contract employee who was brought to trial in 2007. Even though congressional leaders had knowledge of the interrogation techniques and made no attempt to stop them. Even though the conduct is more than six years old. Even though the CIA has taken administrative action against some of the personnel involved in the interrogations. Even though being just a target of a criminal investigation costs thousands of dollars in legal fees. Even though being just a target of a criminal investigation takes a horrendous mental toll. Even though the morale of the CIA will plunge to the depths it did in the wake of the Church Committee attacks. Even though the release of the names of those being scrutinized will make them terrorist targets for the rest of their lives. Even if they are cleared.
The next time our government employees are asked to step forward to get information of a possible, even probable, imminent attack, no one will. Even though…
No good will come of this.
Lets forget for a while what this will do for Republicans in 2010. Instead I just hope the more moderate camp in the Democrat party can seize control before the current leadership drives this nation off a cliff. They have to see what is happening and what the consequences will be. Right?
Mike, the question is, what consequences matter to them more — those in the long term to the country, or those in the short term to their acceptability as cocktail-party invitees?
During Iran-Contra some people had a problem with giving the Iranians arms, period. Some still do.
The Sandinistas were ultimately defeated, not on the battlefield but at the polls in 1990.
During Iran-Contra some people had a problem with giving the Iranians arms, period.
So did I. But I wasn’t upset about arming the Contras. But that’s what really got the Democrats’ panties in a knot.
“The Sandinistas were ultimately defeated, not on the battlefield but at the polls in 1990.”
Who is the President in Nicaragua? Bueller, Bueller? Anyone?
What the loony left better consider is that if they keep moving us toward socialist government and keep thinking and saying it’s JUST Republicans who are mad, they’ll be the next ones getting water boarded.
As many new militias are croppin g up in traditional Dem strong holds as in Republican states. (look for them in the NE and anywhere in the SE) Even if the Republican militimen are outnumbering the Dem militiamen in those states, the militias have the guns. Obviously liberal anti-gun folks won’t be in a place to take armed sides, in an armed take over. Militiamen will have the guns, the libs will have the ACLU.
And I have serious doubts about American Troops firing on Americans, to protect the crowd in control in DC, that they know hates them and is trying to trash the country.
Who knows, water boarding might not be as bad as the Dems think, and they might find out. Soon. Firsthand.
Back in the day, I was upset about the administration circumventing Congress–it was and still is unconstitutional to do so–but I never understood the left’s support of Central American authoritarianism/communism.
By the way, I originally read the post headline as “The Kal-El Syndrome.”
So the problem is that the Attorney General made a decision without first consulting the political polls? The White House isn’t suffering from Kael Syndrome — I doubt there’s anyone in the White House political operation who wants these prosecutions. It is to their credit that they are willing to risk political damage in order to uphold the principle of an independent Justice Department.
So the problem is that the Attorney General made a decision without first consulting the political polls?
No, the problem is that it’s awful policy. The fact that it’s also politically stupid is just gravy.
I doubt there’s anyone in the White House political operation who wants these prosecutions. It is to their credit that they are willing to risk political damage in order to uphold the principle of an independent Justice Department.
If the White House doesn’t like it, all it has to do is issue pardons. It’s one of the powers of the presidency. And the Justice Department isn’t “independent,” and isn’t supposed to be. It is part of the executive branch. If it were independent, there would be no need for independent counsels. The Attorney General reports to the president, and the buck stops in the Oval Office. Thanks for your display of civic ignorance, though.
Frak. Without Texter I keep messing up the HTML. Stupid work computer. Can we get a Preview button?
Also, why does Murray even bother analyzing the ideological trends of one racial group (a group that does not include the President or the Attorney General, the people whose decisions are being questioned) in isolation? U.S. public opinion is not synonymous with U.S. white public opinion.
As I noted in the update, he clarified that at The Corner.
It is to their credit that they are willing to risk political damage in order to uphold the principle of an independent Justice Department.
As Rand pointed out, the depth of your ignorance is on complete display in that one little sentence. The Justice Department is under complete authority of the executive branch. As it should be. This makes the department accountable to the President, who in turn is accountable to the American people.
No, the problem is that it’s awful policy.
So why do you and Murray focus on the politics, instead of dealing with the policy question, which is: if the Attorney General finds evidence that government employees broke the law while implementing a politically popular policy, should he 1) Appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate further, or 2) Look the other way?
And the Justice Department isn’t “independent,” and isn’t supposed to be.
Its first loyalty is (or should be) to the law, not to politics.
From a political perspective, what is the administration thinking? Obviously, this stuff is red meat to the “progressives” who ultimately want to see Cheney hanging from the White House flag pole, but the reaction of everyone else will be somewhere between head-scratching and absolute anger. I don’t see any broad political upside coming from these prosecutions. In fact, quite the opposite.
Sigh.
How many of us thought, circa October 1st, 2001, that we’d see the new year, let alone the rest of the decade, without another, and worse, set of attacks?
Right.
Jim, the answer to your question is “2.”
Its first loyalty is (or should be) to the law, not to politics. Actually, the same should be said of the President. He takes an oath to (IIRC) “faithfully execute the laws of the United States.”
As I noted in the update, he clarified that at The Corner.
The “clarification” doesn’t touch the sentence: “If you want to see a visual representation of the development of the bubble that Barack Obama has been living in since he left Hawaii, that graph is it. ”
I thought the rap on Obama was that he spent too much time in Jeremiah Wright’s church; now it’s that he’s been trapped in a bubble of intellectual whites….
I don’t see any broad political upside coming from these prosecutions. In fact, quite the opposite.
No kidding. It isn’t about politics.
How many of us thought, circa October 1st, 2001, that we’d see the new year, let alone the rest of the decade, without another, and worse, set of attacks?
Take it away, Homer Simpson:
Homer: Not a bear in sight. The “Bear Patrol” is working like a charm!
Lisa: That’s specious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: [uncomprehendingly] Thanks, honey.
Lisa: By your logic, I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Hmm. How does it work?
Lisa: It doesn’t work; it’s just a stupid rock!
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don’t see any tigers around, do you?
Homer: (pause) Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
Its first loyalty is (or should be) to the law, not to politics.
It can do that while still exercising prosecutorial discretion. It doesn’t have infinite resources. It did drop the charges against the Black Panther thugs that were intimidating voters at gunpoint, for example. Do you think that it was exhibiting its loyalty to the law instead of politics when it did that?
Jay Manifold – except that was a bogus fear. After the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, Al Queda wasn’t able to pull anything off for 8 years.
If the standard for “he kept us safe” is “one successful terrorist attack per decade” then every American president kept us safe.
This assumes that the American public is okay with beating people to death with flashlights or some of the other techniques over and above what the President authorized.
It used to be that only the bad guys tortured people. That was how you knew the Nazis, the Japanese, or the Communists were bad – they tortured people. I miss those days.
Take it away, Homer Simpson
Unfortunately for your idiotic analogy, we actually did get a lot of actionable intelligence, and prevent attacks, as a result of the interrogations.
That was how you knew the Nazis, the Japanese, or the Communists were bad – they tortured people.
There were many other ways to know that they were bad, and they tortured people for much different purposes — that’s what made them bad. And in our case, they’re outliers. That’s why they’re news.
Ideologically, there’s not much difference between those two groups.
But the non-political stupidity of Holder is that other career prosecutors who have a much better grasp of the issues have already looked all this over and said “nothing worth prosecuting”. Holder could also have done this quietly, if he were truly concerned about the law and not politics. His announcing of it shows that he is concerned about the politics above the law.
I thought the rap on Obama was that he spent too much time in Jeremiah Wright’s church; now it’s that he’s been trapped in a bubble of intellectual whites….
Those are overlapping bubbles when it comes to hating America as it’s currently constituted, and the president resided in the intersection of them.
After the fact criminal prosecution of CIA members for implementing known policy of the prior administration during wartime is very dangerous territory.
Similar to deciding, after the fact, to prosecute the bomber pilots for fire bombing Dresden or dropping nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As horrific as those acts were in terms of human suffering, they were deemed a necessary part of a broader strategy to achieve goals supported by the American public. If the public didn’t like how the administration was carrying out the war, the situation is resolved at the political level through removal of the administration, not at the criminal level against people tasked with implementing policy.
Having our military and intelligence agencies worrying about criminal prosecutions as the result of political winds shifting is a recipe for disaster. Transparency is fair and reasonable as it allows the political process to occur, but after the fact criminal prosecution is a terrible policy.
Rand, your argument is “we need the information, we’re good, we can do whatever it takes.”
This sounds very close to “the ends justify the means.” The problem with that logic is that it can be used to wave away any law or civil liberty. It is, in fact, exactly the rationale Iran, for instance, is using to arrest protestors.
I’m also concerned with what I read in the report about people going way beyond what was authorized by the President. This is a control issue, as in “who was in control?”
Annoying Old Guy – did career prosecutors decide that the cases couldn’t be made, or did a political appointee make that call?
How the hell were we supposed to know that? The more we found out about the attacks and how they were coordinated, the more we found out we didn’t know. People like you are always spouting off assertions like that as if you had received some sort of message from the stars, but you don’t know that it’s true any more than we did at the time — you’re just pulling this out of your ass so you can look better than those fearmongering bloodthirsty rightwinger Bushites who just wanted an excuse to torture innocent brown people.
criminal prosecution of CIA members for implementing known policy of the prior administration during wartime is very dangerous territory.
Two thoughts:
1) If the “known policy” was in fact a war crime, you can prosecute.
2) That’s not what we’re doing here. The President has been very clear – if the CIA stayed within the “four corners” of the approved interrogation policy, they will not be prosecuted.
Andrea Harris – please don’t put words in my mouth. I do not and am not accusing Bush of being a racist.
My point was that arguing “see, no attacks – he kept us safe” was false logic. It could have been (and apparently was) largely due to an inability to mount large-scale follow-on attacks.
I don’t argue with closed minds.
“It could have been (and apparently was) largely due to an inability to mount large-scale follow-on attacks.”
There was neither a lack of nineteen willing martyrs, nor a lack of box cutters.
The inability has as least something to do with changes -we- made, as opposed to the presumption of the complete incompetence of our opponents.
If the “known policy” was in fact a war crime, you can prosecute.
Then the Justice Department and Obama administration should have the political guts to start at the top, arrest Bush and Tenet and haul them into court. They were responsible for the policy that was in place.
What the justice department is doing is bad policy, and as Rand said, the fact it is bad politics is just gravy.
The President has been very clear – if the CIA stayed within the “four corners” of the approved interrogation policy, they will not be prosecuted.
The President, in typical fashion, has changed his position on prosecuting CIA members so many times I’m not certain anyone can tell what his real views are. He should just say the CIA was “stupid” and be done with it.
Which of those is Holder?
You also need to address the question of why Holder didn’t conduct a quiet investigation first, in order to assess the situation if he thinks that the prosections were (potentially) buried by political appointess, rather than starting with a very public one, if he’s not putting politics first.
I hit “enter” too soon and had to do things. To continue:
First you assert — that’s making a statement as if you believe it to be fact — that the idea that the Bush administration’s decision kept us safe from more attacks was “bogus” because the very fact that there were no large scale attacks after 9-11 meant that we had nothing to worry about! And you base this on what — the fact that nothing happened? That’s like saying “we shouldn’t have spent all that money on a new roof because clearly the fear that the old roof would leak in the rain is bogus” and offering as proof the fact that the new roof had never leaked!
Then you follow that up with qualifiers — “could have,” “apparently.” Meaning you have no more faith in what you just said than I do — which means that you are just saying stuff to look good as opposed to us deluded righties who are so stupid as to think that maybe some of the stuff the government did after 9-11 actually did prevent more domestic attacks, and that this is borne out by the absence of those attacks. You know, like replacing the leaky old roof with a new one really will keep you dry.
“This sounds very close to “the ends justify the means.””
….which is the breakfast cerial of the left. Far be it from Rand to eat any of your cerial.
we actually did get a lot of actionable intelligence, and prevent attacks, as a result of the interrogations.
You did? You sure about that? Really? Or is that a conclusion drawn because there hasn’t been another attack in the US?
It’s interest that this actionable intelligence ensured no attacks on the US, but completely missed attacks outside of the US, especially where they
I am glad you’re so certain of that. It’s interesting that all this “intelligence” didn’t help with all the attacks that happened elsewhere, even when they damaged American interests, like, for example, Madrid. Where the political fall out of the incumbent part losing the election there post the Madrid bombings was significant.
Given that Al Qaeda have remained reasonably active in the following 8 years, across a variety of theatres: Bali, Spain, UK, etc… it’s suggestive that the intelligence gained was spotty at best.
Terrorist spectaculars aren’t easy to plan and deploy and looking at the UK and Spain (two countries with a LOT of experience of active and ongoing terrorist campaigns) there tend to be gaps, even multi-year ones between “spectaculars”.
I would like to think that a little waterboarding here and overt threats there would have the desired effect but pretty much the consensus of opinion is that while you get the person to talk, the problem is whether or not what they’re talking about is worth a damn.
The Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, Wisconsin) has distanced itself from the policy of investigation alleged torture. In a page 1 above-the-fold editorial, this newspaper questions the wisdom of this, reasoning it is a “distraction” from the important health reform initiative.
…is that a conclusion drawn because there hasn’t been another attack in the US?
No, it is a conclusion drawn on the basis of memos that the administration (finally, and reluctantly) released, in redacted form, at the urging of the former vice president. But no one expects you to pay attention to things like facts, or reality.
Unfortunately for your idiotic analogy, we actually did get a lot of actionable intelligence, and prevent attacks, as a result of the interrogations.
In the opinion of people who have every reason to exaggerate the effectiveness of those interrogations. The documents that have been released tell a different story. Click my name for the latest evidence that Cheney has been exaggerating the effectiveness of enhanced interrogations.
No, it is a conclusion drawn on the basis of memos that the administration (finally, and reluctantly) released, in redacted form, at the urging of the former vice president.
Those memos do not say that enhanced interrogation produced any actionable intelligence. Nor do they say that enhanced interrogation was the deciding factor in stopping any attacks or saving any lies. This claim rests purely on Cheney’s credibility, and it’s quite gullible to take him at his word.
Click my name for the latest
evidencedisingenuous leftist demagoguery attempting to insinuate that Cheney has been exaggerating the effectiveness of enhanced interrogations.There, fixed that for ya. No charge.
“You did? You sure about that? Really? Or is that a conclusion drawn because there hasn’t been another attack in the US?”
You know, the fact that your house hasn’t had a leak since you put the new roof on isn’t necessarily due to the new roof. The fact that there have been no leaks means you could have saved money and kept the old roof.
Even though that roof leaked like a sieve.
This claim rests purely on Cheney’s credibility, and it’s quite gullible to take him at his word.
This claim rests purely on Jim’s credibility, and how gullible would we be to take that? I know that I don’t even approach that threshold, nor do most intelligent and informed people familiar with his comments here.
Sharpen – From your mouth to God’s ears.
Question. If obama and his folks were really enemies of the United States what would they do differently?
“This claim rests purely on Cheney’s credibility, and it’s quite gullible to take him at his word.”
Cheney’s credibility dwarfs Obama’s by multiple orders of magnitude. Common sense and logic can tell you that much.
Try some sometime Jim.
I don’t argue with people who would turn the law and the Constitution into a suicide pact. It’s like trying to stop natural selection.
This claim rests purely on Jim’s credibility, and how gullible would we be to take that?
Oh, would that be the Jim who claims the Justice Department is a government entity “independent” of the executive branch?