Today, Jeremy Rosner of GQR wrote an email strenuously objecting to Sullivan's claims ("I have never, ever believed or advised that Democrats should 'cede national security' to the Republicans, and neither has my partner Stan Greenberg, or my friends James Carville and Rahm Emanuel").  He quotes from several memos issued by that faction -- mostly from 2006-2009 -- urging Democrats to exploit various national security weaknesses of Bush and the GOP, along with one from late 2003.  Obviously -- as support for the Iraq War collapsed and the public began hating the GOP 's national security approach -- these strategists advised Democrats to exploit that change in public opinion (November, 2007:  "For the first time in decades, national security has become a potentially winning issue for Democrats").  A child would have known to do that; that oh-so-bold advice proves nothing.

But when it actually mattered -- back in 2002, as Bush was pushing for the invasion of Iraq -- James Carville and Stan Greenberg (along with chronic loser Bob Shrum), as part of Democracy Corps, did exactly what Sullivan described (and what Rosner denied they ever did).  Contrary to Rosner's claim that Democracy Corps' memos are available online, all memos prior to 2007 are archived on a site that appears to be not publicly accessible, but no matter:  for years, Digby has been chronicling the central (and quite effective) role played by Carville/Greenberg in urging Democrats to capitulate to Republicans on national security.  In 2002, shortly before the Congressional vote on Iraq, Carville/Greenberg/Shrum distributed a memo to Democrats advising them that the most politically productive course would be to support the AUMF so that Iraq was off the table for the midterm elections, and the focus would instead be on domestic issues, where Democrats were stronger -- exactly the fear-driven, profoundly immoral and excruciatingly stupid advice which Congressional Democrats followed.  From their 2002 memo:

This decision [the Iraq vote] will take place in a setting where voters, by 10 points, prefer to vote for a Member who supports a resolution to authorize force (50 to 40 percent).2 In addition, we found that a Democrat supporting a resolution runs stronger than one opposing it.  For half the respondents, we presented a Democratic candidate supporting the resolution. Among these voters, the generic congressional vote remained stable, with the Democrats still ahead by 2 points at the end of the survey. In the other half of the sample, we presented a Democrat opposed to the resolution. In this group, the Democratic congressional advantage slipped by 6 points at the end of the survey.

[...]

The debate and vote on the resolution will bring closure on the extended Iraq debate that has crowded out the country’s domestic agenda as Congress concludes.  But there is substantial evidence, as we indicated at the outset, that voters are very ready to turn to domestic issues. It is important that Democrats make this turn and provide a compelling reason to vote Democratic and turn down the Republicans.

In this survey, we tested two message frameworks – one offers a transition to the domestic agenda ("We need independent people in Washington who will be a check on what is going on and pay attention to our needs at home") and one focuses on corporate influence ("Washington should be more responsive to the people and less to big corporate interests").  Both frameworks defeat the Republican alternative that begins with support for the President’s efforts on security.

The memo did say that the Iraq vote was one of conscience and provided some strategic advice for those who intended to vote against it, but most key Democrats (including Carville's patron, Hillary Clinton, 2004 presidential nominee John Kerry and vice presidential nominee John Edwards) followed their advice perfectly -- they "supported the President's efforts on security" by voting for the invasion of Iraq.  In fact, it is clear that both Edwards as well as John Kerry -- guided by Shrum as his campaign manager -- voted for the Iraq War at least in part due to this strategic advice:

 The 2004 election proved that the Democratic Party needs leaders -- not poll-driven consultants, who too often sacrifice principle for what appears expedient.

For example, Kerry voted for Bush's Iraq war resolution, following the "guidance" offered by Democracy Corps, a non-profit "dedicated to making the government of the United States more responsive to the American people."

On October 3, 2002, prior to the Iraq war resolution votes, Democracy Corps (founded in 1999 by James Carville, Stan Greenberg and Bob Shrum) advised Capitol Hill Democrats: "This decision [to support or oppose an Iraq war resolution] will take place in a setting where voters, by 10 points, prefer to vote for a member who supports a resolution to authorize force (50 to 40 percent)."

Needless to say, the Democrats' support for Bush's "security policies" hardly "brought closure" to the Iraq debate, nor did it move the focus to domestic issues.  Instead, the Republicans in 2002 and 2004 ran -- and resoundingly won -- by depicting as Weak on Terror even Democrats who voted for the Iraq War (such as Max Cleland), and even more effectively, by bashing the muddled, confused, contradictory and unprincipled national security position of leading Democrats (I voted for it before I voted against it -- yes, I voted for the invasion of Iraq but. . . .).  It was that deep-seated fear of taking a stand, which voters could easily smell, far more than any specific policy position, that made (and still makes) Democrats appear so pitifully "weak."  Indeed, that's why George Bush made this brilliant line the centerpiece of his 2004 GOP Convention acceptance speech when seeking re-election:

This election will also determine how America responds to the continuing danger of terrorism, and you know where I stand. . . . In the last four years -- in the last four years, you and I have come to know each other. Even when we don't agree, at least you know what I believe and where I stand.

By that point, the country had developed serious doubts about the Iraq War specifically and Bush's national security policies generally, but rather than back away because of polling weakness, Bush stood his ground and made that a selling point of Strength and Principle:  "Even when we don't agree, at least you know what I believe and where I stand." 

The reason that worked is because his two Democratic opponents -- Kerry and Edwards -- had (following Carville/Greenberg/Shrum) cast blatantly cynical and opportunistic votes on Iraq and related matters.  One minute they were national security hawks cheering for Bush's invasion (when that was popular) and the next minute they were anti-war candidates self-righteously criticizing the invasion (when the war became unpopular).  Whether one agreed with their original view or their election-year view mattered little; what was clear is that they were poll-driven opportunists with no core beliefs who were eager to shift with the slightest change in wind.  That -- far more than any specific position on war and Terrorism -- is what makes Democrats appear to be weak losers, and it's what they've been doing -- and what the Carville/Greenberg faction has been urging  for years and years.  

That's the same mindset that led Democrats to pretend to want to end the Iraq War so that they could win the 2006 mid-term election by exploiting anti-war sentiment, but then continue to fund the war without limits or conditions because they were politically afraid to follow through on their alleged convictions (and there, in 2007 was Democracy Corps predictably warning not to equate opposition to the war with a desire for Congress to actually end the war).  Agree or disagree with whatever national security position Democrats happen to be espousing at the moment, what rational person would look at behavior like this and view such individuals as anything other than weak, mewling cowards?

* * * * *

Refusing to accept Jeremy Rosner's self-serving revisionist history on behalf of his good friends Rahm, James and Stan is particularly critical now because Democrats are poised to do this yet again, and this same tired faction is providing the "intellectual and strategic" ammunition.  When running for President, Barack Obama emphatically pledged again and again to overturn -- not continue -- the Bush/Cheney template on Terrorism and civil liberties.  He railed against the notion that we need to abandon our "values" (due process, the rule of law, civilian courts, habeas corpus, transparency) in order to stay safe.  And he won -- resoundingly.

Yet from the start, he takes a half-step forward in that direction followed by two fearful steps back.  He grants civilian trials to a handful of detainees while ordering military commissions and indefinite detention for most.  He trumpets new transparency guidelines while invoking "secrecy" to block courts from reviewing Bush crimes and re-writing FOIA to allow the suppression of torture photos.  He vows to close GITMO and then plans to re-locate its core injustices to Illinois.  He praises habeas review for GITMO detainees while seeking to deny it to those shipped from around the world to Bagram.  He lauds the beauty of due process while compiling hit lists of American citizens to be murdered with no due process, far from any battlefield.  He hails the centrality of the Rule of Law while demanding that Bush crimes be suppressed in the name of Looking Forward, etc. etc.

As I detailed the other day, this muddled, inconsistent, completely unprincipled approach makes it impossible to offer any coherent defense of the few instances where Obama deviates from the Bush/Cheney template.  He's bound himself in exactly the same self-created knots as Democrats who tried to defend their ever-shifting, confused national security beliefs during the Bush era:

Well, yes, I am against the Iraq War even though I did vote for the Iraq War, but that's because I was tricked, or because I didn't read all the reports, or I didn't think he'd really invade, or I thought he would do it better, or I thought he'd try harder at the U.N. first, etc. etc. 

Identically, we now have Obama trying to explain why civilian trials and closing GITMO are so necessary and just at exactly the same time he sets up military commissions and systems of indefinite detention.  He tries to explain why transparency in releasing OLC memos is so vital at the same time he guts FOIA to allow the concealment of torture photos and blocks courts from adjudicating the lawsuits from torture and eavesdropping victims, etc. etc.  It's not nuanced, smart or "pragmatic"; it's craven, unprincipled, cynical and weak.  And it's not hard to see.  For that reason, aside from being loathsome on the merits, it doesn't work politically; quite the opposite.   How many times do Democrats need to learn that lesson before it seeps in?  On national security, civil liberties and Terrorism, could Barack Obama possibly deliver this line credibly:  "Even when we don't agree, at least you know what I believe and where I stand"?  Please.

At exactly the time when the Obama White House is clearly signaling its intent to move even further toward embracing the Bush/Cheney Terrorism/civil liberties template, up pops Carville/Greenberg to warn that they are appearing Weak on National Security, and simultaneously up pops a slew of articles warning that Obama's problems are due to his failures to follow Rahm Emanuel's Centrist advice, including on Terrorism.  Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, which is why it's so crucial not to allow Jermey Rosner and his Democratic strategist friends to re-write it in order to glorify themselves.

Sure, the war that I helped sell and cheered on led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings (at least), the long-term displacement of millions more, and the complete destruction of another country that had done nothing to us.  But I'm not interested in clouding my mind with any of that.  I don't care about that.  That can be talked about once I'm dead.  After all, as the great humanitarian Joseph Stalin taught us, you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, and as the great scholar and torturer Condoleezza Rice explained, we should just gently shut our eyes and think about the massive slaughter and destruction we caused in that country as mere "birth pangs" on the road to something beautiful.

Back in 2003, I said -- with bloodthirsty sadism rabidly drooling from my mouth -- that the real purpose of the war, what made it the Right Thing to do, was that we needed to make large numbers of Muslims "suck. on. this" in order to show them we mean business, and we randomly picked Iraq because . . . . we could.  But now -- to justify the enormous amounts of blood I helped spill and the incalculable amounts of human suffering I helped spawn -- I'm going to pretend that I was motivated by a magnanimous, noble desire to Spread Freedom. 

It was only a matter of time before American elites abandoned their faux regret over Iraq.  For tribalists and nationalists, America can err in its execution but never in its motives.  There's no question -- as this glorifying, propagandistic Newsweek cover story reflects -- that it's now official dogma that this was the right thing to do, or at least that we produced something great and wonderful for that country, as was our intent all along (leaving aside the what is actually happening in Iraq).  It's nothing short of nauseating to watch those responsible glorify what they did without weighing -- or, in Friedman's case, affirmatively dismissing as irrelevant -- the extreme amounts of death and suffering that they caused, all based on false pretenses.  But this is why Tom Friedman is the favorite propagandist of "Washington insiders"-- because he feeds them the justifications they need to feel good about themselves.  Forget all those innocent dead people and destruction you caused; it all worked out in the end.

 

UPDATE:  Several people argue in Comments that this effort to portray the invasion of Iraq as a good thing is motivated not only by a desire for self-cleansing on the part of those responsible, but also to enable future, similar wars to take place.  I don't know whether that's the motive, but it's definitely the effect.  That the invasion of Iraq has been so widely perceived as a horrific debacle had the effect of minimizing the likelihood of future invasions.  Having it now depicted as something that worked out and produced Great Results necessarily makes it easier to justify future wars in that region.  After all, if attacking and invading Muslim countries we don't like in order to change their government is the good and right thing to do, shouldn't we keep doing it?

 

UPDATE II:  Freedom is on the March:  we shouldn't burden our minds worrying about this, though; just do what Tom Friedman does and leave it to the historians while patting ourselves on the back.

It's not actually a unique event of oppression or suffering to have to sit and listen to a speech where someone criticizes you and you can't respond that very moment (but are able, as Roberts just proved, to respond freely afterward).  Even in the State of the Union Address, it's completely customary for the President to criticize the Congress or the opposition party right to their faces, while members of his party stand and cheer vocally, and -- as the reaction to Joe Wilson's outburst demonstrated -- "decorum" dictates that the targets of the criticism sit silently and not respond until later, once the speech is done.  That's how speeches work.  Only Supreme Court Justices would depict their being subjected to such a mundane process as an act of grave unfairness (and, of course, Roberts' comrade, Sam Alito, could not even bring himself to abide by that decorum).

What makes Roberts' petty, self-absorbed grievance all the more striking is that this is what judges do all the time.  It's the essence of the judicial branch.  Federal judges are basically absolute tyrants who rule over their courtroom and those in it with virtually no restraints.  They can and do scold, criticize, berate, mock, humiliate and threaten anyone who appears before their little fiefdoms -- parties, defendants, lawyers, witnesses, audience members -- and not merely "decorum," but the force of law (in the form of contempt citations or other penalties), compels the target to sit silently and not respond.  In fact, lawyers can be, and have been, punished just for publicly criticizing a judge. 

As is true for any large group of people, the range of behavior varies greatly, from unfailingly polite judges to pathologically thuggish ones, but the core dynamic of the judicial process is that judges wield absolute power and everyone else is essentially captive to their whims.  That is why the overriding attribute of those who interact with them is one of extreme, royalty-like deference, both formally (standing when they enter, addressing them as "Your Honor," having them sit always on an elevated platform, decked in their flowing, magisterial robes) as well as informally (watch any court proceeding and see lawyers petrified of somehow offending the judge).  To say that, for many of them, this endless deference affects their expectations and sense of entitlements is to understate the case, as Roberts just proved.

Supreme Court Justices, in particular, have awesome, unrestrained power.  They are guaranteed life tenure, have no authorities who can sanction them except under the most extreme circumstances, and, with the mere sweep of a pen, can radically alter the lives of huge numbers of people or even transform our political system (as five of them, including Roberts, just did, to some degree, in Citizens United).  The very idea that it's terribly wrong, uncouth, and "very troubling" for the President to criticize one of their most significant judicial decisions in a speech while in their majestic presence -- not threaten them, or have them arrested, or incite violence against them, but disagree with their conclusions and call for Congressional remedies (as Art. II, Sec. 3 of the Constitution requires) -- approaches pathological levels of vanity and entitlement.  The particular Obama/Roberts/Alito drama is an unimportant distraction, but what this reflects about the mindset of many judges, including (perhaps especially) ones on the Supreme Court and obviously the Chief Justice of that court, is definitely worth considering.

At least 100 detainees died in U.S. custody, many as a result of interrogation practices and detention conditions.  Gen. Barry McCaffrey put it this way:  "We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the C.I.A."  Other than a handful of very low-level scapegoats, none has been punished, or even investigated, but rather immunized in multiple ways, both formal and informal.  Army Gen. Antonio Taguba concluded that the abuse was the direct result of the orders of top-level Bush officials and said:  "there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."  Most of the people subject to our lawless "war on Terror" detention system were completely innocent.

Iran is a horribly oppressive regime and many of these judicial processes may (or may not) be sham trials.  But they have a citizenry which effectively demanded accountability for torture, a government which relented to citizen demands, and a judiciary which compelled at least some judicial scrutiny and adjudication for these crimes.  One can only imagine what it must be like to be a citizen of a country that feels obligated -- even if just to placate populist anger -- to at least maintain the pretense of that the rule of law applies to all.

 

UPDATE:  And just by the way, Agence France-Presse's Olivier Knox reported today: "AIPAC writes every member of US Congress urging 'crippling' sanctions on Iran."  But remember:  any suggestion that belligerent U.S. actions towards Iran has anything at all to do with Israel would be deeply inappropriate, probably even anti-Semitic or, at the very best, an idea which all decent people would agree has a "revolting provenance."

All of this underscores a vital point:  the Obama White House is hamstrung by its own embrace of the Bush/Cheney Terrorism template in advocating for its own policies.  The pollsters' Memo stresses, for instance, that the primary justification Obama officials offered in defending their Mirandizing of the attempted Christmas Day bomber -- Bush did it too with Richard Reid -- is ineffective and makes them appear "weak":

Voters resist the argument that the Obama administration simply handled the Christmas bomber in the same way the Bush administration handled the "shoe bomber" case; this sounds political, and produces a weak response.

How can this response be anything other than weak and muddled?  Democrats generally and Obama specifically have spent years telling the country that Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies were lawless, immoral, inept and counter-productive.  Yet the minute there's a controversy over Obama's Terrorism policy, his first justification is:  we're only doing what Bush and Cheney did.  He can't stand on his own two feet and forcefully justify civilian trials or Mirandizing Terrorist suspects; he has to take refuge in the fact that Bush also did it -- as though that proves it's the right thing to do, because Bush/Cheney is the Standard-Bearer of Toughness on Terrorism.  If you're going to embrace the core Bush/Cheney model on Terrorism and point to what they did as though that's the guide for how things should be done -- and if you're going to run to them for refuge and protection -- and if you're going to reverse yourself and capitulate at slightest sign of political pressure (FISA, detainee photos, civilian trials) -- is it really any surprise that people will begin to conclude that Bush and Cheney had things basically right and that Democrats are"weak" (not because of specific policies, but because of their fear of arguing for and sticking with their own positions)?

This is the same point made, albeit in a different form, by Stanley Fish in today's New York Times, who argues that there is a growing nostalgia for George Bush among many media figures and the country generally (which, at least with regard to media elites, I've noted before as well; there's zero evidence it's true of the public generally, and Fish's attempt to prove otherwise is unbelievably lame).  Still, today's poll proves the public is far more receptive than before to arguments coming from the Cheneyite faction, and Fish, persuasively, points to this as a major reason why:

Bush’s policies came to seem less obviously reprehensible as the Obama administration drifted into embracing watered-down versions of many of them. Guantanamo hasn’t been closed. No Child Left Behind is being revised and perhaps improved, but not repealed. The banks are still engaging in their bad practices. Partisanship is worse than ever. Obama seems about to back away from the decision to try 9/11 defendants in civilian courts, a prospect that led the ACLU to run an ad in Sunday’s Times with the subheading “Change or more of the same?” Above that question is a series of photographs that shows Obama morphing into guess who -- yes, that’s right, George W. Bush. 

I wish everyone would read that first, bolded sentence every day.  This is a point I've been trying to make in different ways for many months.  It is obviously impossible to maintain that the Terrorism and other national security policies of George Bush and Dick Cheney were radical, heinous, evil and wrong if the successor administration -- one from "the other party," filled with people who spent years vehemently condemning those policies -- end up adopting most of those same policies and the core approach itself.  Inevitably, that behavior will come to be seen as vindication (now that Obama is in office, he sees those policies are necessary), and worse, converts what had been viewed as extremist, highly controversial right-wing policies into unchallenged bipartisan consensus.  

It's only natural that many people in the country say to themselves:  how bad could George Bush and Dick Cheney really have been in these areas if their core policies are being adopted by Obama?  Apparently, there must not be anything wrong with indefinite detention, military commissions, renditions, state secrets, etc. because Obama has embraced them as well.  And once those conclusions are fostered, it's hardly a surprise that Bush officials such as Dick Cheney will once again be listened to as a credible authority on such matters; if he, after all, had the basic approach right, why deviate from it at all?

Independently, and even more important, think about how rhetorically difficult it is for the Obama administration to defend civilian trials when they themselves are subjecting scores of detainees (in fact, most) to military commissions or indefinite detention.  It's a completely confused, unprincipled, self-negating approach that can only produce muddled, unprincipled and therefore weak defenses.  Nobody in the administration can possibly argue (as Democrats used to vocally argue) that military commissions, indefinite detention and denial of civilian trials are un-American and counter-productive, because the Democratic administration is now doing exactly that.  So if you can't argue that, how can you possibly defend civilian trials, or rebut the GOP claim that accused Terrorists should be placed before military commissions or indefinitely detained?  You can't -- you have no argument -- and that's why Obama is losing this debate.

There's a difference -- a fundamental one -- between (a) being pragmatic in trying to implement one's principles and (b) having no principles at all and and glorifying that unanchored emptiness as "pragmatism."  Once you enter the realm of (b), you are not only guilty of having no principles (a sin in its own right), but you're incapable of finding a way to effectively justify what you're doing, because you have no coherent principles to which you can credibly appeal.   In virtually every realm (health care, financial reform, national security), and especially in Terrorism/civil liberties, that has been the great political failure of the Obama administration. 

* * * * *

I spoke at NYU School of Law last week, and in the various questions that were asked, these are the issues that were raised repeatedly.  I'll post a couple of the relevant excerpts in just a few minutes.

 

UPDATE:  Here are several 3-5 minute excepts from the NYU Law School event I did last week, moderated by NYU Law Professor Stephen Holmes, that are relevant to this discussion:

On principles v. pragmatism:

 

On civilian v. military tribunals and the "Soft on Terror" attack:

 

On the prospects of winning these debates:

This was a really great event -- virtually all smart and probing questions -- and so I'll try to post the rest of the excerpts elsewhere a bit later today.

 

UPDATE II:  All of the video clips from the NYU event are now posted, here.

On combating propaganda:

 

On progressive activism under Obama:

 

Vindicating principles in a two-party system:

 

Obama's awareness of his political problems:

 

Does the rule of law matter?

 

 

On principles v. pragmatism :

 

On civilian v. military tribunals and the "Soft on Terror" attack:

 

On the prospects of winning political debates: