The other day I wrote about having that sick feeling in my stomach over the latest attack on the social contract with respect to the unemployment benefits extension. I think we always find these attacks startling and somewhat paralyzing when they happen because they go against our instinctive belief in a certain national moral consensus. They are radical propositions that seem so outrageous that we can’t believe we have to argue the point until it’s too late.
I used the issue of torture as a previous assault on the social contract and I think it’s been born out that as a nation we no longer believe in an absolute prohibition on torture. You’ll recall that at one time President Bush very scrupulously insisted “the United States doesn’t torture,” an odd turn of phrase which was later adopted by President Obama as well. Aside from the legal exposure, I think it was the old tribute vice pays to virtue in that they at least paid lip service to the idea that torture was wrong (even if they winked and nodded to the bloodthirsty sadists while they did it.) Today what we hear are full-throated defenses of torture. They’ve successfully defined this deviancy down.
Get ready for another one, which takes a slightly different approach although not one which is unprecedented:
This new ad — from Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol’s group “Keep America Safe” — might truly be the most repellent and vile political ad of the last decade.
It’s another example of the patented “I know you are but what am I” routine which the Republicans have perfected over the years. This one is obviously designed to create some equivalency in the minds of citizens between the heinous torture advocates John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington etc., and defense lawyers who, by definition, very often defend guilty clients. Indeed, it’s a cornerstone of our judicial system. I assume the right-wing radio talkers will spin the idea that these defense lawyers are terrorist sympathizers hard and before long, we’ll have full fledged debates about whether or not they should be disbarred. At that point, most Americans will tune out and say “they’re all scum” and that will be that.
But the larger point is that this kind of argument, however cynically designed to cover Dick Cheney’s historical legacy, results in the same ripping of the social contract as the torture “controversy.” Over time a fair number of people begin to believe that something we were all taught in grade school as an absolute — a constitutional right to counsel — is controversial. And another piece of our consensus about what the constitution means will have been destroyed (by some very creepy authoritarians, I might add).
And the greatest irony of all this is that for decades one of the most famous screeching critics of what they used to call moral relativism was none other than Lynne Cheney. Shamelessness and hypocrisy don’t even begin to explain it.
"Digby" has been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a writer whose political and cultural observations have entertained and informed the blogosphere since 2002. They can currently be found at www.digbysblog.blogspot.com.
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As I noted yesterday, the group run by Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol released what is certainly one of the more repugnant political ads of the last decade, if not the most repugnant. It’s the type of McCarthyite act which would, if we had any minimal standards in our political culture, result in the shunning of Cheney and Kristol by all decent people (instead, it will likely land the Vice President’s daughter on multiple Sunday talk shows where she can pose as an expert on national security). The ad brands Eric Holder’s DOJ the “Department of Jihad” because it employs 9 lawyers who previously represented Guantanamo detainees (including Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, who successfully represented the Guantanamo-plaintiffs in the 2006 Hamdan case before the U.S. Supreme Court). The ad darkly asks of these lawyers: “whose values do they share?,” and labels 7 of those unidentified DOJ lawyers “The Al Qaeda 7.” The premise of the ad is as clear as it insidious: any lawyers representing accused Terrorists are of suspect loyalties and allegiances, are devoted to “jihad,” and are sympathetic to, if not part of, Al Qaeda (this profoundly ugly smear campaign began with the always-unhinged Andrew McCarthy in National Review, who branded such lawyers “terrorist sympathizers”).
This slander encompasses scores of American military lawyers, who have vigorously, passionately and often successfully defended numerous Guantanamo detainees, including those accused of being Al Qaeda operatives. Adam Serwer and Spencer Ackerman both have excellent pieces on this ad, featuring quotes from several military officers who have defended accused Terrorists, including retired Col. Morris Davis, who was once a lead prosecutor in Guantanamo’s military commissions only to became a vocal critic of that system. Watching as their integrity and character are smeared by the likes of Dick Cheney’s daughter and Bill Kristol is really revolting.
But that disgusting duo is also smearing countless civilian lawyers whose work since 9/11 has been nothing short of heroic: representing the most demonized and despised group of individuals, and devoting massive amounts of time, energy and resources to doing so, almost always for free and — particularly in the early aftermath of 9/11 — at substantial risk to their reputations and professional relationships. They did so to defend the most basic Constitutional liberties of all of us — as Lt. Col. David Frakt told Serwer: ”What we have seen over and over and over is that the vast majority of detainees at Guantanamo are innocent” — and there are no words in the English language sufficient to describe how low and odious are the people responsible for this “Department of Jihad/Al Qaeda 7″ campaign.
As it turns out, one of the lawyers who has successfully represented Guantanamo detainees, Jonathan Hafetz of the ACLU, co-edited a newly released book, The Guantánamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison, Outside the Law, which documents the sacrifices made and the indispensable value of those who have fought against the system of lawlessness and brutality represented by Guantanamo. Hafetz himself represented Mohamed Jawad, a boy no older than 15 at the time he was detained in Afghanistan and shipped to Guantanamo, falsely accused of throwing a grenade at American soldiers who had invaded his country, and put in a cage for 7 years with no trial (where he twice tried to commit suicide), until finally being released last year after a federal judge granted his habeas petition on the ground of insufficient evidence.
I spoke with Hafetz last week regarding the heroic lawyers who have sacrificed to do this work, and the discussion, which is roughly 20 minutes in length, can be heard by clicking PLAY on one of the two recorders below (as always, the podcast can also be downloaded as an MP3 here and on ITunes here). A transcript is here.
We all have a tendency to look back on shameful events in our nation’s history — slavery, the internment of Japanese-Americans, the McCarthyite witch hunts — and like to believe that we would have been on the right side of those conflicts and would have vigorously opposed those responsible for the wrongs. Here we have real, live, contemporary McCarthyites in our midst — Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol — launching a repulsive smear campaign, and we’ll see what the reaction is and how they’re treated by our political and media elites.
UPDATE: Several commenters here made the same point that Col. Davis made to Ackerman: that John Adams, as a lawyer, defended British soldiers accused of brutal crimes committed during the Boston Massacre. Adams called his defense of those enemy soldiers “one of the most gallant, generous, manly, and disinterested actions of my whole life, and one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country.” Imagine the ads Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol would have produced about him. As always, those who most flamboyantly and shrilly anoint themselves Arbiters of American Patriotism wage the most vicious wars on its core principles.
UPDATE II: In response to yesterday’s Cheney/Kristol ad and a months-long crusade by Sen. Charles Grassley on this issue, the DOJ today released the names of the 7 DOJ lawyers whom it previously acknowledged (without identifiying) worked on behalf of Guantanamo detainees before joining the administration. As the Fox News article reporting on this disclosure notes, the Bush/Cheney DOJ also employed several lawyers who had previously represented “War on Terror” detainees, which (according to the Cheney/Kristol ”logic”) means that — just as is true for Rudy Giuliani’s firm — the Bush DOJ was devoted to jihad and in league with Al Qaeda.
Former Vice-President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz.
An extraordinary array of Republicans have been bashing the administration for “Mirandizing” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab over the last few days — including Lindsey Graham, Kit Bond, Rudy Giuliani, Mitch McConnell and Michele Bachmann, to name a few — even as the media admirably did its job reporting that the Bush administration had Mirandized every single terror suspect caught on its watch as well. Despite those facts, former Vice President Dick Cheney stepped up the attack on Obama Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” — and also admitted he’s a war criminal (but more on that later.)
Meanwhile, U.S. forces captured the most powerful Taliban leader they’ve grabbed since the war began in 2001, and intelligence sources tell Newsweek they’ve broken up a big al-Qaida plot in Yemen and Pakistan as well. More on that later too.
Asked about the way the administration treated Abdulmutallab, Cheney skewered the White House. “The proper way to deal with it would have been to treat him as an enemy combatant,” says Cheney. “They didn’t know what to do with the guy.” ABC’s Jonathan Karl confronted Cheney with the fact that his administration had done the same thing with attempted shoe bomber Richard Reid (he didn’t say they’d done the same with every terror suspect Bush-Cheney caught) and the former vice-president had to concede, “We could have put him in military custody, I don’t question that.”
Then Cheney unleashed his full attack, and it turns out he’s trashing his old boss, George W. Bush, not just Obama. Reminded of Bush administration boasts of convicting 175 accused terrorists in U.S. courts — the approach Obama has continued — Cheney replied, shockingly: “Well, we didn’t all agree with that.”
He went on: “I won some, I lost some. I was a big supporter of waterboarding. I was a big supporter of enhanced interrogation techniques.” (Anyone else hearing this sung to the tune of “My Way”?) This is the start of the Dick Cheney book tour, of course, but it’s remarkable how much Cheney is trashing his former boss. Also, admitting he was “a big supporter of waterboarding” strengthens the hand of those who’d like to see Cheney charged as a war criminal.
Not surprisingly, Cheney’s daughter Liz said even more horrible things on Fox News: She claimed the Clinton administration’s decision to try the 1993 World Trade Center bombers in criminal court led directly to 9/11 (h/t Crooks and Liars). God forbid we’re struck again, Democrats can blame the attack on the Bush-Cheney decision to likewise try hundreds of terror suspects in criminal court, thanks to Liz. She also trashed Obama’s director of national intelligence, John Brennan, forgetting he worked for Daddy’s administration. Both Cheneys seemed to hit new lows this weekend, but then again, maybe there is no low they won’t hit. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, U.S. forces captured the most important Taliban leader apprehended since the war began in 2001, according to the New York Times, and Newsweek is reporting that the administration also busted a big al-Qaida plot in Yemen and Pakistan. I’ve criticized the Obama administration’s decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan. This doesn’t obliterate my doubts about the expanded war. But those who support it should be cheering Obama’s approach to terror, not trashing him.
Republicans are hitting new lows when it comes to national security (and most other things, come to think about it.) The Cheneys are a predictable disgrace. Maybe other Republicans will admit what’s working about the White House approach to terror. And if they don’t think there’s proof yet that it’s working — that’s fair enough — maybe they can start by admitting it’s much the same as the Bush-Cheney administration’s approach.
On paper at least, Liz Cheney is more than just the privileged daughter of a former vice-president, bristling with hostile remarks about the Obama administration, the president’s patriotism, and all the terrible perils we face because her father is no longer in control of our national defenses. She advertises herself as a “specialist in Mideast policy,” a term that implies some vague expertise in counterterrorism. What she usually delivers are crude, propagandistic pronouncements like this cheesy attack ad, titled “100 Hours.” Reinforced by lurid music and graphics, its chief message is that President Obama played a few rounds of golf over the Christmas holiday — and spent a few days finding out what happened with Flight 253 before commenting publicly on the incident.
Serving as a board member of Keep America Safe, the neoconservative propaganda organ responsible for that ad, Cheney is also a Fox News commentator and a regular guest on many other outlets. In those roles she has usually escaped tough questions, but there are some signs of weariness with her vacuous bluster.
When she appeared on “ABC News This Week” to discuss the 100 Hours ad, George Stephanopoulos quickly pointed out that George W. Bush didn’t speak publicly about shoe-bomber Richard Reid until six days after he attempted to bring down Flight 253. (Stephanopoulos might also have noted that Cheney and her friends never seemed to notice how often Bush left the White House on vacation — especially during the weeks before 9/11, when the warning system was flashing red-red-red and steam was shooting from Richard Clarke’s ears.) Then Andrew Sullivan wondered aloud why the mainstream media lavish so much attention and airtime on someone whose public prominence is rooted solely in nepotism. A very good question, even though Sullivan is about eight years too late in asking.
But whenever Liz Cheney (or her dad) complain that nobody except them takes terrorism seriously, I think about her husband, Philip Perry, and the Washington Monthly’s remarkable July 2007 investigation of how he protected the chemical industry from any federal effort to secure their manufacturing plants — huge and enormously toxic — from a terror attack. (Real experts have long agreed that chemical manufacturing complexes, many of them abutting metropolitan population centers, present exceptionally tempting and insecure targets for al-Qaida.)
Strictly a patronage appointee like his wife, Perry is a Republican attorney who has spun his government appointments at the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Homeland Security into gold at the Latham & Watkins lobby shop — where he chairs the Homeland Security practice group, representing the same contractors and corporations he failed to regulate. This is simply the usual revolving-door Republicanism, except that in a period of actual danger, Perry did lasting damage to the nation’s security. Listening to Liz and Dick is irritating, but America is safer with the Cheney family (and cronies) on TV and out of government.
After an administration ends and the other party takes over, key members often find an institutional home from which to continue their arguments. In 2003, for example, veterans of the Clinton administration founded the Center for American Progress, to provide research and talking-points for center-left policies.
Following this basic model, Liz Cheney — daughter of the former vice president and a former State Department official herself — has gathered a group of conservatives of a particular ilk into a group she’s calling “Keep America Safe.” However, it’s not exactly a Bush administration in exile. Considering some of the people involved — Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, blogger Michael Goldfarb and Cheney herself — it might be more appropriate to call it a Cheney administration in exile.
Given the group’s principals, there should be little surprise about the main issues with which Keep America Safe is concerning itself. It’s basically your big neoconservative three: detention, torture and bombing. Nor is the argumentative style of the group and its members exactly a breath of fresh air. Bill Kristol explained the group’s purpose to Politico this way: “The Left has dozens of organizations and tens of millions of dollars dedicated to undercutting the war on terror. The good guys need some help too.” On Twitter, Michael Goldfarb wrote, “Why doesn’t the left want to Keep America Safe…sort of surprised by all the hostility.”
The Politico article on the group also highlights a two-minute promotional video that it produced. You won’t exactly be enlightened by the content, which is a series of intensely misleading half-truths. The basic gist is, to paraphrase Goldfarb, that President Obama doesn’t want to Keep America Safe.
So here’s a quick breakdown of the video’s claims. Thanks goes out to “Keep America Safe” for the “rhetoric vs. reality” format, which I will shamelessly appropriate:
Keep America Safe rhetoric: Barack Obama gives a good speech.
Reality: Okay, this one is basically true.
Keep America Safe rhetoric: Obama is scrapping the European missile shield, creating an opening for Iranian missiles to pour into Europe.
Reality: Unmentioned, naturally, is the fact that Obama junked the plan in order to secure Russian cooperation in pressuring Iran.
Keep America Safe rhetoric: Obama isn’t interested in protecting the CIA; you can tell this because his attorney general is investigating possible violations of the law by interrogators, which past CIA chiefs dislike.
Reality: This is, strictly, true. However, it neglects to point out that we do not traditionally rely on the chiefs of an agency to determine whether lawbreaking by their subordinates should be punished. We — typically — count on the judiciary for that instead.
Keep America Safe rhetoric: Obama promised to send more troops to Afghanistan, but hasn’t done it yet.
Reality: The military has already significantly enlarged its presence in Afghanistan, technically fulfilling the president’s campaign promise. Further, it came out recently that Obama quietly sent 13,000 new troops to Afghanistan. But yes, he’s still considering sending tens of thousands more, and on that front, he is taking a bit of time to think over his options.
Keep America Safe rhetoric: The president isn’t protecting the country because he’s slacking off, going on TV and golfing and vacationing and jet-setting to Copenhagen.
Reality: The trip to Copenhagen took, like, a day. Obama was already in New York when he went on the Tonight Show. And as for the golf game, well, remember which president spent the most days on vacation? On a related note, do you really want to be criticizing presidents for spending too long thinking over whether and how to commit American soldiers to battle? (Maybe better not to answer that one.)
Here it might be instructive to go back to Center for American Progress for a moment. As it happens, Politico recently ran an article on Think Progress, a CAP-based blog. Among the people asked for a quote was none other than Keep America Safe’s Michael Goldfarb. Said Goldfarb, “They’re a shameless bunch of lying, distorting, propagandists, which I respect, and I don’t know what MSNBC would do without them. But I think the high watermark for Think Progress is long past.”
And with that, Goldfarb went back to his office in the Cheney administration in exile.
Red State, a big conservative blog on the model of Daily Kos, had its first big bloggers’ gathering this past weekend. They even had some fairly big names in the world of Republican politics come speak — Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., among others — but they needed a headliner, someone whose name alone would be a draw.
So while Liz Cheney might not be her famous father, she does share a last name with the former vice-president, and that was apparently enough to make her the surprise guest at the event. That, and perhaps the political benefits for her? She’s suggested in the past that she might run for elected office one day soon, and as Politico’s Jonathan Martin observes, while there, she certainly sounded like a candidate, at least in her attacks on President Obama’s foreign policy.
Obama has a desire “to placate, to appease, not to cause offense,” Cheney said. “And it’s this desire that drives the president to plead with our enemies to talk at all costs. It puts America in a position of weakness, one that will not and cannot secure American interests.
“Now as a veteran of the State Department, I can tell you that effective diplomacy is not about appeasing your enemy. It’s not about unilateral pre-emptive disarmament. America has to negotiate from a position of strength. To survive as a nation, our president can’t function as a disinterested international arbitrator. He can’t attempt to stand above America and our enemies. In other words, America needs a commander in chief, not a global community organizer.”
As you’ll probably remember, the slam on Obama that uses his past as a community organizer against him was a favorite during the campaign, especially when it got some use at the Republican National Convention last summer.
Former Vice-President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz. 
