Month: May 2009

The biggest impediment to moving any Guantanamo detainees to American soil has little to do with the law or the Geneva Conventions or, candidly, national security. It has, instead, everything to do with familiar, mundane (Not In My Back Yard) NIMBY scenarios and old-fashioned, disingenuous politics.  

 

Consider the comments of these three, Exhibit A pandering Congressional pols: Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb.

·         “Well, I don’t think you can convince the American people that you can bring the people from Gitmo to their states, and they will be safe,” declaimed Shelby.

·         “I don’t know why it is better to have somebody in a so-called ‘supermax’ facility in, say, Colorado than it is to keep them in Guantanamo,” opined Kyl.

·         “I think they need to be kept elsewhere, wherever that is,” prattled  Nelson.

 

Ironically, one of the upsides of leading the world in incarcerations is that along the way, we’ve learned how to build a pretty good “supermax.”  That’s where the terrorist likes of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Zacharias Moussaoui are: the Colorado “supermax” lockdown. They’re not going anywhere but to an occasional shower stall. Charlie Manson has a better chance of tying some sheets together and slipping back into the populace than “supermaxed” terrorists have of escaping.

 

Not only is the “supermax” super safe, it is the anti-Gitmo, which is critically important. In other words, it won’t be an ongoing source of jihadi pep rallies and a geopolitical nightmare for the U.S. And it won’t be a reminder to the rest of the world that America still occupies a sliver of the sovereign island of Cuba, which can’t be helpful.

 

The three NIMBY senators know it, but would rather pander to their constituents’ unfounded fears. And let’s not forget who set the alarmist predicate on this one: former Vice President Dick Cheney. “To bring the worst of the worst terrorists inside the United States would be cause for great danger and regret in the years to come,” apocalyptically warned the erstwhile Darth Veeper.

Stay with me on this one.

 

So, what to make of the Dick Cheney “Obamanator” Tour? Including, of course, that virtual mano a mano duel with President Obama recently. Overlapping agendas, it would appear.

 

First, for an ideologically marginalized entity labeled the “Party of No” amid unprecedented, multiple crises, Cheney is — if not GOP manna — certainly most welcome. A higher power than Palin is obviously needed, even if not acknowledged.  These are troubled times for the incredible shrinking tent that is today’s Republican Party.

 

Cheney’s obvious appeal is national security. Its catastrophic breach, hardly inconceivable, trumps all other issues. After all, who — really, really, down deep — doesn’t want to do everything possible — including the ethically and morally problematic — to prevent a 9/11 sequel? Ticking time bomb and all that. Who would truly care, goes a certain line of theoretical reasoning, about post-apocalyptic consolation prizes — such as the still fluttering flag of ACLU principles amid chaos and carnage?

 

Love him or loathe him, Cheney’s the avatar of national security. If this country gets hit again — big time — then industry bailouts, protectionism, abortion, national debt, stimulus scenarios, energy policy and health-care reform will be rendered instantaneously moot.

 

Cheney, the embodiment of the GOP’s uber talking point, is ostensibly a reminder that your churlish, old uncle who carries a big (waterboard, rendition, warrant-less wire tap) stick would be better in a zero-sum, security punch out than a less experienced sort better known for charisma, eloquence and vision. You betcha.

 

And Cheney is hardly shy in framing the GOP position on the basis that America hasn’t been hit again since 9/11. “You think that would have happened under a Gore Administration?!” goes his all-but-asked rhetorical question.

 

Cheney is his own best advocate because he’s the ultimate neocon. He believes it all.

 

Having said that.  

 

It was, after all, on the Bush-Cheney watch that 9/11 actually HAPPENED. Cheney was pre-eminent among those who had dismissed the warnings of national security guru Richard Clarke as the rantings of a Clinton-era Cassandra. Recall that it was Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush who allowed Osama bin Laden to avoid a Tora Bora capture or cave-in by shifting America’s military priorities to their war of choice, Iraq.

 

And then there’s the strategy, per se, of al-Qaeda.

 

To be sure, fundamentalist killers were disrupted in their communications and money laundering by steps taken by the Bush Administration. But al-Qaeda had already made its point that America was not untouchable.

 

David Kilcullen, the Australian counterinsurgency expert who wrote The Accidental Guerrilla, quotes bin Laden (from 2004) on al-Qaeda’s post-9/11 tactics: “All we have to do is send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a cloth on which is written ‘al-Qaeda,’ in order to make the (U.S.) generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses…so we are continuing this policy of bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.”

 

Moreover, why risk re-ceding the moral high ground that was accorded the U.S. immediately after 9/11 by most of the world?

 

And then there’s the more personal level.

 

It’s altogether plausible that Cheney was tired of having been a second banana to a junior executive for so long. He was smart enough to be a puppet master but not providential enough to be president.  

 

Grabbing the bully pulpit on national security was a way of addressing that accident of history. Now was certainly not the time to emulate the classy code of partisan silence being invoked by former President George W. Bush and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

 

And going public was also a way of guaranteeing the highest possible bid for the memoir Cheney is known to be shopping around.

It is being referenced as a neo-classic “they said/she said.”  That is, the CIA briefing to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi that did or did not reference waterboarding back in 2002.  Who to believe when both have ample motivations to be less than candid? Who to believe when both are less than citadels of veracity? Who to believe when winks, nods and arched brows can communicate what note-taking doesn’t record?

 

So, best to ask former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, who, as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee back then, received a CIA detainee briefing in the same time frame. He says there was no mention of waterboarding – and given that there was (typically) staff present, it was, indeed, no surprise that something as sensitive as waterboarding wasn’t on the agenda, official or otherwise.

 

Frankly, Bob “Anal Retentive Note Taker” Graham is the most credible source on this subject. Chances are, waterboarding, per se, was never part of Pelosi’s briefing.