Is it good for General Motors or the country, or what?

To have done nothing about the auto industry… was never an option

A paycheck is better than a handout, and had the government done nothing at all and let GM fold, the U.S. taxpayers would be spending as much or more than has been spent already as a safety net to the decimated economies in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and other border state and southern regions that depend on the auto industry. My standing position on the Arena on GM and the other struggling auto makers has been two-fold: They should have entered bankruptcy before receiving government bailout or loan guarantees and, second, it’s essential that the United States have a thriving private transportation industry and every effort must be made to ensure its existence. The government has already spent $80 billion on GM, though I point out to bean counters of the partisan variety that this is far less than the $700 billion bath American taxpayers have taken in Iraq. 

To have done nothing about the auto industry, however, was never an option, and that fact is not debatable. Both Republican and Democratic administrations acted under that very assumption–that the U.S. auto industry must come through the current crises in some form. A lot of good a prediction from will do for workers and investor who lose out in this restructuring, but I predict that the government will be all but entirely out of New General Motors’s hair before Labor Day in 2010 when the midterm campaign season shifts into full swing.

This post originally appeared on Politico’s Arena.

Subscribe (RSS) to Take 2

Focus on your writing at the Attic Writers’ Workshop

On a separate issue, denying funding to close Guantanamo

This left-over Bush administration problem needs to be resolved. 

First, we should stop holding enemy combatants indefinitely and get on with charging them with a crime. In general, we should imprison enemy combatants in federal corrections institutions where today we have already some 200,000 offenders behind bars. 

The “Escape of the Giant Jihadist” hysteria is absurd. Anyone who knows anything about the real life of federal prisons knows that there is more than an adequate amount of prisoner-led self-policing going on inside those walls, in addition to professional guards. In fact, given how many prisons we have in this country of all kinds, it’s shocking how little the American public knows about the actual experiences of those whom we incarcerate. Gitmo has been a failure. I know it can’t be done by lunch, but we need to put that unfortunate chapter in American “justice” behind us.

~ ~ ~

Rory Cooper of the Heritage Foundation responds

David, excuse me if it feels like I’m targeting you this week, but I would like to address a couple of your points. First, you have correctly identified a major difference between conservatives and liberals, and the liberal belief that the enemy combatants at Gitmo are part of the “justice” system. They are not. They are terrorists who declared war on the United States who do not represent a flag nation, as we became accustomed to in previous wars.

It is absurd to think that the only concern is that the terrorist might break out, which trivializes the issue. The question is, if you put them in Colorado’s SuperMax, is Colorado now a target for terrorism by men we have not caught yet? Or are they automatically entered into the U.S. judicial system? Since that would be highly inappropriate given that evidence against them was gathered in classified military processes, where would you prosecute them? In a military tribunal as Presidents Bush and Obama both supported.

So if they’re being tried in a military tribunal, why not keep them imprisoned on a military base. Where is the most secure facility for this? Guantanamo Bay. The men and women who serve our country at Gitmo are amazing soldiers who watch over these murderous thugs with integrity and responsibility and to move them out of that facility to improve the window dressing of this issue is naïve. I recommend you watch the National Geographic Channel’s (super non-partisan) documentary “Inside Gitmo” for a look at this facility that is hailed as exemplary from both sides of the aisle. Most agree it was unfortunate that President Obama chose to sign an executive order closing Gitmo on his second day in office before knowing the facts, or having a plan. And as America regains its senses, I hope we can now all agree that fighting terrorism is priority #1, not fighting a public relations battle from 2003.

~ ~ ~

Fred Barbash, Politico’s Arena moderator responds

Pardon my interruption…but if they were all terrorists we wouldn’t be having this problem, which is the more-than-semantic problem with the discussion of this issue generally. The Bush and Obama administrations have been struggling to come up with a process-acceptable to the Supreme Court–precisely to determine which of those in custody are, in fact, terrorists.

~ ~ ~

My response

Rory, no offense taken. Call me a liberal or, hey, like yesterday, call me poetic, but I do in fact support due process for Guantanamo prisoners, as well as closing the prison camp there. If recent polling is to be believed, so too does a majority of the American public.

For some time now military, diplomatic, and intelligence officials have been investigating public, private, or military prisons to take Guantanomo prisoners (and struggling in the effort because of a U.S. law preventing mixing Guantanomo detainees with domestic inmates). This process, of course, was begun during the Bush administration. There is a precedent, meanwhile, for terrorist detentions in American jails: The shoe bomber, Richard Reid, is in the SuperMax in Colorado; Zarcarias Moussaoui is incarcerated there also.

As of February of this year, 500 enemy combatants, including some alleged to be the so-called “worst of the worst,” have actually been released already from Guantanomo. So it’s unclear who is a terrorist thug and who isn’t–that’s why we should be charging them and trying them. And, then, we can call them murderous thugs if that’s, in fact, what they are. Also, it’s from this lot (of the 500, I mean) that the allegations that several dozen of them are back in the field come from–including Abdullah Zakir, a militant whom the Bush administration released from Guantanamo two years ago and who is now a leader among the Afghan Taliban.

About 200-some prisoners remain. A third of these have been cleared some time ago to be sent home without charges. Another third are being kept because the military believes there is evidence to try them–whether in military or in federal courts, where, by the way, there is precedent for shielding the public from classified evidence–though only two dozen have actually been charged and of these only three have been brought to trial. Finally, of the other third, there lacks evidence to charge these individuals with anything–although intelligence officials insist these prisoners are too risky to set free. They’re the ones who have to be dealt with, and they were going to have to be dealt with whether Guantanomo is kept open or not.

Re: Colorado SuperMax as a potential site of terrorist attacks. Rory, we might be able to agree on this point: It makes no difference who is president or who controls the U.S. Congress or how well or poorly we treat enemy combatants, or even what policies of defense, what uses of hard or soft power get employed for us to be realists about the following fact. Jihadists don’t need motivation to attack civilians. So let’s not ascribe to them any special care for the our national drama about domestic security.

I’ll check out your movie. Re: yesterday’s debate. By now you surely know that “excessivement sensible” means overly sensitive.

This post originally appeared on Politico’s Arena.

Subscribe (RSS) to Take 2

Focus on your writing at the Attic Writers’ Workshop

If you were the decider, how would you decide the fate of a Guantanamo detainee?

…Unlike the Bush administration, the Obama administration is not tagged with seven years of legal disarray and perhaps illegal conduct

This detainee decision is flawed and troublesome. Our courts are well-equipped to try the 200-plus detainees we have in Cuba and others who are arrested in the future. Our super-max prisons are well-equipped to hold any prisoner, foreign or domestic.

By arguing that we can try some detainees in U.S. courts but not others, the decision is an admission that there are in fact a few dozen detainees, long considered extraordinarily dangerous, for whom we lack sufficient evidence to try or even convict. Thus, the government continues to trap itself into a quasi-legal vice. But creating a layered system of trying detainees in military tribunals and also in American courts, as well as expanding their legal rights, is significantly different from the Bush administration’s policy of holding combatants without charge or trial indefinitely. Or claiming a legal right to do so.

Some, especially on the right, are chastising President Obama for reversing his campaign pledge–he has–or that this new policy resembles the Bush administration’s policy–it does, though it differs significantly in affording combatants more legal rights of defense. But the complaint that Obama is now doing what Bush did is utterly hollow because context matters. The Bush and Obama decisions about detainees may resemble each other–and the do–but the two administrations are not developing tribunal and court policies from the same place of public faith and trust.

This post originally appeared on Politico’s Arena.

Subscribe (RSS) to Take 2

Focus on your writing at the Attic Writers’ Workshop

Tortured, Round 2

 

Cesar Conda

Republican strategist, former Romney and Cheney advisor

 

The 9/11 National Commission report concluded that both Presidents Clinton and Bush were not well served by the FBI and the CIA

David, there is a big difference between the 3,000 innocent civilians who were going about their daily lives when they were slaughtered on 9/11 and the 4,924 American military men and women who bravely gave their lives to fight for our country.

Your assertion that President George W. Bush’s “pre 9/11 policies made us unsafe” and that he “is responsible for the failure before on 9/10 and prior” doesn’t square with the bipartisan 9/11 National Commission report, which concluded that both Presidents Clinton and Bush were not well served by the FBI and the CIA. According to the Commission: “What we can say with confidence is that none of the measures adopted by the U.S. government from 1998 to 2001 disturbed or even delayed the progress of the al Qaeda plot. Across the government, there were failures of imagination, policy, capabilities, and management.”

On the question of whether America is safer, the 9/11 Commission concluded: “Because of offensive actions against al Qaeda since 9/11, and defensive actions to improve homeland security, we believe we are safer today. But we are not safe.”

President George W. Bush prevented another 9/11-type of attack, and made America safer today. We are not safe because our enemies with al Qaeda are plotting every single day to kill us. I believe dismantling the Bush anti-terror policies will make us less safe. You, Maria Cardona and others do not. If you get your way, let’s hope and pray that you are right, and I am wrong.

 

 

• David Biespiel

  Poet and writer, Attic Writer’s Workshop

   

  The 9/11 Commissioners did not know what we now know

  Cesar, I don’t think we’re that far apart in fact, but perhaps so in nuance and certainly emphasis.

  Our domestic actions to prevent terrorists and our military excursion in Iraq are part of the same strategic cloth. My point about success/failure characterizations of the Bush administration did not excuse the Clinton administration but I can see how you might see it that way by my not saying so. I’ll be clear: Officials in both the Clinton and Bush administrations bear responsibility for the failures that led to 9/11. Richard Clarke, who served in both administrations, has detailed these lapses.

  The 9/11 Commissioners did not know what we now know. The 9/11 Commissioners went to lengths not to report on the relationship between American safety and the war in Iraq–and the terrorist-related consequences that the war has engendered. 

  The 9/11 Commission Report was published in July 2004, even prior to President Bush’s re-election. It wasn’t until December 2005 that the New York Times reported that the Bush administration had conducted numerous illegal–for the sake of friendly debate, allegedly illegal–warrantless searches as part of its counterterrorism initiatives. 

  The 9/11 Commissioners did not know that, in 2007, the United Nations Commission on Torture would admonish the U.S. for our “enhanced interrogation techniques” and the use of secret prisons. 

  The 9/11 Commissioners did not know about the CIA’s destruction of video tape showing prisoners being interrogated by CIA agents–though I suspect they would have excused the destruction of videotape on the grounds that the U.S. does not want other nations to prosecute our agents for potential violations of international law. 

  To the deaths of Americans, both innocent and uniformed military, I would add the 10s of thousands (some estimates have it at 90,000) Iraqis who have died as a result of violent conflict since the start of the war in 2003. Do I ascribe all of those deaths to President Bush, absolutely not. Though the shopkeeper who was killed by a hand-grenade in Faisaliyah, Mosul on March 26, 2009, did not start a preventative war–or even a preventable one. His death does not make Americans safer, at home or abroad.

  Focus on your writing at the Attic Writers’ Workshop

  follow david on twitter

   

Tortured

 

Cesar Conda

Republican strategist, former Romney and Cheney advisor

 

Bush’s polices made us safe

In her response to yesterday’s Arena question about the Bush Administration’s interrogation policies, Maria Cardona  asserted that “these misguided and dreadful policies have not made us safer…” and they have only provided “fodder” to our enemies. On 9/11, our enemies killed almost 3,000 of our fellow Americans before “these misguided and dreadful policies” were ever put into place. Our enemies in Al-Qaeda don’t need additional “fodder” or motivation; their hatred for America and the freedoms America stands for is absolute.

Interestingly, when lawmakers were briefed about these tougher interrogation policies, there was bipartisan approval and encouragement for them. Apparently, the Democrats who were briefed on these interrogation policies did not view them as “misguided and dreadful.”

Cardona’s assertion that the intelligence infrastructure created after 9/11 has “not made us safer” doesn’t square with the fact that there has not been another terrorist attack on American soil. Weakening that infrastructure will make America more vulnerable. 

Finally, there is another line from “conservative hero” Ronald Reagan that we should borrow and use to guide us in today’s War on Terror: “We must have the will to meet the challenges of an adversary who is constantly testing our resolve to defend our vital national interests.”

 

• David Biespiel

  Poet and writer, Attic Writer’s Workshop

   

  More Americans have died since 9/11 than on 9/11

  Cesar, you’re right to point out the culpability that Congressional Democrats share in approving the Bush administration’s dubious interrogation policies. These Democrats may not have viewed the interrogation policies, including torture, as “misguided and dreadful,” to use Marina Cordona’s words from the other day on the Arena, but that does not mean that the Democrats’ approval wasn’t itself misguided and dreadful. 

  Both the Bush administration and its supporters overt or tacit approval of torture as an interrogation method was misguided and dreadful. 

  Be that as it may, if supporters of President Bush’s post-9/11 polices can assert that his administration made us safer, then supporters must also affirm the corollary: President Bush’s pre-9/11 policies made us unsafe. If the Bush administration is responsible for the success that’s claimed after 9/11, then it’s responsible for the failure before on 9/10 and prior. While I believe that is the case–that culpability, I do not think it is absolutely so; except for a few spectacular occasions, it’s not like the American homeland has been under attack all that much from 1812 to 2001 anyway.

  Conservatives and Republicans assert that, after 9/11, President Bush’s interrogation policies and actions generally have made us safer because, as you write, “there has not been another terrorist attack on American soil.” I’m disappointed that you make this argument because, for one thing, it’s just the mother of all debate stoppers, to borrow an expression. Why? Because no one can prove a negative. 

  Just because there’s been no attack on American soil, doesn’t confirm that we’re more safe. As you say, terrorists don’t need “fodder.” Meanwhile, Americans have not actually been safer. The 4,924 American service men and women who have been casualties in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom were not safer. (In the spirit of disclosure, I was a supporter of Operation Enduring Freedom and the creation of the Homeland Security Department; I opposed Operation Iraqi Freedom; and as I have written on the Arena and elsewhere I am willing to admit that President Bush was right to conquer Iraq when I see an Iraqi and Iranian embassy in Jerusalem and an Israeli embassy in Baghdad and Tehran.) As far as the issue of American safety is concerned, more Americans have died since 9/11 than died on 9/11.

  Finally, to assert that Americans are safer because of the Bush administration’s interrogation policies is to assert that the rule of law is less important than American safety. That’s a debate that must be had again and again, now and in the future, about the relationship between the importance of American security and the importance of abiding by American laws. It is Machiavellian to assert that torture is justifiable because it prevents further attacks against Americans or because “there has not been another terrorist attack on American soil.” 

  I should like to add something to that fine quote by President Reagan you supplied this morning. Thank you, Cesar, for posting it; I hadn’t read it before. “We must have the will to meet the challenges of an adversary who is constantly testing our resolve to defend our national interests” and we must have the resolve to make sure that those challenges do not cause us to abandon our values about the relationship between freedom and the rule of law.

  from Politico

  Focus on your writing at the Attic Writers’ Workshop

  follow david on twitter

   

U.S. Is Now Pro-Human Rights…Again

“U.S. to Join U.N. Human Rights Council, Reversing Bush Policy” written by Colum Lynch

from The Washington Post

Focus on your writing at the Attic Writers’ Workshop

follow david on twitter

Keeping Up with the Bin Ladens

“One Big Unhappy Family” by Fred Halliday. From New York Review of Books

follow david on twitter