Dick Cheney speech: A fundamental question.
Former Vice-President Dick Cheney spoke today defending the Bush administration's record on terrorism. There is a fundamental question that we all have to ask ourselves -- does the Constitution mean anything? Or is it just a piece of paper? We have become the country that we are because of our ideals, even when our government has failed to live up to those ideals. Our revolution in 1776 was one of the most successful in history -- we were able to export our ideals around the world in just a few short decades, spawning the French Revolution and ending colonial rule in Latin America and weakening the grip of monarchies in Europe. In two world wars, we were able to prove that people who fight for freedom will always triumph over people who fight under the yoke of tyranny. Our ideals inspired the people of Russia and Eastern Europe to throw off the yoke of Communism. Our civil rights movement has spawned many others both here and around the world. Our country granted women the right to vote, something that is universal in the Western world.
President Bush, at the outset of his self-declared "war on terror," stated that the terrorists hated us for our freedoms. Cheney reiterated that in his speech today. That is partially true -- our notion of equality for women, for instance, is totally antithetical to anything they stand for, as is our right to vote, our right to free speech, and our notion of separation of church and state. Therefore, we judge the Bush and Cheney administrations by the standards that they set out for themselves -- anytime we do something that is totally antithetical to the Constitution or to international law, that helps the terrorists. Anytime we uphold the rule of law, the terrorists lose.
At the outset of his tenure as Vice-President, Cheney stated that since he was a secretary of defense, his duties "tended towards" national security. That is an understatement -- and it seems that he lost sight of his mission. When he took office, Cheney swore the oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Bound up in that oath of office is the expectation that in everything he does -- whether protecting us against terrorism or in any other aspect -- he does it legally. When you take the oath of office, you don't promise only to defend the parts of the Constitution that you like and refuse to defend the parts that you don't like -- you promise to defend the whole Constitution. If you don't subscribe to the Constitution, then don't run for office.
Cheney outlined the whole history of attacks against the US starting in 1993 and cumulating in the 9/11 attacks. Before the 9/11 attacks, terrorism was treated as a law enforcement problem. However, Cheney said that with the 9/11 attacks, we could no longer view it as a law enforcement problem, but we had to be able to stop terrorist attacks before they struck again, with even worse consequences. All of which is a laudable goal.
But what happened instead was one of the largest naked power grabs in US history. Starting with the Patriot Act, the government began a string of ever-increasing incursions on our civil liberties, snooping on our personal private lives, and justifying enormous war crimes by what Congress called "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States." And given the fact that George Bush had Bin Laden cornered and failed to capture him, and given the fact that he subsequently diverted resources to Iraq for a war of aggression that was started for personal revenge and to gain control of the world's oil supplies for Cheney's friends at Halliburton, one feels that Cheney does not believe his own rhetoric. So, we can draw some conclusions from that. First of all, we can and should make every effort to bring Bin Laden to justice -- he planned and implemented a war of aggression against the US; the fact that Bush and Cheney committed war crimes does not change that. Secondly of all, given the fact that Bush and Cheney didn't believe their own rhetoric, Bin Laden and the Taliban don't represent the strategic threat to the US that Bush and Cheney say they do. That means that we should not stay in Afghanistan forever, but we have to develop an exit plan as well as a plan to secure Pakistan's nukes.
The world that Cheney weaves is one in which everyone is against the US. Now, that may make one heroic and noble in the books. But in real life, the notion that everyone is against the man in the mirror usually means that the man in the mirror is doing something wrong. In the months and years after 9/11, the Bush administration masterfully wove a web of lies and conspiracy theories, cumulating in the plan between Bush and Blair to manupulate the case for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. All for one man's personal revenge against the man who allegedly tried to kill his father. All for another man's attempt to rack in billions for his friends at Halliburton.
The so-called "war on terror" had some successes such as the dismantling of Libya's nuclear program as well as the takedown of the A.Q. Khan Network as well as the fact that there have been no attacks since 9/11 after there had been many attacks by Bin Laden against US interests before 9/11. But at what cost? I am reminded of the saying about gaining the world and losing one's soul. We spent hundreds of billions of dollars and killed 1.5 million people to discover that not only did Saddam have nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks and had never reconstituted his WMD programs after the First Gulf War, he shot terrorists and didn't want anything to do with them. We are stuck in a quagmire in Afghanistan that we have no easy way out of. We have increased recruitment of terrorists every time we tortured people or violated international law. The Bush/Cheney administration was overly focused on short-term successes at the expense of our long-term future. This mentality spilled over into every aspect of our lives, and now the devil has presented his bill -- long-term recession, record high gas prices, foreclosures, lost jobs, and an inability to deal with other problems such as Darfur.
Cheney points to Article II, which he says creates the Unitary Executive, as well as the Joint Resolution passed by Congress authorizing "all necessary and appropriate force" to protect the American people. But first of all, Cheney's novel theory of a "Unitary Executive" is nowhere to be found in Article II. It does state that the President is the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. But our system is a system of checks and balances. The Constitution limits the President's authority as Commander in Chief by having Congress control the purse strings as well as the authority of regulating the military. And Congress has done so through the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The Constitution also gives Congress, not the President, the power to declare war. Therefore, the President must carry out his policies with advice and consent of Congress. To accept the theory of the Unitary Executive means that, theoretically, the President could be like Julius Caesar and overthrow the Democracy if he doesn't like what Congress is doing.
Cheney then proceeds to defend torture, which is not and has never been a reliable method of obtaining information. Persons subjected to torture will say anything to escape it, meaning that they would lie if they had to. For all the torture techniques that Cheney authorized, we have not found and captured Bin Laden and brought him to justice. By contrast, the people who killed Zarqawi did not need to use torture to find and kill him. And not only is it ineffective, it represents a form of cruel and unusual punishment under the Constitution of this country.
We all agree on the need to avert terrorist plots. But if the people in charge can't find ways of doing so legally, then they need to find another line of work. The Constitution is more than just a piece of paper. It is more than the supreme law of the land. It is a statement of our values as a nation. To detain people without trial may pass muster for the extremist judges who Bush has appointed to the bench. But it does not pass muster with any reasonable reading of the Constitution, nor is the notion of people being guilty until proven innocent. If the Prime Directive is national security, as Cheney states, then we might as well become like North Korea and turn this place into an armed camp. In fact, the Constitution is our prime directive, and everything else derives from it.
Cheney seeks to pass off Abu Girhab as the actions of a few bad people. But the problem is that this happened on Bush and Cheney's watch; therefore, the responsibility is totally on them. We have never had a full accounting of who knew what and there are a lot of unanswered questions about that sordid affair. But what is obvious from that is that at the very least, our soldiers have lost sight of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which prohibits torture. This very basic failure to instill a code of ethics in our soldiers happened on Bush and Cheney's watch -- therefore, Cheney can't claim that Bush is a unitary executive and then turn around and claim that Abu Girhab was not his fault. He can't have it both ways.
Cheney claims that leading members of Congress were briefed on the methods of interrogation used. But let's suppose that is true for the sake of the argument (Pelosi denies this). All Cheney is doing is passing the buck for something that he was responsible for. It did not meet either our laws or our international treaties -- the Geneva Conventions specifically forbid indefinite detentions and torture. The Constitution specifically states that we are just as bound by international treaties that we sign as we are our own laws.
Cheney then states that there is "no middle ground" and "there is never a good time to compromise" when our security is at stake. But in that regard, Cheney just passed judgment on his administration. Recall that Cheney stated that the terrorists hated us for our freedom. Therefore, the fact that Cheney compromised our personal liberties means that his compromising of our Constitution left us exposed. There is never a good time to compromise our Constitution. There is never a good time to ignore the Geneva Convention prohibitions against torture or due process. By their own standards, they put many more American lives at risk through the compromise of our Constitution than they saved. And there are over 4,000 soldiers who never made it back home because of Bush and Cheney's war of aggression against a nation which had nothing to do with Bin Laden or 9/11.
He continues:
And when you hear that there are no more, quote, “enemy combatants,” as there were back in the days of that scary war on terror, at first that sounds like progress. The only problem is that the phrase is gone, but the same assortment of killers and would-be mass murderers are still there. And finding some less judgmental or more pleasant-sounding name for terrorists doesn’t change what they are – or what they would do if we let them loose.
Well, good for Obama -- the fact of the matter is that all persons are presumed innocent until proven guilty, a fact that escaped Cheney's supposedly thorough reviews of the Constitution. The fact that Cheney ordered through reviews when the answers are right in front of him means that Cheney did not order these reviews out of any regard for the Constitution -- he ordered these reviews as a way of getting around the Constitution, not the other way around.
Cheney points to the fact that one in seven joined the people fighting our forces after leaving Guantanamo. That, it would seem, is a low number. It could be spun either way -- either they weren't terrorists in the first place or they were and we deterred them from it. But regardless, it is better to let a few guilty people go free than it is to imprison one innocent person. That is why our Constitution requires the state to prove someone's guilt, not the other way around. But Cheney repeatedly begs the question when he repeatedly refers to the detainees at Guantanamo as "terrorists." That is part of the problem -- people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Therefore, it is not justifiable to call them "terrorists" since they have not been proven to be so in a court of law.
And Cheney's claim that Obama has still reserved the right to torture is nonsense because of the fact that Obama has signed an order banning the use of torture. Is he suggesting that Obama is somehow being dishonest about it? One has to get used to the "Democrats do it too" meme that Cheney and others use all the time. But the fact of the matter is that right and wrong do not change with the changing of the President. Therefore, Cheney cannot claim that these are simply partisan political attacks because we would go after Obama any time he does any of the things that Bush did when he was in office.
And releasing the interrogation memos was a blow for justice on the part of Obama. He should have gone farther and released the photos as well. I maintain he should even release the memos that Cheney is demanding be released. Let us see the complete picture of what happened and let us decide for ourselves what is and isn't significant. It is always an encouraging sign when a President shows improvements from his predecessor in transparency. When the government does its business in secret, people will fill in the blanks for themselves. That is why we have all these 9/11 tinfoil theories which allege that Bush or Cheney were responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
And finally, Cheney laments what he sees as the disarray that our country is in and how it encourages the terrorists to try again. But all this is of their own making. Our Constitution is more than just a piece of paper. It is more than just a law. It is a statement of our values as a nation. If we are to fight the terrorists and win, we must be true to those values and not compromise them out of fear or panic. Right is right no matter what situation that we are in.