Battered Bush Syndrome
Boy, I miss the heady days of the first Bush term, when Dubya was in the saddle, proactive, pre-emptive, unilateral and bold in his take-no-prisoners resolve to defend America from its Islamist enemies, whatever it took. This second term is a sad, flaccid, flabby shell of warmed-over Kerryism by comparison.
We start with the big low: the Administration's passivity with Congress in the face of the SCOTUS' reprehensible Hamdan misruling:
Perhaps their thinking paralleled mine in the evident pointlessness of drafting and re-drafting and re-re-drafting legislation, no matter how bluntly worded, that the SCOTUS will simply throw out anyway. Too bad they didn't carry the parallel further to simply defying Hamdan in the best Andrew Jackson tradition, and pushing legislation instead to even more significantly curtail Olympus' appellate jurisdiction. The oligarchists want to play hardball, let the White House throw high, inside fastballs until they get the message that they're leaning way too far over the plate.
Instead, the Bushies did what would at one time have been inconceivable: they threw in the towel (h/t CQ):
I've commented previously that the Bush Administration undermined its own erstwhile legal argument for military tribunals by applying, in practice, Geneva Convention Common Article 3 to the terrorist captives at Gitmo and elsewhere. Since they have treated the "detainees" as though they were de facto POWs, their was little practical resonance or relevance to their position that the jihadis weren't entitled to GC protections. It would seem that here, too, White House thinking paralleled my own, only again drawing the opposite conclusion.
Thus is being missed, if not a legal or legislative opportunity, then at least a political one, in holding a debate over tribunal legislation that would force the Democrats to come out in defense of what Rush Limbaugh has long dubbed "the terrorist Bill of Rights" in the very home stretch of the 2006 mid-term campaign. It would, in fact, be quite similar to the way the President maneuvered the Dems into the debate over the declaration of war against Saddam Hussein in the runup to the 2002 mid-terms.
Instead, Bush is just sitting on the sidelines, letting the issue drift toward an outcome far worse than the Hamdan decision itself.
On the other hand, showing what this Administration can still accomplish when it musters the will to act decisively, the President has won a fairly comprehensive victory beating back the congressional attempt to effectively shut down the NSA terrorist surveillance program (h/t CQ):
"Snarlin' Arlen" is just trying to save face. The key to this "compromise" is that subjecting the TSP to FISC review is voluntary. If he chooses not to do so, this legislation allows that refusal. If he chooses otherwise, he's not doing anything he couldn't have done before.
OTOH, Specter's choice of words makes me wonder if an unwritten part of this deal is that Bush will "voluntarily" surrender the TSP to the FISC. That would be more distressing but for the sad reality that the TSP has already been largely compromised anyway (h/t New York f'ing Times), and whatever tattered remnants that remain will be swept away by the Hamden SCOTUS sooner rather than later. In short, "What have we got to lose that hasn't been taken away from us already"?
I frankly attribute much of this Administration's fatalism to the PR beating it's taken ever since Florida 2K but especially starting with the buildup to the invasion of Iraq. Aside from the six month re-election campaign in 2004, that mau-mauing has been absorbed on a daily basis with almost no response, much less sustained push-back. They've just taken it and taken it and taken it and it's finally worn them down to the point where the Executive Branch is being stripped bare of its constitutional war-fighting powers by the Legislative and Judicial Branches and they're meekly accepting it.
That's what makes this development particularly unpersuasive:
I'd love this if it were actually true. Unfortunately I have to share Brother Hinderaker's skepticism. Besides, haven't we heard this spin before? Wasn't blowing out the seditious Clintonoid shadow government from Langley's bowels the mandate Porter Goss was given when Bush recruited him to head CIA? And how long did Goss last before that same White House stabbed him in the back and kicked him in the ass at the insistence of that same intel bureaucracy for the capital offense of doing what the President had asked of him?
Victor Davis Hanson exhorts Bush today to "better explain the complex terror war." I think a prerequisite to that is a determination of whether Dubya still believes in fighting it at all if it means - and it always has - battling domestic attempts to emasculate him.
If the "New Tone" trumps even the struggle for national survival, we really are screwed.
We start with the big low: the Administration's passivity with Congress in the face of the SCOTUS' reprehensible Hamdan misruling:
Unfortunately, the debate hasn’t gotten off to an auspicious start. Reacting with justifiable anger to the Court’s high-handed treatment of Congress’s past legislative actions, particularly the Detainee Treatment Act, numerous House and Senate members — Republicans and even Democrats — said in the decision’s immediate wake that they wanted to move rapidly to enact a new statute authorizing military commissions to try unlawful combatants and establishing fair, but tough-minded, procedures for them. The Administration had an opportunity to lead, by quickly proposing draft legislation and helping to structure the hearings process. Instead it took a laissez-faire attitude, putting forward no legislative proposals or even broad principles to inform legislation. This laid-back strategy helped delay the legislative process: Military-commissions legislation can no longer be enacted within the next three months and may not be finalized until after the November elections.
Perhaps their thinking paralleled mine in the evident pointlessness of drafting and re-drafting and re-re-drafting legislation, no matter how bluntly worded, that the SCOTUS will simply throw out anyway. Too bad they didn't carry the parallel further to simply defying Hamdan in the best Andrew Jackson tradition, and pushing legislation instead to even more significantly curtail Olympus' appellate jurisdiction. The oligarchists want to play hardball, let the White House throw high, inside fastballs until they get the message that they're leaning way too far over the plate.
Instead, the Bushies did what would at one time have been inconceivable: they threw in the towel (h/t CQ):
Citing recent meetings with Stephen Hadley, the President's national security adviser, and other top administration officials, [Supreme Chancellor John "Maverick"] McCain said the White House would not insist upon legislation authorizing military commissions established by the Pentagon.
"At that time, I was under the impression that that was the Administration's position," McCain said. "I hope that hadn't changed."
Such a promise would contradict testimony heard earlier this week from Administration officials, who told lawmakers that Congress should not turn to the Uniformed Code of Military Justice because it would grant terrorists too many freedoms and would be unpractical on the battlefield. In their testimony, officials representing the Defense and Justice Department advocated that Congress pass legislation authorizing the military commissions. ...
I've commented previously that the Bush Administration undermined its own erstwhile legal argument for military tribunals by applying, in practice, Geneva Convention Common Article 3 to the terrorist captives at Gitmo and elsewhere. Since they have treated the "detainees" as though they were de facto POWs, their was little practical resonance or relevance to their position that the jihadis weren't entitled to GC protections. It would seem that here, too, White House thinking paralleled my own, only again drawing the opposite conclusion.
Thus is being missed, if not a legal or legislative opportunity, then at least a political one, in holding a debate over tribunal legislation that would force the Democrats to come out in defense of what Rush Limbaugh has long dubbed "the terrorist Bill of Rights" in the very home stretch of the 2006 mid-term campaign. It would, in fact, be quite similar to the way the President maneuvered the Dems into the debate over the declaration of war against Saddam Hussein in the runup to the 2002 mid-terms.
Instead, Bush is just sitting on the sidelines, letting the issue drift toward an outcome far worse than the Hamdan decision itself.
On the other hand, showing what this Administration can still accomplish when it musters the will to act decisively, the President has won a fairly comprehensive victory beating back the congressional attempt to effectively shut down the NSA terrorist surveillance program (h/t CQ):
The White House has conditionally agreed to a court review of its controversial eavesdropping program, Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter said Thursday.
Specter said President Bush has agreed to sign legislation that would authorize the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to review the constitutionality of the National Security Agency's most high-profile monitoring operations. ...
Specter said the legislation, which has not yet been made public, was the result of "tortuous" negotiations with the White House since June.
"If the bill is not changed, the President will submit the Terrorist Surveillance Program to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court," Specter said. "That is the President's commitment."
"Snarlin' Arlen" is just trying to save face. The key to this "compromise" is that subjecting the TSP to FISC review is voluntary. If he chooses not to do so, this legislation allows that refusal. If he chooses otherwise, he's not doing anything he couldn't have done before.
OTOH, Specter's choice of words makes me wonder if an unwritten part of this deal is that Bush will "voluntarily" surrender the TSP to the FISC. That would be more distressing but for the sad reality that the TSP has already been largely compromised anyway (h/t New York f'ing Times), and whatever tattered remnants that remain will be swept away by the Hamden SCOTUS sooner rather than later. In short, "What have we got to lose that hasn't been taken away from us already"?
I frankly attribute much of this Administration's fatalism to the PR beating it's taken ever since Florida 2K but especially starting with the buildup to the invasion of Iraq. Aside from the six month re-election campaign in 2004, that mau-mauing has been absorbed on a daily basis with almost no response, much less sustained push-back. They've just taken it and taken it and taken it and it's finally worn them down to the point where the Executive Branch is being stripped bare of its constitutional war-fighting powers by the Legislative and Judicial Branches and they're meekly accepting it.
That's what makes this development particularly unpersuasive:
The Bush Administration is preparing a crackdown on intelligence leaks to the media and will try to pursue prosecutions in some recent cases, the chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee on Tuesday.
"There will be a renewed effort by the Justice Department in a couple of these cases to go through the entire process ... so they can prosecute," Hoekstra said in a speech to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
Hoekstra also said the newly-installed CIA director Michael Hayden was conducting aggressive internal investigations against leakers.
I'd love this if it were actually true. Unfortunately I have to share Brother Hinderaker's skepticism. Besides, haven't we heard this spin before? Wasn't blowing out the seditious Clintonoid shadow government from Langley's bowels the mandate Porter Goss was given when Bush recruited him to head CIA? And how long did Goss last before that same White House stabbed him in the back and kicked him in the ass at the insistence of that same intel bureaucracy for the capital offense of doing what the President had asked of him?
Victor Davis Hanson exhorts Bush today to "better explain the complex terror war." I think a prerequisite to that is a determination of whether Dubya still believes in fighting it at all if it means - and it always has - battling domestic attempts to emasculate him.
If the "New Tone" trumps even the struggle for national survival, we really are screwed.
posted by JASmius at 9:45 PM
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