Humanizing The Vacuum

Let the games begin: the NYT’s comprehensive account of how Obama decides who dies. Thanks to a “legalistic” mind that can both shade and obscure nuance, Obama’s managed to fulfill a few public pledges while still killing more terrorists, keeping black sites open for rendition, and withholding Miranda rights from suspects for as long as possible. An excerpt:

A phalanx of retired generals and admirals stood behind Mr. Obama on the second day of his presidency, providing martial cover as he signed several executive orders to make good on campaign pledges. Brutal interrogation techniques were banned, he declared. And the prison at Guantánamo Bay would be closed.

What the new president did not say was that the orders contained a few subtle loopholes. They reflected a still unfamiliar Barack Obama, a realist who, unlike some of his fervent supporters, was never carried away by his own rhetoric. Instead, he was already putting his lawyerly mind to carving out the maximum amount of maneuvering room to fight terrorism as he saw fit.

It was a pattern that would be seen repeatedly, from his response to Republican complaints that he wanted to read terrorists their rights, to his acceptance of the C.I.A.’s method for counting civilian casualties in drone strikes.

The day before the executive orders were issued, the C.I.A.’s top lawyer, John A. Rizzo, had called the White House in a panic. The order prohibited the agency from operating detention facilities, closing once and for all the secret overseas “black sites” where interrogators had brutalized terrorist suspects.

“The way this is written, you are going to take us out of the rendition business,” Mr. Rizzo told Gregory B. Craig, Mr. Obama’s White House counsel, referring to the much-criticized practice of grabbing a terrorist suspect abroad and delivering him to another country for interrogation or trial. The problem, Mr. Rizzo explained, was that the C.I.A. sometimes held such suspects for a day or two while awaiting a flight. The order appeared to outlaw that.

Mr. Craig assured him that the new president had no intention of ending rendition — only its abuse, which could lead to American complicity in torture abroad. So a new definition of “detention facility” was inserted, excluding places used to hold people “on a short-term, transitory basis.” Problem solved — and no messy public explanation damped Mr. Obama’s celebration.

“Pragmatism over ideology,” his campaign national security team had advised in a memo in March 2008. It was counsel that only reinforced the president’s instincts.

I didn’t need Glenn Greenwald to tell me that Diane Sawyer’s ABC News broadcast last night was loathsome. For those of us who don’t pay for cable and depend on broadcast news and the Internet for wisdom, ABC aired a segment by the squirrely, smirking Brian Ross in which he explained how and why Iran remains a mortal threat to the existence of the United States. His source? Anonymous “senior” administration officials. To better aid the cause of verisimilitude, producers devoted four minutes by my count to the Very Serious Martha Raddatz on a battleship or something in the Strait of Hormuz interviewing Very Concerned officers. My fork dropped. Mass hysteria! I found succor in my copy of Cosmic Thing.

I lack the reserves to comment on the events of the last twenty-four hours. Euphoria and contrarianism both look like unsavory options. Two of the best dispatches look past catharsis: Steve Coll’s analysis of the future of al-Qaeda and the late Osama bin Laden’s centrality in its operations; and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ solemn parsing of the tumult an event like this inspires in citizens who want justice yet recoil from the way that justice and revenge are often indistinguishable:

What actually sticks with me is Bin Laden killed mass quantities of human beings with almost regard for distinctions. It’s not that he killed Muslims. It’s that he didn’t much care who he killed.

Osama Bin Laden The body-count, in number and means, is spectacular–I think Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who video-taped himself beheading human beings. I think about the hundreds of people killed in the bombing of al-Askaria Mosque, with the apparent hope of fomenting a Civil War. I think about the deaths in Nairobi, and bombing of night-clubs in Bali. It really is bigger than 9/11.

Faced with that level of callous disregard for life, I find it a little difficult to lecture 25-year olds who came of age during this time on their varied reactions. Americans are humans too.

A poster on The Corner, responding to a person pleading for “national unity” or something:

And this attitude is why more often than not, Republicans lose. If Bush had killed Bin Laden (which he should have in 8 friggin years!), do you think the liberals would be falling all over themselves to praise him like so many here are doing with Obama? This is the nightmare scenario for the GOP. Not only will Obama cruise to victory next year, his coattails will now be in full effect again, hurting our chances in House and Senate races across the country. There is no excuse for President Bush to not have gotten this done in his two terms in office. Obama putting Osama out to pasture in two years makes the whole Bush team look like weak amateurs. You cannot….CANNOT…take politics out of this. And as a said before, Obama is at an unbelievably strong 50% even with gas prices, food prices, lack of jobs, etc. The public is looking for any reason to side with the guy and this is a mighty good reason.