The spectacle of two duelling speeches with a mile of each other in downtown Washington was extraordinary.
I was at the Cheney event and watched Obama's address on a big screen
beside the empty lectern that the former veep stepped behind barely two
minutes after his adversary had finished.
So who won the fight? (it's hard to use anothing other than a
martial or pugilistic metaphor). Well, most people are on either one
side or the other of this issue and I doubt today will have prompted
many to switch sides.
But the very fact that Obama chose to schedule his speech (Cheney's
was announced first, WEEKS AGO) at exactly the same time as the former veep was a
sign of some weakness.
Here are 10 of the punches he landed on the President's jaw:
1. "I've heard occasional speculation that I'm a different
man after 9/11. I wouldn't say that, but I'll freely admit that
watching a coordinated, devastating attack on our country from an
underground bunker at the White House can affect how you view your
responsibilities."
Anyone who was in New York or Washington on 9/11 (I was here in DC)
was profoundly affected and most Americans understand this. Obama was,
as far as I can tell, in Chicago. His response - he was then a mere
state senator for liberal Hyde Park - was startlingly hand-wringing and
out of step with how most Americans were feeling. This statement by
Cheney reminds people of the tough decisions he and Bush had to make -
ones that Obama has not yet faced.
2. "The first attack on the World Trade Center was treated
as a law- enforcement problem, with everything handled after the fact:
arrests, indictments, convictions, prison sentences, case closed."
This was the pre-9/11 mindset, much criticised after the attacks.
Many sense that this is the approach Obama is increasingly taking.
3. "By presidential decision last month, we saw the
selective release of documents relating to enhanced interrogations.
This is held up as a bold exercise in open government, honoring the
public's right to know. We're informed as well that there was much
agonizing over this decision. Yet somehow, when the soul searching was
done and the veil was lifted on the policies of the Bush
administration, the public was given less than half the truth."
The release of the documents was a nakedly political move by Obama
and Cheney called him on it. This passage from Obama's speech today
came across as completely disingenuous: "I did not do
this because I disagreed with the enhanced interrogation techniques
that those memos authorized, and I didn't release the documents because
I rejected their legal rationales -- although I do on both counts. I
released the memos because the existence of that approach to
interrogation was already widely known, the Bush Administration had
acknowledged its existence, and I had already banned those methods."
4. "It's hard to imagine a worse precedent filled with more
possibilities for trouble and abuse than to have an incoming
administration criminalize the policy decisions of its predecessor.
Apart from doing a serious injustice to intelligence operators and
lawyers, who deserve far better for their devoted service, the danger
here is a loss of focus on national security and what it requires."
Obama's suggestion that Bush administration officials might be
prosecuted for legal and policy judgements about what was an was not
permissible in interrogations was chilling. I doubt most Americans have
any enthusiasm for such a witch-hunt and it flies in the face of
Obama's stated desire not to "re-litigate" the Bush years.
5."We had a lot of blind spots after the attacks on our
country, things we didn't know about al Qaeda. We didn't know about al
Qaeda's plans, but Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and a few others did know.
And with many thousands of innocent lives potentially in the balance,
we did not think it made sense to let the terrorists answer questions
in their own good time, if they answered them at all."
The political climate is very different now from what it was just
after 9/11 but it could change again in a heartbeat if and when there
is another terrorist attack. Most Americans do not favour torture but
do want the CIA and other agencies to question suspected terrorists
very vigorously indeed if there is any chance they might know something
about an attack on the US homeland.
6. "On his second day in office, President Obama announced
he was closing the detention facility at Guantanamo. This step came
with little deliberation, and no plan. Now the president says some of
these terrorists should be brought to American soil for trial in our
court system. Others, he says, will be shipped to third countries; but
so far, the United States has had little luck getting other countries
to take hardened terrorists."
Obama's grand announcement at the start of his administration that
Gitmo would be closed within a year was clearly not properly thought
out. If he fails to achieve what he promised, he will pay a big
political price and Cheney was marking his card on the issue.
7. "The administration has found that it's easy to receive
applause in Europe for closing Guantanamo, but it's tricky to come up
with an alternative that will serve the interest of justice and
America's national security."
The notion that Obama makes gestures designed to court popularity
abroad is one that could find increasing resonance - many Republicans
strongly suspect it already.
8."If fine speechmaking, appeals to reason, or pleas for
compassion had the power to move them, the terrorists would long ago
have abandoned the field."
As Cheney said this, sarcasm dripped from his lips. Obviously "fine
speechmaking" but no real substance is not a new charge against Obama
and it hits home. And Cheney successfully mades the point that much of
the rhetoric from the Left tends to suggest that if only the US did not
waterboard people, if only the US was viewed as Obama rather than Bush,
Venus rather than Mars then it would be universally loved and al-Qaeda
would wither away. UNfortunately, that's not the real world.
9. "It's worth recalling that ultimate power of
declassification belongs to the president himself. President Obama has
used his declassification authority to reveal what happens in the
interrogation of terrorists. Now let him use that same power to show
Americans what did not happen thanks to the good work of our
intelligence officials."
Cheney is pushing Obama to declassify documeents relating to the
information gained from terrorist suspects who were subjected to
Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. This puts Obama in a bind. If he
does so, it prolongs an argument he wants to move on from and prolongs
the Obama vs Cheney meme that is distracting and doesn't really help
him. if he doesn't, he looks like he has something to hide.
10."To the very end of our administration, we kept al-Qaeda
terrorists busy with other problems. We focused on getting their
secrets instead of sharing ours with them. And on our watch, they never
hit this country again. After the most lethal and devastating terrorist
attack ever, 7- 1/2 years without a repeat is not a record to be
rebuked and scorned, much less criminalized."
It's indisputably an achievement of the Bush administration that it
prevented the US from being attacked after 9/11. By ramming this point
home, Cheney tees things up for some very tough questioning of Obama in
the event that the US is attacked again.
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