Yesterday ex-VP Dick Cheney gave a major speech at the American Enterprise Institute defending the Bush administration's record. Cheney spoke right after President Obama spoke at the National Archives, trying to show that Team Obama will win the war lawfully, avoiding all those dastardly doings of the Bush - Cheney years. Cheney said that one side's policy is premised primarily on whether one sees 9/11 and a harbinger of greater attacks to come versus those who think it a "one-off" event. He proclaimed: "Seven and a half years is not a record to be rebuked and scorned, let alone criminalize." Cheney accused Democrats of false indignation--feigned outrage over methods critics in Congress had been briefed about. He called for release of the two Team Bush CIA memos that would add content of the answers to the four Team Bush memos that revealed the method of asking questions--44 having declassified the latter but not the former.
President 44 cited our values as encouraging surrender to the allies in WW-II and said that we would proceed with more allied support and less alienated Muslims. We shall see if such allied support, so far not consistently in evidence, materializes. As for alienated Muslims, these have not been in short supply anytime in the past few centuries, and if detention policy angers them, so do our Predator strikes in Southwest Asia. Bam assured us we can safely house Gitmo detainees in our prisons; he should read Steven Schwartz's chilling piece about how a vast militant Islamist literature infests the libraries of our prison system--moderate Islamic texts need not apply.
Jed Babbin sees hubris in Obama and pride in Cheney, as shown by speech texts. The NY post uses "jailhouse jihad" to describe how radical Islamist doctrine acquired in prison drove the NY terror plotters arrested earlier this week. David Brooks says Obama won by packaging the Bush second term policies, which pulled back from Cheney first term policies, and that thus Cheney defends only the first Bush term; DB thinks us now more secure with he changes made in Bush's second term and continued by Team 44. The WSJ editors see vindication in Obama following Bush-Cheney.
Charles Krauthammer sees in 44's performance the "Obama three-step": (a) excoriate the Bush policy, (b) ostentatiously unveil cosmetic changes, (c) adopt the Bush policy. CK notes that on indefinite detention--even of terrorists not convicted at trial--military commissions, enhanced interrogation as a retained option, rendition, surveillance, etc., Team 44 sounds like Team 43. He notes that the island idea is gaining currency re where to hold the Gitmo Gang, in light of the Senate's 90-6 NIMBY vote, which partly reflects a desire of Americans to impose the traditional remedy of extreme physical isolation upon those who pose the very worst threats to society:
That doesn't leave a lot of places. The home countries won't take them. Europe is recalcitrant. Saint Helena needs refurbishing. Elba didn't work out too well the first time. And Devil's Island is now a tourist destination. Gitmo is starting to look good again.
CK sees a national consensus being thus forged by 44 in accord with much of what 43 did:
The genius of democracy is that the rotation of power forces the opposition to come to its senses when it takes over. When the new guys, brought to power by popular will, then adopt the policies of the old guys, a national consensus is forged and a new legitimacy established.
That's happening before our eyes. The Bush policies in the war on terror won't have to await vindication by historians. Obama is doing it day by day. His denials mean nothing. Look at his deeds.
Complementing the showdown is Arthur Herman's "The Gitmo Myth" offering a detailed look at the Bush detention policy, in a 17-page piece for weekend reading, especially appropriate to Memorial Day.
Bottom Line. Bam has iconography on his side, Cheney the better pure case on the merits. But it was telling that the President adjusted his own speech schedule to speak on the same day as the former Vice-President. Normally it would be the other way around, one would think. But these are not normal times, Cheney was not a normal VP, and Obama is hardly a normal Prez. Thus Dick Cheney emerges as the big winner of the Cusp of Memorial Day Weekend Showdown--Obama tacks towards Cheney policies and lets Cheney set the agenda. Stay tuned.
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