Category: 
by David V. Johnson
Freedom of choice can be a dangerous thing. That’s why our splendid republic tends to restrict our options to equally anodyne alternatives: Coke or Pepsi? Kris or Adam? Democrats or Republicans?
Last Thursday, we were treated to another empty selection: Obama or Cheney? The media portrayed their near-simultaneous speeches on national security as the ultimate showdown between two diametrically opposed views. Time Magazine played up their Beltway duel—Obama at the National Archives and Cheney at the American Enterprise Institute—as a heavyweight prize fight. (And by the way, is there a moronic Beltway meme that Mark Halperin won’t parrot?)
Jack Goldsmith, former deputy AG in the Bush administration, has thankfully explained how Obama and Cheney fundamentally agree about most of the core issues:
Former Vice President Cheney says that President Obama’s reversal of Bush-era terrorism policies endangers American security. The Obama administration, he charges, has “moved to take down a lot of those policies we put in place that kept the nation safe for nearly eight years from a follow-on terrorist attack like 9/11.” Many people think Cheney is scare-mongering and owes President Obama his support or at least his silence. But there is a different problem with Cheney’s criticisms: his premise that the Obama administration has reversed Bush-era policies is largely wrong. The truth is closer to the opposite: The new administration has copied most of the Bush program, has expanded some of it, and has narrowed only a bit. Almost all of the Obama changes have been at the level of packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric.
On the issue of habeus corpus rights, to take one example, Goldsmith writes:
During the campaign former professor Obama spoke eloquently about the importance of habeas corpus review of executive detentions of enemy soldiers. Habeas corpus is “the foundation of Anglo-American law” and “the essence of who we are,” he said. But his administration has applied this principle in the same narrow fashion as the late Bush administration. It has argued that Guantanamo detainees can challenge the “fact, duration, or location” of confinement on habeas review, but not their “conditions of confinement.” It has maintained that “the Geneva Conventions are not judicially enforceable by private individuals” in habeas proceedings. And it has made clear its belief that the limited habeas rights it recognizes for the two hundred or so detainees on Guantanamo Bay do not extend to the 600 or so detainees in Bagram Air Base. This latter position might prove more controversial for President Obama than for President Bush. The new president’s enlarged military commitment in Afghanistan and Pakistan, combined with the forthcoming closure of Guantanamo, means that the number of suspects detained in Bagram–without charge or trial and without access to lawyers or habeas rights–is likely to increase, perhaps dramatically.
Go ahead and read the rest.
No matter what your politics or your views on national security, I hope you agree that the relevant issues deserve a serious discussion between genuinely opposed sides. The Obama-Cheney “debate” is just another faux choice served up by our faux democracy.
