We hosted a dinner for Andy Worthington, the author of Guantánamo files, a few weeks ago and something he said struck a cord with everyone in attendance. During a back and forth pertaining to the positive statements made by Senator McCain, Senator Obama and Senator Clinton vis-à-vis Guantánamo – all seem keen to close it - Andy asked us to consider the end game for the U.S. Specifically he asked what would happen to the prisoners.

Of course the first reaction of most of the individuals in attendance was predictable – these prisoners would be repatriated back to their home countries. However, as Andy prodded us to consider that assumption we all stumbled upon the problem that he was grappling with. It became clear that there would be many countries that would refuse to take back their citizens. After all, the U.S. has been stating since the first prisoner transfer to Guantánamo that it is holding the worst of the worst. With that statement on the record it seems fair to assume that some countries will choose to wash their hands of the matter. Why risk internal strife by bringing back someone who is a radical, has become radicalized or is likely to embarrass his home government by questioning why they did not do more to seek the release of an innocent national. What will the U.S. do if it ends up with a group of prisoners who have no where to go and are not deemed to have committed acts that warrant a trial?

The three candidates for President seem to understand that Guantánamo is a blot on the U.S. image in the world and I am convinced that all of them would like to close it. However, in an incredible irony, it seems possible that the next U.S. President may find that closing Guantánamo proves to be harder than it was for the Bush Administration to open it.

I am going to start making a few calls on this issue to see what the latest thinking is within Defense department circles and will report back in the days ahead.

There’s been a lot of talk about whether the U.S. President should boycott the Olympics because of Chinese human rights concerns. The irony is that in the eyes of much of the world, it may not mean very much if we took such a bold action. Studies indicate that the U.S. under George W. Bush has a less favorable image than China. And it’s hard to imagine that many people could take Bush seriously when he talks about human rights in China, after he has condoned waterboarding practices that clearly violate international human rights protocols.

Even in an ideal world, I’m not sure that a boycott is the most effective way to influence China’s deeply concerning human rights record. After all, Nixon’s trip to China was arguably the most impactful U.S. act in shaping China’s future and Nixon went there more in friendship than in protest. At the same time, he delivered a clear message. Similarly, I tend to think America should fully participate in the Olympics while wearing a clear symbol of our support of human rights and making clear our hope that China will change its ways.

What’s sad, though, is that our country, which for so long has been an image of freedom despite all our shortcomings and our continued inequities, is now seen so negatively worldwide that it is not clear even if we tried to make a statement anyone would take us seriously. It is yet another sign of one of the great casualties of the Bush years: America’s image in the world.

The Partnership for a Secure America formed to confront (and hopefully counteract) problems in the American foreign policy debate. We don’t have enough civil discussion of important foreign policy issues. Sometimes we have partisan shouting matches; sometimes the name-calling actually masks bipartisan consensus on the underlying issue, preventing Americans from thinking through alternative policies that might better serve the national interest.

Normally, blog-writers here complain about shrill politicians — for good reason. But this morning on NPR, I heard a new facet of the nasty, “gotcha” style of foreign policy debate in the U.S. The ACLU is upset (justifiably, IMHO) that the U.S. might facilitate torture of suspects in the War on Terror through the practice of “extraordinary rendition,” where suspects are transferred between countries, without judicial process, often to countries with poor human rights practices (i.e., to places where interrogation may involve torture). This practice may or may not have benefits in preventing terror, but it’s hard to have a reasoned policy debate about extraordinary rendition in an environment of secrecy and name-calling. So the ACLU is looking around for some way to impose accountability.

Again, I’m all in favor of accountability for bad policies in the War on Terror. The ACLU has a good history of asking questions, lobbying, suing, and otherwise injecting important issues into American policy debates. Today, the ACLU perhaps has a beef with the CIA or perhaps with the Bush Administration policy-makers who authorize and support the CIA’s actions. There may be aspects of rendition that make sense — aspects that do not lead to torture. If the U.S. wants to defend this policy, leaders need to make that clear and to take steps to give the public (including the international public) confidence that the policy is not and will not be abused. The ACLU should ask questions.

But this morning, the ACLU asked questions of someone else. Of Boeing (actually, one of its subsidiaries). The ACLU previously participated in a law suit against the CIA, one that is currently under appeal. Temporarily stymied on that avenue, though, they grabbed for another possible villain. Big corporations are rarely popular, so why not go after Boeing? At least it keeps the issue in the public eye. (more…)

One thing that I find interesting watching the politics of the Iraq war is that the anger against this war is not nearly as real as it was before the war even started. If you look back to the moments before this war, there was an unprecedented activism around this war. As someone who marched (with Pro-America, Anti-War signs) in the demonstrations before the war, I can tell you that I have never seen such intense opposition to a policy in my life to date. And yet now that the war has gone far worse than even its critics worried, and the country has clearly united against stay the course, there are hardly any protests. Where did the anger go?

My question is one that I feel very personally because my own vociferous anger over this war has somehow declined even as the urgency for change has increased. I think for me a lot of it has to do with the fact that you feel like you are speaking to deaf ears. Even after our initial protests — and indeed even after the election and the Iraq study group — it is not clear that this democratically elected president really sees himself as much as a democratic leader as a stalwart commander-in-chief. He is “the decider” and somehow his strategy seems to work — tell people you’re the decider and they will believe you and quiet down.

Hopefully, if the President continues to sidestep the ISG report, he may be faced with protests like those that proceeded this war. Of course, these protests would recognize the bravery and courage of our troops. And that’s precisely why we would be out there — to say that their bravery and courage deserves a commander in chief at the top with a coherent plan for victory.

“Confidence Building Measures” is a term more commonly associated with international conflict than U.S. domestic politics, but at the dawn of a new political era in Washington, DC both the Republican President and the new Democratic Congress would be wise to consider employing this age old tactic.
 
Such measures are needed because the level of distrust, and distain, between the two parties is at an all time high and frankly the country cannot afford two more years of political sparring….not when Iraq threatens to become the most damaging intervention in U.S. history and not when we also need to focus on a slate of other incredibly serious foreign policy issues.
 
So what can the Administration and Congress agree on during the first weeks of 2007 in order to build the trust needed to tackle the top tier crises of our time?
 
First, the President could announce that he will host a high level White House meeting on Darfur for key legislators and foreign policy experts from inside and outside government. Darfur is a bipartisan concern and the President would show leadership if he were to convene a group that would be able to map out a comprehensive U.S. global engagement plan on Darfur. Symbolically he could ask Rep. Payne (D-NJ) and Sen. Brownback (R-KS) to co-chair the working sessions.
 
Second, Congress should pass and the President should sign into law, legislation that would create a task force on AIDS and Global Poverty co-chaired by former President’s George H. W. Bush and William J. Clinton tasked with developing a road map for the U.S. to play a leadership role in ensuring that the Millennium Development Goals are attained by 2015.  
 
Third, our elected officials should create an Independent Bipartisan Commission on Interrogation. After two failed efforts to effectively tackle the issue of interrogation it is past time that a broad range of experts are brought together and tasked with the duty of holistically looking at this issue and subsequently offering Congress and the President clear guidance as to changes in the law that need to be made. The experts would be drawn from the intelligence, foreign policy, law enforcement, military, veterans, legal and human rights community. Additional members could include representatives of the faith community, theologians, cultural specialists and historians.
 
Will these three confidence building measures be easy to accomplish? Unfortunately, in an indictment of Washington, DC circa 2006 the answer is no. However, in contrast to the top tier challenges to come these three measures are more easily attainable and would set a tone of cooperation for the final two years of the President’s term in office.
 
The country is facing a cluster of significant foreign policy challenges and needs the Administration and the Congress to work together – first they need to remember how this is done. 
 

I thought that in 2005 we had settled the “torture” issue.  John McCain broke with the President to introduce legislation that would prohibit the use of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of prisoners.  McCain got broad bipartisan support for his legislation and despite Cheney’s attempts to insert exclusions for the CIA, McCain was successful.  Not able to accept this defeat, Bush inserted a signing statement that basically said that he would implement the legislation as he saw fit. 

Now we are presented with this issue again.  No one should be fooled this time into thinking that this legislation has anything to do with keeping America safer.  It’s politics pure and simple.  Earlier in the year Karl Rove clearly stated that he would make this election a referendum on which party would keep America safer.  True to his plan, the President has supported legislation that allows for certain “alternative” interrogration techniques for prisoners being held by the CIA.  Whether or not this legislation passes is probably irrelevant for Bush.  The goal here is simply to have Democrats voting against legislation that “keeps America safer.”  I wouldn’t be surprised if the commercials were already shot - Congressperson ______ voted against the President’s plan to protect Americans.  Can we really trust him/her to keep us safe?  Already you are seeing foreign policy being thrown front and center in the political debate.  Here’s a recent ad on the wiretapping issue by Nancy Johnson who is running for reelection in Connecticut. 

As we saw last week, Bush had miscalculated the Republican opposition to this purely political piece of legislation.   Not only did John McCain come out against the legislation, but also Lindsey Graham and John Warner.  Colin Powell also was critical of this.  Not surprising that a host of ex military officials are the ones who saw the dangers of such legislation.  Now some are criticizing McCain saying that his stance on the torture issue will hurt him in his Presidential run.  Come on now!  If anyone can make an argument about standing up on principle on this issue, it’s John McCain. 

The Bush administration may still get its wish to have this purely political legislation come to a vote, but it will have a hard time explaining why the Democrats that stood against the legislation were accompanied by folks like Colin Powell, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and John Warner. 

Two developments took place this week that did not get connected by popular media, but arguably should have been. First, we learned that the Pentagon is probing into whether the death of Iraqi civilians in Haditha at the hands of U.S. Marines took place “in cold blood.” Second, a U.N. Panel announced that U.S. practices at Guantanamo violated the 1984 Convention Against Torture, which the U.S. ratified.

The reason these stories connect is that both the stories themselves, and especially the way the administration and conservative thought leaders reacted to them, present the wrong picture to the world about American objectives in the war on terror and the war in Iraq. The stories themselves suggest that America may not be living up to its principles in being a benevolent and fair superpower. But, worse, the reactions to the stories suggest that some leaders do not even care.

Instead of taking the probe in Haditha seriously, the Washington Times decided to focus its editorial on criticizing Murtha for even raising the issue, calling his actions “an egregious violation of ethical conduct.” The Bush administration’s response to the U.N. panel similarly attacked the messenger rather than taking the message seriously. Without going into depth, the administration called the U.N. report riddled with errors and said it had improved its treatment. “We acknowledge that there were serious incidents of abuse. We’ve all seen Abu Ghraib,” the State Department’s top lawyer, John B. Bellinger III, told reporters. But “clearly our record has improved over the last few years,” he said.

(more…)

We give university chapters of our organization discretion in planning their events on campus, hoping they’ll use that freedom wisely to promote a responsible vision for U.S. leadership in the world. Unfortunately, one of our chapters at the University of Chicago recently used that freedom to make our country less safe. The event, entitled “Free Speech and the Danish Cartoons,” displayed the Danish cartoons that sparked controversy worldwide and then had a cadre of free speech advocates explain why the media should have broadcast these images more widely.

In my last blog entry, I wrote about how the media and politicians were basking in our differences, while Americans across the country were taking our similarities seriously. My hope was that the common sense of Americans might trickle up to the Washington divisionaries. But this event at U Chicago is definitely a set back to my thesis that our citizens are more mature than our leaders. On the Danish cartoons issue, it’s been our leaders in Washington who appear to understand the national security imperative of tolerance and understanding.

And its the students at this recent event at the University of Chicago who do not get it. They believe the decision by our government and media leaders not to show the cartoons was mistake. According to them, “our inaction leads to bigger responses from radical Islamists” and so we need to broadcast these cartoons as far as possible so “they” know we’re not cowards. We need to speak freely no matter the consequences.

I think this is the dead wrong way to understand the cartoon issue. (more…)