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This page contains all of the posts and discussion on MemeStreams referencing the following web page: The Man Behind the Torture. You can find discussions on MemeStreams as you surf the web, even if you aren't a MemeStreams member, using the Threads Bookmarklet.
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The Man Behind the Torture
by possibly noteworthy at 6:13 am EST, Nov 19, 2007 |
The most provocative aspect of Goldsmith's argument, however, is also the least persuasive. He contends that the problem was not that Addington and the administration did not care sufficiently about the law, but that they cared too intensely, so much so that they were "strangled by law." He claims that "this war has been lawyered to death," and describes government officials as overly chilled by the prospect that they might be held criminally accountable for actions taken in the name of the country's security. Goldsmith prefers the good old days when matters of national security and war were, for the most part, not regulated by federal legislation, and presidents, such as FDR, were free to shape their judgments without regard for law, and could concentrate instead on "political legitimation." In the post-Watergate era, he laments, Congress passed "many of the laws that so infuriatingly tied the President's hands in the post-9/11 world." This view, of course, is fully consonant with that of Cheney and Addington. Cheney, for example, told reporters on board Air Force One in 2005 that "a lot of the things around Watergate and Vietnam both, in the seventies, served to erode the authority I think the President needs."
It's interesting how none of this perspective comes through in the PBS specials or the NYT stories. Was he "saving it" for his book? |
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RE: The Man Behind the Torture
by Decius at 9:04 am EST, Nov 19, 2007 |
possibly noteworthy wrote:
It's interesting how none of this perspective comes through in the PBS specials or the NYT stories.
I think it came through in the pair of stories that I quoted. I think people have a bit of selective hearing about what he has to say. In general his arguement is that many of the legal structures the administration tore up should have been torn up, but in a legal way that incorporated the other branches of government, instead of simply by executive order based on an untested theory of the inherent constitutional authority of the president. Partisans are quick to quip that they tried this with the patriot act and the democrats used it against them, and so their best bet at that point was not to involve the legislature as it handed political weapons to their enemies. This perspective only makes sense if you don't think there was anything wrong with the patriot act. Ultimately you wind up in this place where conservatives are insisting that they only support working with the legislature if the legislature does exactly what they want, when they want, and how they want... frankly very much like the perspective of ancient kings and not really different from not working with the legislature. What the conservative movement is completely incapable of doing is accepting that they might not be correct about everything, which is, of course, the very reason that these kinds of unilateral changes are illegal in the first place. |
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