Hullabaloo

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

 
Hysterical liberals, ruining everything

by digby

Well hell. It turns out that the Presidency of the United States is not only a mere ceremonial office to which nobody pays attention on domestic policy --- it's powerless when it comes to foreign policy and national security as well.

Kevin Drum read Daniel Klaidman's new book and reports that Obama would have really liked to do things differently than he has on Guantanamo and terrorism trials, but he had no support from the the feckless Democrats so he had no choice:

According to Klaidman, part of the answer is that Obama changed as he learned more about the reality of the fight against al-Qaeda. Another part of the answer is that, like all presidents, he succumbed to institutional and bureaucratic pressure. But for my money, the most telling passage of the book suggests that an equal part of the answer is that he simply never received any serious support from his own party.

Klaidman relates an anecdote about Barbara Boxer and Barbara Mikulski allegedly pitching a fit in the White House over the deal that Rahm struck allowing 45 days notice before a prisoner could be transferred from Guantanamo. The liberal ladies were evidently on the verge of hysteria, shouting "where's your plan, over and over again." Klaidman archly observes:

These were the same representatives who had pilloried the Bush administration for its fear-mongering tactics in the war on terror, but behind the grand doors of the LBJ Room, all politics were local. We're going to get clobbered back home, the Democrats protested.

Justice department officials stood by in dismay, worrying over the fate of our democracy.

Far be if from me to contest this version of events. I wasn't there. But let's review the events of late 2009 and early 2010 starting with this report from Dana Milbank (after the fact):

Emanuel bitterly opposed former White House counsel Greg Craig’s effort to close the Guantanamo Bay prison within a year, arguing that it wasn’t politically feasible. Obama overruled Emanuel, the deadline wasn’t met, and Republicans pounced on the president and the Democrats for trying to bring terrorists to U.S. prisons. Likewise, Emanuel fought fiercely against Attorney General Eric Holder’s plan to send Khalid Sheik Mohammed to New York for a trial. Emanuel lost, and the result was another political fiasco.

Keeping that in mind, recall that Rahm made a deal with Republicans for this 45 day notice of transfer from Guantanamo and his poison pill got a vote of 79-19. Now whether he did this to purposefully make it impossible to actually bring any trials to the US or because he genuinely thought this would bring Republicans on board for the whole plan is unknown.

According to the Klaidman book the liberals were livid about this deal because they knew the whole thing was now going to turn into a non-stop shit-storm and they wanted to know just how the administration planned to deal with it. And then they refused to back the poor powerless president, who was left out there all on his own once again. Kevin writes:

[O]ne of the things that made it almost inevitable that Obama would end up caving in on so many of his promises was the fact that Democrats wouldn't help him fight back. In the end, maybe that didn't matter. Maybe public opinion was simply too hardened on these issues. But the plain fact is that if the entire national security apparatus and the opposition party and public opinion and your own party are pretty much all lining up on the same side, there's not much a president can do.

Except, you know, that didn't happen. It didn't happen over and over again:

October 21,2009:

The Senate voted early Friday to reject a Republican effort to prohibit the United States from prosecuting foreign terrorist suspects in civilian courts, handing a victory to President Barack Obama.

By 52-47, senators turned aside a proposal by Sen. Kelly Ayotte (AY-aht), R-N.H., that would have forced such trials to occur before military tribunals or commissions.

November 11, 2009

The Senate rejected a move Thursday to block the Obama administration from using ordinary federal courts to prosecute those alleged to have plotted the Sept. 11 attacks.

On a 54-45 vote, the Senate tabled an amendment from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) that would have left military commissions as the only option for prosecuting Sept. 11 suspects.

All 40 Republicans supported the amendment, along with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and four Democrats: Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.)

Graham said the measure, offered as an amendment to the annual appropriations bill for the Commerce and Justice Departments, was needed to head off what he said were plans by the Obama administration to send Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others allegedly involved in the Sept. 11 plot to trials before civilian courts in the U.S.

Cantwell, later agreed to join the Democrats in a subsequent vote.

Then this in February of 2010:

Democrats, to help the administration push back on Republican attacks, sent Obama a letter Thursday afternoon that endorsed the use of federal criminal courts. "Our system of justice is strong enough to prosecute the people who have attacked us," wrote Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.) and Senate Intelligence Chairman Dianne Feinstein (Calif.).

I could go on. It's just not the case that the president was hamstrung by the weak sister Dems who refused to help him. They did. They went out on a very weak limb to help him despite the fact that Rahm was in there making "deals" that ensured that even if they won, they had already lost.

I don't doubt this was always going to be hard, especially once Huckleberry Graham and his crew got out there and started fearmongering. (Graham, you'll recall, was supposed to be the administration's great "partner" during this period on Guantanamo and climate change.) And maybe there was never any way to get this done, politically. Americans have been brainwashed into believing that terrorists are supernatural villains unlike any enemy the world has ever known. But a majority of Senate Democrats, including the hysterical, parochial liberals, backed their president on this when it came time to vote, every step of the way.

Someday maybe Greg Craig will will write a memoir and we'll get the other side of this story.


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digby 6/12/2012 10:30:00 AM