Whatever you think of his personal foibles or political positions, Ted Kennedy, in an exclusive memoir excerpt at Talking Points Memo, exemplifies what it means to reach for the moniker "statesman" instead of merely "politician." Those in power who persist in relying on sources like these to formulate their views certainly deserve some measure of respect (a small measure–they're still in politics, mind). But if policy arguments took place with this kind of weight behind them, we might get somewhere besides the facile posturing of the elected that currently passes for debate:
I was struck by the consistent drumbeat of opposition to the rush to war by respected military leaders–General John Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe; marine general Joseph Hoar, former commander in chief of Central Command. I will never forget what General Hoar in particular said in response to my question about urban warfare. He said that Baghdad would look like the last fifteen minutes of the Spielberg movie Saving Private Ryan.
My views on war drew upon the teachings of Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas. A distillation of their philosophies has yielded six principles that guide the determination of a "just" war, and these principles were my guiding arguments:
• A war must have a just cause, confronting a danger that is beyond question;
• It must be declared by a legitimate authority acting on behalf of the people;
• It must be driven by the right intention, not ulterior, self-interested motives;
• It must be a last resort;
• It must be proportional, so that the harm inflicted does not outweigh the good achieved; and
• It must have a reasonable chance of success.There was no just cause for the invasion of Iraq, I declared time and again. Iraq posed no threat that justified immediate, preemptive war, and there was no convincing pattern of relationships between Saddam and Al Qaeda. The "legitimate authority," the Congress, indeed approved authorization for the use of force in Iraq in October 2002, but it acted in haste and under pressure from the White House, which intentionally politicized the vote by scheduling it before midterm elections. By contrast, in 1991, the administration of the first President Bush timed the vote on the use of military force against Iraq to occur after midterm elections, in order to de-politicize the decision.
ALSO: Cape Cod was pleasant as ever. Even spent an afternoon in Provincetown shopping and people-watching. There are few places as interesting for the latter–last time I was there, I saw a bike crash followed by an honest-to-goodness slap fight. Now that's a vacation.
ADDITIONAL: Glenn Greenwald hits it out of the park on the latest instance of Obama -sigh- imitating Bush:
Indefinitely imprisoning Guantanamo detainees without trial — or abducting people from around the world and shipping them to Bagram (or third-party countries) with no legal rights — is intrinsically heinous. But the real danger lies in institutionalizing such schemes using the force of law — vesting the President with the ongoing, future statutory power to imprison people based on the pernicious theory that they are likely to commit a crime in the future and therefore must be "preventively detained" with no charges and no trial. It's not merely likely, but inevitable, that such powers will be severely abused — especially if there is another attack. As the Ninth Circuit recently wrote in ruling that John Ashcroft can be held personally liable for the wrongful, post-9/11 imprisonment of American Muslims: such policies "are repugnant to the Constitution and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters in our national history."
That's presumably why Greg Craig said that it's "hard to imagine Barack Obama as the first President of the United States to introduce a preventive-detention law." If Professor Chesney and his pro-preventive-detention comrades in the Obama administration are truly interested in the substantive, Serious discussion they claim they want, they ought to focus on those dangers. Our own history — and basic human nature — leave no doubt that those dangers are far more grave and serious than whatever costs there are to according all people we want to imprison — including accused Terrorists — real due process.
