Marc Thiessen, Ignorant Alarmist on Ebola

That Marc Thiessen... he just loves to argue from fear. Today, from the starting point of a "worst case scenario" involving an intentional release of smallpox in a series of U.S. shopping malls, he's feigning concern that Ebola could be use for biological warfare. Describing this "worst case scenario" for smallpox,

After 13 days, 16,000 smallpox cases have been reported in 25 states and 1,000 people have died. Vaccine supplies have been depleted. Canada and Mexico have closed their borders to the United States. It has become logistically impossible to identify and isolate smallpox victims and their contacts to prevent the disease from spreading. Trading on the stock exchanged is suspended. International commerce grinds to a halt. No country in the world will allow flights originating in or transiting through the United States to land. States have closed their borders with other states. There are riots and looting throughout the country.

After 25 days, the number of cases has risen to 30,000, with 10,000 expected to die, and the National Security Council is advised that, absent large scale and successful vaccination programs, the epidemic “could conceivably comprise as many as 3,000,000 cases of smallpox and lead to 1,000,000 deaths.”

If we're assuming that smallpox is epidemic within the United States inside of two weeks, it would be too late to close the borders. The U.S. is a highly mobile nation, and U.S. travelers would already have spread the virus around the world. In terms of what might happen in the absence of a large scale and successful vaccination program, we need not be particularly worried as we would see such a program immediately implemented. Whether it would be compulsory, or whether we would allow people to let themselves and their children become infected with smallpox due to religious objections or fantasies about the evils of vaccines, is a discussion for another day -- the vast majority of people would eagerly extend their arms for the jab of a needle.

Thiessen appears to be unaware of why biological warfare has been largely avoided. Certainly we have a history of smallpox being used as a biological weapon of sorts in this country, with the "plague traders" who would sell infected blankets to an Indian village, collect them after the virus wiped out most of their customers, then sell the same infected blankets to another village. But the fact is, playing around with germ warfare is extremely dangerous. If you release germs to the wind, assuming you can create an effective means of delivery, you can't count on the winds not to blow them right back in your face. If you try to strike a more technologically sophisticated opponent with a virulent disease, you risk having that disease communicated back into your own population -- which lacks the same level of sophistication and resources for containment, vaccination and treatment. If we're talking about state-sponsored terrorism, let's just say that a sudden, mass-vaccination program for smallpox would be noticed -- and if you don't protect your own population, "successful" germ warfare with a disease like smallpox is going to bite you in the posterior.

This is Thiessen writing, so you know his argument is going to get worse. And it does.

So what about Ebola?

Unlike smallpox, which is hard to come by, the Ebola infection is raging right now in parts of Africa where Islamist extremists could have easy access.

Except that the people who use it in "worst case" germ warfare scenarios aren't imagining that it would be stolen from a secure laboratory. They know that at present the smallpox virus can be synthesized, and they know that as time progresses the lab technology to synthesize viruses like smallpox and polio will only get cheaper. But never mind that, Thiessen has come up with a dark fantasy that he believes will scare your pants right off of you:

Ebola has up to a 21-day incubation period — more than enough time for terrorists to infect themselves and then come here with the virus. In a nightmare scenario, suicide bombers infected with Ebola could blow themselves up in a crowded place — say, shopping malls in Oklahoma City, Philadelphia and Atlanta — spreading infected tissue and bodily fluids.

Let's pause for a moment and reflect on the total number of suicide bombers who have made it into the United States and blown themselves up in shopping malls. With the number "zero" resonating in your head, now picture Thiessen's fantasy -- these would-be suicide terrorists would be picked from people wholly unknown to the United States government or any of its internal or allied intelligence agencies. They would get visas to the United States. Shortly before coming to the United States, they would visit an Ebola-infected region and deliberately expose themselves to infected blood and vomit. Nobody would notice this unusual travel pattern. Then they would come to the United States before becoming symptomatic, acquire the material to build suicide vests, build those vests, and blow themselves up in shopping malls.

Thiessen seems to realize the absurdity of his own scenario, as he continues,

Or, the virus could also be released more subtly. Terrorists could collect samples of infected body fluids, and then place them on doorknobs, handrails or airplane tray tables, allowing Ebola to spread quietly before officials even realize that a biological attack has taken place.

Of course, we're back to the question of containment. Even in this scenario Thiessen is taking the approach of the worst case scenario, the notion that Ebola can survive for long periods of time in trace amounts on surfaces and remain highly contagious. Thiessen also seems to know, despite his earlier fear-mongering, that such a means of attempted transmission would not be very effective -- now he's imagining "what would happen if 50, 100 or more Ebola patients started showing up at U.S. hospitals". He posits that it would result in mass panic -- which may be true, but if so would have a lot less to do with Ebola itself than with demagogues like Thiessen. And, again, the more widespread the infection, the more likely it is that the disease is going to spread to other nations -- and potentially devastate the nations Thiessen fantasizes as being the source of the "germ warfare".

Having played a central role in the beating of the drums of war, Thiessen is fully aware of how the U.S. managed to manipulate the segment of the population that was unaware that Saddam Hussein played no role in the 9/11 attacks into supporting a full-scale assault on Iraq. What does Thiessen believe the response would be to a group that claimed responsibility for an effective germ warfare attack within the United States, or for a government that sponsored such an attack? That is, Thiessen's terrorists would not only have to operate with a significant level of sophistication in preparing their plot and getting infectious matter to the United States, while being simultaneously ignorant of the inherent dangers in germ warfare, they would have to be wholly undeterred by the idea that the United States would respond with a military fury that would make "shock and awe" in Iraq look like a children's party.

Also, but for the fact that it's presently in the headlines why Ebola? It's a terrifying disease, certainly, but it's not particularly communicable and to date the evidence is that an infected person is not infectious until they're symptomatic -- at which time, due to the severity of symptoms, at least in this country they're apt to be seeking emergency medical attention. That helps explain the zero cases identified to date where an infected person in the developed world spread Ebola to another person while outside of a hospital.

As is Thiessen's wont, he has to include a gratuitous slam against the President,

Then there is the impact of all the false assurances from President Obama that Ebola was unlikely to reach our shores and that if it did that “our doctors, our nurses and our medical staff are trained, are ready, and are able to deal with a possible case safely.”

which brings to mind a column by Fred Hiatt, the guy who believes that Thiessen is an asset to the Washington Post's editorial pages:

With a new week, and the possibility of additional Ebola patients, Americans — or at least American politicians — have an urgent need: someone to blame.

After all, while more than 4,000 Africans dying of Ebola was not enough to grab our attention, two infected nurses in the United States is a full-fledged crisis.

To save readers from viewing hours of repetitive cable television and political advertising, I assembled a handy list of villains proposed (or soon to be proposed) by talking heads of the left and right. Feel free to select one or more.

• President Obama, for caring about Africans more than he cares about us....

• Obama, for not listening to the World Health Organization’s warnings on Ebola....

What’s striking in the present case is how the absence of that sense of unity feeds on itself. Obama shouldn’t have suggested that Ebola was unlikely to reach America, Frieden shouldn’t have assured us that every hospital would be ready on Day One.

But in a climate that is so unforgiving, so quick to pounce, so unwilling to accept that mistakes will be made and should be learned from, it’s understandable that leaders trap themselves into promising more than they can deliver.

A desire for accountability does not have to preclude a certain generosity of spirit, or some empathy for those who are performing public service. We seem to have forgotten that.

There's a danger in taking a stance against demagogues, fear-mongering and gotcha politics when one need only scan across the printed page, or click a link on the virtual page, to see one (or more) of your own columnists engaging in the behavior you are pretending to decry. If you want "talking heads of the left and right" to display a more generous spirit, holding people accountable while admitting their own role in trapping leaders into over-promising, perhaps the first thing to do is to clean house.

Meanwhile, Thiessen should reflect on the comments that his column is generating which, unlike those he hopes to generate -- angry rant against the President and Democrats -- mostly identify him as having written a terrible column designed to create fear.

Michael Gerson Plays His Part

I'll grant, when Gerson plays the part of a Republican shill he does so with far more dignity than Marc Thiessen, the rabid self-caricature who later filled Gerson's former role as G.W. Bush's chief speechwriter. Alas, I damn him with faint praise. What you rarely see from Gerson is any reflection on the Bush Administration's endless series of colossal blunders, and how they contributed to the continuing mess in the Middle East. Instead, per the latest memo, the index finger is extended to be wagged at President Obama.

In Gerson's latest column he scolds the President, in essence, for not finding a way to fix the mess in the Middle East. And why not? After all the President has has six years to fix a mess that was more than a century in the making, six years to put G.W. Bush's Humpty Dumpty mess back together again. Facts? Gerson doesn't need to concern himself too much with the facts and their well-known liberal bias.

Gerson gets started by stating the obvious,

For an American president, the world is a banquet of frustrations. But the collapse of much of the Middle East into civil war, sectarian conflict, war crimes and terrorist-exploited chaos should rank higher on the list.

Gerson proceeds to criticize the President for concluding that it would not be a wise move to intercede in Syria's civil war, characterizing the President's position as one of risk aversion. It has apparently never occurred to Gerson that staying out of a military conflict carries its own set of risks. Gerson lectures,

Because the United States refused to coordinate an effort to arm the responsible opposition in Syria, there has been no pressure for the regime to engage in serious peace negotiations. Bashar al-Assad has found barrel bombs more effective. In Geneva talks last November, American officials were left with no plan except to (pathetically) hope for Russian and Iranian diplomatic favors, which never came. Countries such as Turkey and the Gulf states, left leaderless in the region, have often funneled support to radicals. The United States has supplied weapons to the Iraqi government to fight militants in western Iraq while (incoherently) refusing to arm people fighting the same enemy 100 miles to the west in Syria. Now a few thousand militants, with roots in the Syrian conflict, threaten to destroy the Iraqi government, along with the remnants of U.S. credibility in the region.

Oh yes, the "responsible opposition parties".... that would apparently be the ones who are not winning. It remains unclear how people like Gerson expected that the U.S. (or any other nation) could identify and support enough factions that we would want to win the Syrian civil war such that they could take and hold the country. Frankly, the idea sounds like an opium dream. Perhaps Gerson should read his own newspaper, such that he might have at least some understanding of the complexity of trying to arm opposition groups while keeping western arms out of the hands of factions hostile to the west. One would think that Gerson would be able to look at the performance of the U.S.-trained, U.S.-armed Iraqi army, which turned tail and fled at the first sight of ISIS, and recognize that things aren't as simple as air dropping weapons into the hands of factions that we hope are neither hostile to the west nor likely to engage in brutal reprisals if they gain control over territory held by the the Assad regime or other armed factions.

Also, did it occur to Gerson that if "a few thousand militants, with roots in the Syrian conflict" threaten the post-war government of Iraq, the problems with that government quite obviously run deep? A few thousand militants who collectively are unable to topple the Assad regime are able to battle so effectively in Iraq that its army drops its weapons and runs away?

Iraqi officials told the Guardian that two divisions of Iraqi soldiers – roughly 30,000 men – simply turned and ran in the face of the assault by an insurgent force of just 800 fighters. Isis extremists roamed freely on Wednesday through the streets of Mosul, openly surprised at the ease with which they took Iraq's second largest city after three days of sporadic fighting.

If Iraqis won't fight for the unity of their own country, who does Gerson believe should fight the battles? Also, isn't this an important reminder of the complexity of the situation in Syria? What amount of U.S.-provided munitions just fell into the hands of those few hundred ISIS fighters?

Gerson carries on,

The mere containment of Syrian chaos would have required a more activist U.S. policy — coordinating Middle Eastern and European powers to create a balance of forces on the ground that might have encouraged a power-sharing agreement among less horrible regime elements and less horrible opposition groups. Some variant is still Syria’s best (but fading) hope.

The less horrible groups, presumably, being the ones who aren't explicitly promising bloody vengeance the moment they take power? And power-sharing... how well has that worked out in Iraq and Afghanistan following the two longest wars in U.S. history, both wrought by Gerson's former lord and master? In what fantasy world does Gerson live, where upon defeating Assad and the, well, more horrible groups, rival factions will join hands and unite Syria as opposed to battling amongst themselves for control of the nation? Is he truly comfortable with allowing the Assad regime's chemical weapons arsenal to fall into the hands of those "less horrible" factions?

As for doing something more than arming "less horrible" factions, there was the possibility of launching air strikes against Syria. But Gerson has apparently forgotten that his own political party opposed any such military action. Had the President ignored the Republican nay vote and proceeded to bomb Syria, would Gerson dispute that his party would have been screeching for Obama's impeachment? Did Gerson somehow overlook the words of Ted Cruz, published in Gerson's own paper?

Gerson continues,

Outside the administration, the unsentimental have sometimes argued that it is not a bad outcome for Assad’s forces and the Sunni Islamists to kill each other in a stalemate. Apart from being immoral — content with the slaughter of civilians — this also turns out to be stupid. It is only a stalemate until new battle-hardened extremists are produced who unravel neighboring countries or board planes to destinations unknown.

Perhaps, along with a host of other Republicans, Ted Cruz is among the "unsentimental"? Actually, that's probably a reasonable characterization of Cruz. But Gerson is largely hollow manning. Some have taken the position that a long-term stalemate may be the outcome most consistent with U.S. interests, a conclusion consistent with Cruz's arguments, but they typically have acknowledged the human cost:

Given this depressing state of affairs, a decisive outcome for either side would be unacceptable for the United States. An Iranian-backed restoration of the Assad regime would increase Iran’s power and status across the entire Middle East, while a victory by the extremist-dominated rebels would inaugurate another wave of Al Qaeda terrorism.

There is only one outcome that the United States can possibly favor: an indefinite draw.

By tying down Mr. Assad’s army and its Iranian and Hezbollah allies in a war against Al Qaeda-aligned extremist fighters, four of Washington’s enemies will be engaged in war among themselves and prevented from attacking Americans or America’s allies.

That this is now the best option is unfortunate, indeed tragic, but favoring it is not a cruel imposition on the people of Syria, because a great majority of them are facing exactly the same predicament.

Non-Sunni Syrians can expect only social exclusion or even outright massacre if the rebels win, while the nonfundamentalist Sunni majority would face renewed political oppression if Mr. Assad wins. And if the rebels win, moderate Sunnis would be politically marginalized under fundamentalist rulers, who would also impose draconian prohibitions.

Were Gerson to read that type of analysis, rather than huffing about its lack of sentimentality, he might recognize that there's no solution to the crisis in Syria that isn't going to result in large-scale oppression and suffering.

Gerson, quick to accuse his imagined opponents of being "stupid", has also apparently not noticed that the deaths and displacement of civilians that trouble him are occurring within the context of a Syrian civil war. Does he believe that western munitions have magical features that prevent them from killing civilians? Does he believe that when western powers back a civil war, civilian deaths cease, only armed combatants are killed, and no one becomes a refugee? Civilian suffering was significant under Assad, it is significant under civil war, it would remain significant under Gerson's escalated civil war, and it will continue even if the "less horrible" factions prevail. Why does Gerson pretend -- and he has to know that his position is a pretense -- that there's a good alternative? Probably for the same reason he pretends that those "less horrible" Syrian factions won't harm a hair on a civilian head if given western arms or control of the nation. It's an argument of convenience, offered for political purposes.

Gerson suggests,

After years of defining staying out of the Middle East as success, this may now involve saving the Iraqi government, actively coordinating support to the Syrian opposition and bolstering state institutions in Lebanon and other highly stressed countries.

Concluding, "President Obama has shown no appetite or aptitude for this role — but refusing it now would be a massive failure." Let's step back in history to 2001, when Gerson's former employer became President. Iraq was subject to a no fly zone, but was contained under Saddam Hussein and entirely hostile to al-Qaeda. Syria had recently come under the rule of Bashar al-Assad, who had not yet established himself as a tyrant in the model of his father. Egypt remained reasonably stable under Mubarek. Lebanon was a mess, but the mess was largely contained by Syrian occupation and the threat of another Israeli incursion or invasion. Under G.W.'s watch, Syria's penchant for oppression and torture was viewed as a virtue, and Syria was enlisted as a partner for the rendition and torture of terrorism suspects. Bush opposed the Syria Accountability Act. His invasion of Iraq, championed by Gerson, bogged the nation down in a long, extraordinarily expensive war. It was as a result of that war, and under G.W.'s watch, that Maliki government was formed, a government that eight years later cannot inspire the nation's armed forces to defend its cities. It's a shame nobody in the Bush Administration had the necessary stroke of genius, back in early 2001, to consider trying to press Assad into being a more progressive leader or, in the alternative, "actively coordinating support to the Syrian opposition", while "bolstering state institutions in Lebanon and other highly stressed countries". Sure, the Middle East of 2001 was a carton of fragile eggs, any one of which could be easily broken with consequences potentially spilling over into its neighbors. But after Bush made a hobby of tossing those eggs into the air and hitting them with a tennis racket, I again assert that the word for Gerson's finger-wagging at Obama is "chutzpah". Gerson's term, "massive failure", seems like a fair assessment of Bush's policy.

I don't particularly care for the argument that the hawkish elements of our society, people like Gerson who can't seem to even recall recent history, should send their kids off to fight the wars for which they openly yearn -- their kids should not suffer for their parents' hawkishness. But it's never a surprise to see that somebody like Gerson was never interested in pursuing a military career himself, and that it's other people's children whom he would eagerly dispatch to fight yet another war in the Middle East.

But the worst part of this sort of column is that it's generic. There's a single basic column with a number of blanks to be filled in with whatever President Obama does or does not do, a tepid suggestion that things might be better had something different been done -- but always short on specifics about what should have been done and why it would have resulted in a better outcome -- and a standard set of attacks that Obama's choices did not miraculously fix all that's wrong with the region or world. It's an astonishingly lazy form of analysis, and it speaks poorly of Fred Hiatt and his editorial pages that he is so happy to run this type of column. When you're dealing with a region where your typical choice is trying to figure out which of a number of bad solutions will be the least damaging, it's irresponsible to suggest that there are easy answers.

Marc Thiessen, as Usual, Gets Things Completely Wrong

I suspect Marc Thiessen's intelligence is no worse than average, but he's certainly not afraid to look stupid:

Politicians and commentators on the left have been publicly flogging Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) for daring to talk about poverty in America’s inner cities. The charges have been so vicious and scurrilous (accusing him of using racial “dog-whistles” and language “deliberately crafted to appeal to white racists”) that their only purpose can be to send a message to Ryan and any other Republican who would dare follow his lead: Keep your hands off our issue. Poverty belongs to us. Stay away or we will brand you a racist.

(Insert obligatory Jay Smooth video here.)

Ryan’s attackers worry that if Republicans follow his lead, it will expose the failure of the left’s approach to poverty. For decades, Republicans gave Democrats a near-monopoly in the fight against poverty. And like most monopolies shielded from competition, the Democrat-led war on poverty failed. We have spent trillions of dollars on anti-poverty programs, and today the number of Americans living at or near poverty is higher than it was in 1964.

Yeah.... Ryan's critics are terrified that his war on poverty, and by that I mean policy proposals that would make it even harder to be poor, is going to win him votes from... um... I guess it would be nobody?

Ryan’s attackers are also worried that if Republicans make helping the poor and vulnerable a priority, Democrats can no longer win elections by waging class warfare and painting the GOP as uncaring champions of the wealthy. They want the Republicans to follow the example of Mitt Romney, who declared in 2012, “I’m not concerned about the very poor. . . . We will hear from the Democrat Party [on] the plight of the poor. . . . But my campaign is focused on middle-income Americans.”

I cannot recall the last time a Democrat had to "wage class warfare" or "paint the GOP as uncaring about the poor". The GOP hangs that brand on itself. But for somebody as (willfully?) obtuse as Thiessen, perhaps that's a difficult distinction to draw.

Ryan understands that if Republicans abandon the poor to the Democrats, they will hurt the poor — because Democrats have all the wrong answers for the problems of poverty. But they will also hurt themselves. Because no one — in the middle class or any class — wants to support a party that does not care for the most vulnerable among us.

Stuff and nonsense on both fronts. First, however flawed anti-poverty efforts of the past have been, the reason Thiessen can hang most of the responsibility for those programs on the Democrats is that the Republican approach to poverty (including Ryan's approach) hinges on cutting benefits for the poor. For example, the Republican Party is in a tizzy, right now, because their food stamp cuts aren't going to be as deep as they had hoped. Maybe in Thiessen's alternate universe, nothing says "We love the poor" like food stamp cuts.

Second, the Republicans have made something of an art form of distinguishing the "deserving poor" (i.e., poor people who, on the whole, vote for Republicans) from the "undeserving poor" (i.e., poor people who, on the whole, tend to vote for Democrats). A smarter man than Thiessen would admit that Ryan's foul-up was in making too explicit that many of those his party deems "undeserving" fall within a particular demographic,

We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work, and so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with.

If Thiessen wants the Republican Party to keep making statements like that, let's just say, if his thesis about voter concerns is correct he'll do nothing but harm to his party.

If You Want to Defend Torture, Start By Admitting That It's Torture

Going back a few weeks, George Will wrote an editorial with a number of similarities to Richard Cohen's piece on the morality of torture, particularly in the manner in which Will substitutes his experience in a movie theater for fact-based argument. Will opens with the sympathetic quotation of Col. Nathan Jessep, Jack Nicholson's character from A Few Good Men,

“I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it.”

That diatribe was, of course, the lead-in to the film's Perry Mason moment, when Jessup confesses to ordering the abuse of an enlisted man who ended up dead. Will seems particularly taken with the quote, "You [expletive] people... you have no idea how to defend a nation", never mind that Jessup is addressing a military court martial. Sure, it's a movie and Jessup's speech is directed at the movie audience, but his on screen attack is directed at other military officers. Jessup's honor falls short of helping the two enlisted men who carried out his directive avoid being prosecuted for murder. If Will's argument is that there should be no checks on men who believe themselves to be acting in the best interest of the nation, Jessup by this point having rejected the opinions of every other officer who suggested an alternative to the Code Red, having excused himself from the confines of the Marine Corps' regulations and Uniform Code of Military Justice, having happily allowed two enlisted men to be looking at lengthy prison terms for carrying out his orders, and having repeatedly perjured himself on the stand and repeatedly disparaged the other military officers involved in the legal proceeding, he has every right to attempt that argument. But were Will to explore some of our nation's history, including how we came to have a civilian in the role of Commander in Chief, he might come to realize that in fact a Colonel, even one who is extraordinarily self-assured, even one who is doing important work, is and should be answerable to higher authorities.

Switching over to Zero Dark Thirty, Will informs us,

Viewers will know going in how the movie ends. They will not know how they will feel when seeing an American tell a detainee, “When you lie to me I hurt you,” and proceed to do so.

Frankly, "When you lie to me I hurt you," makes for better film than "When I think you have information you're not sharing, I'll keep you awake for 180 hours," but... call it poetic license. But contrary to Will's suggestion, most viewers will have seen plenty of dramatizations that involve torture, including torture committed by Americans. Kiefer Sutherland (whose character disagreed with Jessup's approach in A Few Good Men) made something of a career of it in his series, "24". Another season, another ticking time bomb. The difference is that this is supposed to be "based on a true story", and that unlike other films based upon true stories this one is... I don't know... more graphic? Easier to confuse with a documentary?

As is his wont, Will likes to overstate the benefits of torture, blithely reciting the claims of various Bush Administration officials about how tidbits of relevant information were gleaned from the torture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, including "the nickname of a trusted courier of bin Laden". Will implies a straight line from the disclosure of that nickname in 2003 to the killing of Bin Laden some eight years later. That's not exactly a ringing endorsement of the "ticking timebomb" defense. We cannot know at this juncture whether the nickname of Bin Laden's courier would have been obtained from Mohammed without the use of torture, but we can reasonably conclude that either the name was not of much help to the investigation or that Mohammed poured out so much information under torture that the key to finding Bin Laden was buried in a mountain of irrelevant disclosures, with wild goose chases taking priority over the identification of the courier.

The question of whether torture "works" depends both on the tactics the torturer is willing to use, and also upon the torturer's goal. For example, let's say I want to know what the enemy is up to, and I have 100 enemy operatives in custody. If I am willing to torture all of them, I can start looking for commonalities among their disclosures. Sure, there's a chance that they will have been fed misinformation and not have the information I'm looking for, but odds are I'll learn something useful. Or I'll be able to test their stories and, if my information is good, use torture to punish what I believe to be errors or inaccuracies in the hope that the subject will become terrified of being caught in a lie. It's similar to the manner in which police divide suspects and interrogate them separately, then lie about what the other suspects have said or disclosed in order to try to trick the others. Except with torture. Sure, I may end up torturing people to try to get them to disclose something that they know nothing about, and if I'm not careful I can inadvertently feed them the answers to the questions that will stop the torture and mistake their new answers for actionable intelligence, but if I torture enough people in enough circumstances I will get names, locations, and other information that turn out to be valid. And if I break down the wrong door, shoot the wrong person, pick up and torture an innocent person based upon a bad tip, well, "I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it."

Similarly, I may not care if the person I'm torturing tells the truth. I may want that person to lie. To pose for propaganda pictures or a film, to make or sign a confession to crimes, or to simply be too frightened to ever stand against me or my regime in the future lest he again be picked up and tortured.

Will lectures us,

Viewers of “Zero Dark Thirty” can decide whether or which “enhanced interrogation” measures depicted — slaps, sleep deprivation, humiliation, waterboarding — constitute, in plain English, torture. And they can ponder whether any or all of them would be wrong even if effective.

Sorry, but that's a cop-out. We would not see the situation as ambiguous if a police agency used those techniques to elicit confessions from a criminal suspect, particularly if it were an American citizen being tortured by a police agency in the developing world. We would not see the situation as ambiguous if those techniques were being applied to a U.S. solider in enemy custody. Let's not forget how few seconds it took for Christopher Hitchens to change his position from "waterboarding can't be that bad," to "it's torture." (For the record, sixteen.) If somebody were to put a bag over Will's head, strip him naked, transport him to a remote location, and apply the techniques he describes, I'm somehow not thinking that his subsequent column would be so deferential, "my readers can decide for themselves if the 'enhanced interrogation' measures I describe constitute, in plain English, torture". He would have an opinion.

Will shouldn't be so afraid to take a stand. After all, if these techniques were simply another form of acceptable interrogation, we wouldn't need the euphemisms and we wouldn't be talking about "tough choices" or quoting Colonel Jessup for the principle that "anything goes in the name of freedom". No small part of the reason we're still having this discussion is that men like Michael Mukasey and Bush Administration lickspittles like Marc Theissen refuse to acknowledge the truth of what we were doing, while prominent commentators like George Will provide them with cover. How can he talk about "facing up to what we did" if he's not even willing to hang a name on it?

You Don't Bend to The Opinion Polls, Yet You Call Yourself a Leader?

If Michael Gerson were an honest man, he would admit that his former colleague, David Frum, made a valid point when he argued that the Republican Party would have benefited from making itself a part of healthcare reform rather than positioning itself as an obstacle. The Republican Party's continuing avalanche of misinformation about the Affordable Care Act is a sight to behold - as was the manner in which a contrived "activity vs. inactivity" distinction was puffed up over the course of two short years into a legal theory that almost defeated the legislation. Having lost first at the legislature and then in the courts, what's a hack like Gerson to do but double down on his party's mendacity.

Gerson was, of course, an important cog in the wheel of the Bush Administration's misinformation machine. The machine for which popular opinion was a meaningless distraction. The public is starting to oppose war with Iraq? "Well then, let's get the invasion underway - the public always comes around when the bombs start dropping." The public opposes privatizing Social Security? "Well then, let's find a different word to use. How does 'private accounts' sound?" The public wants to know who met with Dick Cheney when he was forming the Administration's energy policy? "Well, it's tempting to scoff or laugh, but let's stick with stonewalling for now."

But when it's the other guy in office, Michael Gerson is suddenly all for government by plebiscite. Gerson can't even be honest about public sentiment. He whines about the Affordable Care Act, "Change came in the form of a law that a plurality of Americans opposed", but he knows full well that the opposition was in no small part a result of Republican demagoguery and misinformation. He wasn't the worst of the bunch, but he played an eager and happy role in that misinformation campaign.

He knew then, just as he knows now, that the only significant part of "Obamacare" that polled poorly was the individual mandate - that pretty much every other significant reform element, when people understood what they were asked about, received majority support. He focuses on the bill as a whole because it advances his narrative - the lie he and his party keep telling the nation, not because they believe that the public doesn't like "Obamacare" but because they're terrified that it will succeed.

Yes, that's right, they're terrified of its success. If they believed a tenth of their demagoguery, they would allow the ACA to come into full effect and let people see for themselves how bad it is. It's easy to repeal unpopular laws. They live in abject terror of a popular, successful reform that brings insurance to tens of millions of people who are presently uninsured or underinsured. So their effort has been to keep that from happening - and to tell as many lies as necessary to provoke public suspicion, concern and opposition.

Gerson has good company in today's Republican Party, because his position is essentially that of a coward. If you're trying to advance what you believe to be good policy, or at least the best policy you can implement given political reality, and run into a political headwind, you should abandon ship, run for the hills, scurry off the sinking ship like a terrified rat. Perhaps that's how he perceives his ex-boss's abandonment of immigration reform and Social Security reform, or McCain's abandonment of immigration reform, campaign finance reform, cap and trade.... The ultimate politician is a Mitt Romney, a guy with no core beliefs, a guy who's always chasing the latest poll, a guy who will discard his most significant (and arguably only) significant political achievement in the name of winning an election. I would like to say that nobody in their right mind would confuse Gerson's brand of cowardice with leadership but... while you can't fool all of the people all of the time, Gerson and friends are happy to shoot for 51%.

Listen to Gerson's platitudinous nonsense:

Obamacare matters in the current election not only because its future is at stake but for what its passage tells us about Obama as a leader. He is stubborn, which can be an admirable trait when applied to the public interest. But on health-care reform, Obama combined stubbornness with ideological predictability and partisan ruthlessness — imposing a very conventional liberalism in the Chicago way.

Obama is "stubborn" - a good thing if it means advancing Gerson's political agenda, really that of his party, but a terrible thing if it means advancing any other agenda. To pass legislation with a significant majority in the House, a 60 vote majority in the Senate, and then to reconcile minor differences in the bill based upon majority support in the Senate? That's anti-democratic. Not at all like the Bush-era tax cuts that shot our deficits through the roof and create a lingering hangover for our nation, crammed through the Senate by reconciliation in Bush's first term based upon a series of patently false promises. Who was heading up the team tasked with spinning that sow's ear into a silk purse? Oh, yeah....

For goodness sake, "the Chicago way"? Can't Gerson try to be even a little bit creative, to try to disguise his silly and childish attacks as something other than warmed over Republican demagoguery? Is he unable to conjure up a novel turn of phrase without the help of David Frum? To find fresh poison to inject into the public discourse without the help of Marc Thiessen? (Lord, what a dream team that was.)

Gerson continues to whine that Obama failed to broker a "grand budget compromise in 2011", a failure attributed to his demand that a significant part of the balancing of the budget come in the form of tax increases, then goes on to whine about forthcoming "large issues" - "avoiding the fiscal cliff, reforming the tax code, making entitlement commitments more sustainable". Never mind that the "fiscal cliff" is of little concern to anybody but pundits and demagogues - here in the real world we know that Congress will act to prevent that "cliff" from having any meaningful impact on the economy or defense spending. Never mind that Obama's "grand bargain" proposals included significant entitlement reform, and that the very legislation Gerson rails about, "Obamacare", implements cost-saving reforms - and that it has been Gerson's own Republican Party that has demagogued against the Medicare cuts that are part of that legislation. Never mind that "reforming the tax code" is a meaningless phrase - you may as well whimper that the President hasn't spent enough time reshuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Gerson closes by suggesting that if Obama doesn't "become an entirely different type of leader", by which he apparently means a spineless Republican, we should conclude that "America needs a new one". I guess it's fortunate for Gerson that a man who shares his complete lack of integrity, and endorses Gerson's apparent notion that "presidential leadership" is best demonstrated by following the latest opinion poll, is presently the Republican presidential nominee.

The Washington Post's Self-Satirist Strikes Again

Marc Thiessen lays it on thick:

The Government Accountability Institute, a new conservative investigative research organization, examined President Obama’s schedule from the day he took office until mid-June 2012, to see how often he attended his Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) — the meeting at which he is briefed on the most critical intelligence threats to the country. During his first 1,225 days in office, Obama attended his PDB just 536 times — or 43.8 percent of the time. During 2011 and the first half of 2012, his attendance became even less frequent — falling to just over 38 percent. By contrast, Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush almost never missed his daily intelligence meeting.

Thiessen then shares a response he received, dismissing his argument as complete bunk:

Vietor did not dispute the numbers, but said the fact that the president, during a time of war, does not attend his daily intelligence meeting on a daily basis is “not particularly interesting or useful.” He says that the president reads his PDB every day, and he disagreed with the suggestion that there is any difference whatsoever between simply reading the briefing book and having an interactive discussion of its contents with top national security and intelligence officials where the president can probe assumptions and ask questions. “I actually don’t agree at all,” Vietor told me in an e-mail, “The president gets the information he needs from the intelligence community each day.”

And yet Thiessen's whinge goes on, "When Obama forgoes this daily intelligence meeting, he is consciously placing other priorities ahead of national security." Because if you don't do things the way Bush did things, well, you may make far fewer mistakes, need far fewer apologists trying to whitewash your record, and the like, but... no, there's really not a valid point you can pull out of that comparison.

A more detailed response from another source:

The White House dismissed the comparison as a difference without substance, with Press Secretary Jay Carney calling the report “hilarious.”

“The President is among the most sophisticated consumers of intelligence on the planet,” National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor wrote in an e-mail. “He receives and reads his [Presidential Daily Brief] every day, and most days when he’s at the White House receives a briefing in person. When necessary he probes the arguments, requests more information or seeks alternate analysis. Sometimes that’s via a written assessment and other times it’s in person.”

The president also has frequent national security meetings beyond the daily briefing, and would also be briefed on the latest intelligence before meeting with a foreign leader, for example.

“Marc basically wrote a story culled from our public schedule that shows how Marc’s old boss, President Bush, structured his day differently than President Obama,” Vietor wrote. “Not exactly breaking news to anyone who has covered this place for the last few years.”

It seems reasonable to ask, also, when we can expect to see similar faux analysis based upon number-crunching of the daily schedules of Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. Let's recall also, George W. Bush blundered his way into one foreign policy disaster after another - so frequent attendance doesn't save you from being misled or making mistakes.

Having been put firmly in his place, what else can Thiessen do but... double down! Citing the same right-wing outfit that produced the meaningless "skipping" figure, Thiessen extrapolates,

So Obama has spent roughly 600 hours on the golf course, and roughly 536 hours discussing the PDB with his intelligence and national security advisors. White House spokesman Jay Carney said my report was “hilarious.” Really? There’s nothing funny about a president who has more time for golf than he does for his daily intelligence brief.

And, OMG, look how much time he spends eating. And brushing his teeth. And sleeping!

It's fascinating, isn't it, that Thiessen completely ignores the substance of the response he admits, up front, having received - that the President gets his information on a daily basis, simply in a manner different from that preferred by G.W. Bush. Perhaps Thiessen is confused by the notion that a President might read something, but it's interesting to note that Thiessen assumes that it took the President a cumulative zero minutes to read the 500 or so PDB's from the meetings he, in Thiessen's parlance, "skipped". Let's not forget also that you can do business on the golf course. Here's Thiessen's former employer in action:

I wonder when we can expect Thiessen to declare that his former boss's litany of errors ban be explained by the claims that he spent about a third of his presidency on vacation. What was that? You mean, when it's his ox being gored the picture becomes nuanced, the President has lots of duties even when on "vacation", a lot of presidential vacations are "working vacations".... You can't simply sum up the days and draw the conclusion that the President wasn't doing his duties in a manner not reflected by that simply tally? Well, go figure.

But you're still left with the fact that Bush's attendance record didn't prevent him from making catastrophic foreign policy decisions that continue to haunt this country and drain its treasury. Thiessen used to try to rehabilitate the reputation of his ex-boss, but apparently there's no longer any profit in that?

Oops, My Bad.

I had written,

At least according to prevaricator extraordinaire, as quoted by Charles Pierce, Marc Thiessen, who offers a "He was lying to get elected, so that's okay" defense of Paul Ryan:...

And now I learn that Mark Thiessen is gloating that I attributed words to him that were in fact authored by Alexandra Petri. My explanation, not defense, is that I was taking a "Charles Pierce reads Mark Thiessen so I don't have to" approach to the quotation. The problem was not that Pierce was inaccurate, such that it is not fair to rely upon the accuracy of his quotations. It's that I misinterpreted him and, had I simply clicked through, I would have avoided the error.

However, we do have the Beltway press's sudden spasm of actual honesty to thank for the most singularly stupid piece of writing The Washington Post it likely ever will publish, even if it renews Marc Thiessen's contract for the next 20 years.

Just because someone tells you different facts than you remember from when you were there watching the event happen doesn't mean that he is lying. It may just mean that he is trying to be elected to something. Besides, there is literal truth and story truth and narrative truth and speech truth, and, of the four, literal truth most seldom gets invited to parties. Conversation as we know it would end. Politics consists of assembling a convincing story about events out of the facts at your disposal and seeing how many people prefer your story to your opponent's. We all start with the same fabric of fact, but a lot of art goes into the draping. There are lies, damned lies, statistics and Things Your Opponent Did to Grandma.

A quick note to Marc Thiessen: Comments are open here. You can go to any post I have ever made, add your own thoughts, insult me, challenge my ideas, push me, pull my hair, poke me in the eye - go for it. I even allow anonymous comments, so you don't have to attach your name. It will take less time to post a comment than to post to twitter. If you post drivel I'll call you out, just as I have done in the past with some of your opinion pieces, but if I make a mistake I want to know, I want to take ownership, and I want to correct it. (Should I joke here about how such an approach to mistakes is probably alien to your experience in Washington?)

I am flattered that your reputation management brings you by my blog, but I can't make corrections or offer apologies if you sneak off to gloat over my mistake in a twitter feed I don't follow. (I don't follow any twitter feeds, in case it matters.) We all make mistakes at times, some of us like to take responsibility and correct them.

Your gloating serves to reinforce my impression of your character which, as you know from the other posts I've made about you that you have chosen not to tweet about, is not very high to begin with. That's reflected in the fact that somebody's parody seemed consistent with the type of thing you write in earnest - I've not made that mistake with any of your peers.

Help me out here by doing something that surprises me and says, "You've underestimated this guy."

Justice Roberts, Institutional Integrity and the Lesser of Two Evils

As many on the political right continue their attempt to vilify Justice Roberts, one argument that is repeatedly raised is that Roberts somehow failed in his duty by choosing to uphold a law he believed to be unconstitutional. It is difficult to believe that people who advance that argument have read the court's opinion or have considered the issues; but I guess it's easier to speculate based on gossip than to think things through.

I've touched on this before, but let's make it simple: Imagine that you're a Supreme Court justice, presented with a law that you believe to be unconstitutional in part under a Commerce Clause analysis, but on the whole to be perfectly constitutional and non-controversial. You have four colleagues who take the position that the entire law is constitutional. You have another four colleagues who take the position that although your analysis is correct, the entire law must be overturned because... they say so.

Even without considering the novelty of the legal theory that is being used to attack the law - a less than two year old theory, minted by a right-wing law professor with the specific goal of attacking the specific law under discussion, and which is exceptionally unlikely to be relevant to any court decisions during your lifetime, or perhaps for the remaining history of the nation - the conundrum is clear: You are but one vote. Whichever side you join, by your analysis the outcome will be less than optimal - either the entire law us upheld or the entire law fails.

Do you stroke your chin and ask yourself, "Should I find a way to uphold a law I believe is (in part) unconstitutional, in order to preserve the integrity of the court," or do you instead ask yourself, "As part of my general duty to my office and the nation, do I pick the most judicially conservative outcome?" Roberts past votes suggest that he is not reticent about overturning precedents or invalidating laws he views as unconstitutional, no matter what controversy might result.

Let's now assume that you can find a way to join with the dissenters in their reasoning as to why portions of the law are unconstitutional, but then fall back on a somewhat strained, alternative theory pursuant to which the provision can be sustained within the context of established constitutional law. On the other hand, you can find no constitutional basis for the excesses of he dissenters - you see them as engaging in unbridled activism, reaching far beyond what the law and constitution dictate in order to advance a political agenda. In such a context your decision to take the former path is not premises upon fear that joining the dissenters will result in attacks on your reputation or the Court's - it will be your concern that you would deserve that treatment and that your dereliction of duty would be harmful to the court.

It now appears that the leaks about Roberts potentially upholding the law started at least a month before the decision was issued. In that context absurd, right-wing attacks on the left as trying to pressure Roberts may well have been in response to those leaks. You don't have to pay much attention to the Court to know that it has been dealing the political left defeat after defeat for many decades. Further, the notion that Roberts would gain any credibiity with the left that would overcome existing skepticism based upon his established track record, let alone credibility that won't disappear the moment he joins with the dissenters to decide, for example, an issue that's not properly before the court, to order an issue rebriefed and reargued so he can decide a different issue, or endorses new constitutional theories that are not actually premised on anything you can find in the Constitution.

You want vilification? Mark Thiessen proudly engages in right-wing vilification, attacking every Supreme Court appointee from the past thirty years except for Thomas, Scalia and Alito. If you think that's based on anything more profound that Thiessen's personal political agenda, it's not because you're informed. Even in the context of the ACA decision, and Kennedy's attempt to hold the entire Act unconstitutional, Thiessen is tossing fuel on a pyre with Kennedy's name on it.

There's no harm to Roberts in upsetting the "left" - the angrier he makes the left, the more of a hero he becomes to certain, presently dominant factions on the right. The articles accusing "liberals" of trying to pressure him seem, in retrospect, to have been a preemptive strike against Roberts - a warning that if he did not strike down the entire law, he would be vilified as being weak, and of caving in to pressure from the left.

And, surprise, that's exactly what is happening.

Justice Roberts, Apostate!

David Frum knows a little bit about apostasy. His abrupt termination by the AEI¹ was reportedly triggered by his "Waterloo" argument, that by choosing to fight healthcare reform rather than participate in the process the Republican Party missed the opportunity to potentially help craft a more conservative bill.

Since his termination, Frum has been attempting to reinvent himself as a different sort of Republican, a sensible Republican who longs for the good old days of bipartisanship (i.e., 5 Democrats joining a Republican bill) and who complains about partisanship, the unseemliness of right-wing radio hosts, and the like. His quest to reinvent himself has not found him a new home in the Republican Party, nor has his retreat from his own past excesses been forgotten by those who might be his allies but for his past attacks. But if Jeb Bush's apparent gamble on the Republican Party's return to moderation is credible, perhaps he'll seem like less of a Cassandra and more of an opinion leader.

Back in his AEI glory days, Frum appeared to be participating in what I jokingly suggested might be a contest between himself and two of his former Bush Administration speechwriting buddies, his ex-boss Michael Gerson and his fellow backbiter Marc Thiessen. The contest appeared to be, who could make the dumbest possible statement about an issue of public controversy and still be taken seriously. The AEI termination led to Frum's gradual, overall withdrawal from the contest - a choice he may regret, given that the apparent prize for the winner(s) is a sinecure on the Washington Post Op/Ed page.

I alluded to Gerson's commentary on the Supreme Court's decision upholding the ACA while poking fun at the ridiculous Peggy Noonan, but that wasn't entirely fair to Frum. Although he does see the Court's decision as contradicting the Republican Agenda, his criticism was directed not at Roberts but at the Republican Party. Once it was Waterloo, now it's a 100 Years War.

On the whole, Marc Thiessen is the clear contest winner - the guy whose arguments are usually devoid of fact or reason, with no apparent consequence to his standing as a conservative commentator. Michael Gerson's columns have gradually faded into mediocrity. It's if he can barely muster the energy to gather the kindling, leaving poor Marc not only to collect the firewood, but also to identify the heretics who must be burned.

When I saw Thiessen's piece today, titled Why is Fred Hiatt So Awful at Picking Op/Ed Columnists Why are Republicans so awful at picking Supreme Court justices, it seemed lucky for Frum that he had thrown in the towel. Thiessen lectures us that,

Democrats have been virtually flawless in appointing reliable liberals to the court. Yet Republicans, more often than not, appoint justices who vote with the other side on critical decisions.

If you actually follow the court, you will recall Justice Stevens' observations that his "transformation" from "conservative" to "liberal" did not actually involve his changing any of his opinions - it resulted from the court's dramatic shift to the right. Reagan's policies and politics would be far too liberal for the modern Republican Party. He appointed his nominees before the individual health insurance mandate was created and advocated by conservatives and the Republican Party, so it shouldn't be particularly surprising that his nominees represented a different brand of conservatism.

Thiessen also forgets that the task of nominating candidates for the Supreme Court belongs to the President, not to the party. Prior to G.W.'s presidency it was difficult to imagine that the Republicans would turn on a president's nominee in the manner in which they turned on Harriet Miers. Thiessen complains that Supreme Court justices don't share his preferred political agenda, and aren't consistently trying to advance his preferred agenda through their service on the Court? Maybe that's because Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush didn't share Thiessen's agenda, and thus didn't apply his litmus tests when selecting candidates. Perhaps also, Supreme Court Justices don't see their job quite the same way Thiessen does.

And that's before we get to the silliness of Thiessen's suggestion that the justices appointed by Democratic Presidents always vote against Thiessen's agenda "on critical decisions". As they say, it all depends on whose ox is getting gored.

Thiessen prattles on with the notion that "Conservatives are pariahs if they vote against the left on certain issues. But if they cross over vote with the left, they are hailed as statesmen." Hardly. Kennedy, generally regarded as the "swing vote" of the current court, is not hailed as a statesman. He's often characterized as having a weak and inconsistent approach to the Constitution, and of tending to patronize women. Who does he imagine he's talking about? Rehnquist? Scalia? Thomas? Alito? Because one example from one case, with cherry-picked quotes from a handful of sources, does not constitute a pattern - even if we ignore the fact that "pre-emptive" attacks are irrelevant to his argument and that it's conservatives like himself who are engaged in the behavior he supposedly deplores.

Thiessen's on a roll,

Liberal nominees can simply affirm liberal positions, while conservatives must speak cryptically in terms of their judicial philosophy.

A statement that leaves me with the firm impression that Thiessen has never read a Supreme Court opinion - majority, concurring or dissent - by any of the Justices he's attacking. If you read a typical Scalia or Thomas opinion and are left scratching your head, "Is he a conservative? It's so... cryptic", all you've established is that you're a dolt.

Thiessen whines,

But legislate from the bench is exactly what Roberts did last week. The law’s proponents consistently rejected the notion that the individual mandate was a tax. But Roberts effectively redrafted the statute, making the mandate a tax in order to declare it constitutional....

That is the kind of sophistry we expect from liberals. The left sees the law as a tool of social justice — so they start with the desired outcome and then come up with legal reasoning to justify it. That is what Roberts did last week. He decided he wanted to uphold Obamacare and rewrote the statute to fit that outcome.

Talk about turning history on its head. Two years ago when the bill passed, conservative commentators regarded it as all-but-certain to pass muster with the Supreme Court. Then, months later, a right-wing law professor invented the "activity/inactivity" distinction that became the centerpiece of the legal attack on the ACA. And it almost worked. As Thiessen knows, Roberts endorsed that newly fabricated "magic bullet" argument - the one that was supposed to take down the ACA (or at least its key elements.

Had the four dissenters joined Roberts in overturning only the mandate and the associated community rating / preexisting condition provisions of the ACA, I think Roberts would have joined with them and that hacks like Thiessen would be praising his brilliance. But Roberts had just one vote to cast. With four Justices voting to uphold the bulk of the ACA, four hungering to overturn the entire Act - including provisions that are already in effect and have absolutely no relation to the mandate - Roberts chose the more judicially conservative approach. Thiessen should perhaps address his anger at the dissenters who, as a result of their eagerness to throw the baby out with the bathwater, ended up preserving both.

No, there's no real intellectual satisfaction to "We'll call it a tax and, voila, constitutional," but that was the avenue that allowed Roberts to join with the dissenters on issues that a better legal analysis would have required him to reject. The better approach would have been either to apply a traditional Commerce Clause analysis, applying existing precedent and discussing the proposed "activity/inactivity" distinction within that framework. Although there's some debate over whether it constitutes dicta or holding, Roberts attempted to articulate a new framework - but in order to avoid a form of activism that would take center stage in Constitutional Law textbooks for decades to come, he found an alternative path to upholding the ACA.

Thiessen sees only two reasons why Roberts would have changed his vote, "[that] he was suddenly convinced by his liberal colleagues, or simply had a failure of nerve". Thiessen apparently cannot contemplate the possibility that given a forced choice between (virtually) all or nothing, Roberts chose the conservative approach - eschewing the activism that hacks like Thiessen claim to detest but, as evidenced by his poisonous diatribe, actually desire. Thiessen falls victim to self-parody,

We need jurists who not only have a philosophy of judicial restraint, but the intestinal fortitude not to be swayed by pressure from the New York Times, the Georgetown cocktail circuit and the legal academy.

Which columnists do you suppose you're more likely to find at a Georgetown cocktail party - those of the New York Times, or those of the Washington Post? Which paper does Thiessen, who is explicitly trying to punish, diminish and marginalize Roberts for voting "the wrong way" on a case, work for, again? What's the point of Thiessen's vitriol, or of his long history of seeking out heretics and calling for their destruction, if not to influence them and others - to try to intimidate them into toeing the party line? And the legal academy? Which justices adhered to precedent and two centuries of Commerce Clause jurisprudence, again? And which glommed onto a less than two-year-old theory concocted by a law professor, then championed by others, as a means of defeating the ACA? Thiessen is entitled to his own opinion column, but not to his own facts.

I was going to declare Thiessen the hands-down winner, but before I had a chance to write anything Gerson came up with a late entry. Another "facts be damned" whine about how conservatives justicescare too much about the institution of the Court to simply aren't able to ram through the Republican agenda.

Perhaps channeling his inner David Brooks, king of the false dichotomy, Gerson pontificates that there are "two varieties of judicial conservatism — institutionalism and constitutionalism".

In [an institutionalist's] view, the court maintains its power by exercising it sparingly — deferring whenever possible to the legislative branch. Institutionalism embodies a temperamental conservatism — a commitment to continuity, humility and prudence.

[Constitutionalists focus] on the rigorous application of the words of the founding document. In this view, the meaning of the text is primary, whatever the political consequences of applying it.

So within the context of this decision, in which five Justices - the dissenters and Roberts - looked at the following Constitutional language:

[The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes;

And concluded that the text includes an absolute prohibition on the regulation of what the Court determines to be the regulation of inactivity - imposing a penalty on a person who chooses not to engage in a specific form of commerce - no matter what the facts or how compelling the circumstances. The fundamental "reasoning" for the prohibition is that, although states have long imposed mandates without controversy or excess, to allow even the most modest of mandate in even the most compelling of circumstances would inevitably lead to the government forcing people to buy broccoli. That argument is neither textual nor logical.

Meanwhile it is possible to be a close adherent of the text of the Constitution while also believing that the Court needs to protect its credibility as an institution. Gerson defends the judicial activism of the justices he purports to be constitutionalists, suggesting that they're pushing back against "liberal activism", but that's a self-serving, political argument. In the present case, the concurring opinion represents both the better textual interpretation and (as Gerson concedes) the "institutional conservatism" that Gerson would have us believe is somehow solely the province of Roberts. (Sorry, Michael - Roberts has only one vote - he needed to join with four others for that vote to count for anything.)

Gerson shares, and perhaps parrots, Thiessen's complaint that Roberts turned to Congress's power to tax as his basis for upholding the law. He then presents an addle, social science argument that the mandate might work as a "mandate" but by revealing to people the supposed secret that they could actually choose not to buy insurance and pay a penalty, Roberts has made it more likely that people will regard their choice in economic terms and now be more likely to pick the penalty if they think they'll save money. Seriously? One hardly dares tell Gerson that such "reasoning" has no place in the constitutional analysis of a statute.

Gerson opened his column by casting aspersions on Earl Warren, and closes by cautioning Justice Roberts, in effect, that if he doesn't shape up and start doing what the Republican Party wants him to do, he can expect hacks like Gerson to argue that he's the "new Earl Warren".

On the whole, Gerson seems to be parroting arguments raised by others, perhaps including Thiessen, so I think Thiessen takes the round.
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1. For somebody who cherishes intellectual rigor and honest debate, being fired by the AEI would be a badge of honor... but I presuppose that such a person could get hired by the AEI.

The Contest is Back On?

Recall the Frum / Gerson / Thiessen contest? Gerson's making a decent effort, but at this point Thiessen has an incredible lead.

When Your Actions Are Defensible, You Don't Have to Lie

I'm sure that there are any number of online reactions to John Yoo's recent prevarications in the Washington Post but, even if so, I'll add one more. One of the most incredible aspects of the successful raid on Osama bin Laden's compound is how various incompetents from the Bush Administration have attempted to use the raid to justify torture. Long gone are the days when those same incompetents argued that we didn't actually torture people, and long gone is the "ticking time bomb" excuse for torture. Now the case appears to be that if you obtain through torture any information that with the application of hindsight might somehow connect to a law enforcement success at some point in the future, no matter how many years pass, torture is wonderful, necessary and successful.

The argument belies itself. If the fruits of torture are so accurate and useful, and if the mite of information allegedly gleaned from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in fact led inexorably to the raid on bin Laden, that raid should have occurred six or so years ago - when the information was fresh. Instead what did we see? Yoo's former lord and master, G.W. Bush, declaring that bin Laden was no longer among his priorities - even as far back as 2002:

"The idea of focusing on one person, is, um, really indicates to me that people really don't understand the scope of the mission. Terror is bigger than one person. And, uh, he's just, he's a person who'se now been marginalized.... So, I don't know where he is, nor, you know, I just don't spend that much time on it, Kelly, to be honest with you."

So when G.W. announced that bin Laden was irrelevant, failing to capture or kill him was no big deal, and that he had other things to worry about it, his lap dogs had not one word of criticism. Now, almost a decade later, they're yipping at President Obama because he succeeded where Bush failed, and suddenly bin Laden is the most important fugitive in the world.

If we step back in time, the story of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's torture seems to be something along the lines of this: He was captured and detained for interrogation, and was proving to be a source of valuable intelligence. Then somebody with a Dick Cheney mindset apparently said, "Hey - we'll get even more information if we torture him," and John Yoo happily signed on to write a memo to immunize the torturers from prosecution. Torture proceeded, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed shared countless plots, many of which were never more than pipe dreams, and some of which appear to have been made up on the spot (because, as you know, that's how you stop torture - by telling the torturer what he wants to hear.) And despite the continued protestation of people like Yoo and Marc Thiessen, the torture program was declared a failure and was cancelled.

If, in fact, the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed produced a valuable bit of information that led so easily to bin Laden, as Yoo suggests - facts be damned - why wasn't that lead followed in a timely manner?

The United States located al Qaeda's leader by learning the identity of a trusted courier from the tough interrogations of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks, and his successor, Abu Faraj al-Libi.

Armed with the courier's nom de guerre, American intelligence agencies later found him thanks to his phone call to a contact already under electronic surveillance. Last August, the courier traveled to bin Laden's compound, but it took another eight months before the CIA became certain that the al Qaeda leader was hiding inside.

Surely Yoo isn't going to try to argue to us that the courier did not visit bin Laden so much as once between the torture of KSM and last August. If Yoo is correct about the value of that information, then he should be honest about how torture impacted the ability of U.S. intelligence to winnow useful information out of the avalanche of garbage KSM produced under torture.

Yoo offers a childish caricature of how the U.S. might have treated captured war criminals had President Obama been in charge after 9/11:

Imagine what would have happened if the Obama administration had been running things immediately following 9/11. After their "arrest," we would have read KSM and al-Libi their Miranda rights, provided them legal counsel, sent them to the U.S. for detention, and granted them all the rights provided a U.S. citizen in criminal proceedings.

Because, you know, it's either that or rendition, black sites and torture - no possible middle ground. Not only is Yoo offering a false dichotomy, it's not even consistent with his argument - he's suggesting that Bush would have tried to gently capture bin Laden, take him into custody and interrogate him, while President Obama was too much of a cowboy. A little consistency, please?

And let's also remember that the Bush Administration did arrest suspected terrorists after 9/11 and, while it did play fast and loose with the Constitution with no small amount of help from people like Yoo, some notable terrorists were Mirandized and were tried in federal court. I don't recall that, at the time, people like Yoo were decrying how the Bush Administration's successful prosecution of terrorists was undermining the war on terror. You didn't hear Yoo scold President Bush for announcing that he wanted to capture bin Laden "dead or alive." You didn't hear so much of a whimper of criticism when Bush ordered a raid that resulted in the deaths of Saddam Hussein's sons, both of whom could have provided valuable intelligence had they been captured alive.

Yoo also acts as if President Obama was in the room when bin Laden was killed, rather than being the person who signed off on a carefully constructed military operation:

As Sunday's operation put so vividly on display, Mr. Obama would rather kill al Qaeda leaders—whether by drones or special ops teams—than wade through the difficult questions raised by their detention. This may have dissuaded Mr. Obama from sending a more robust force to attempt a capture.

Were Yoo an honest man he would admit that, had President Obama turned the mission into a larger operation intended to capture bin Laden, he and his ilk would be the first to point their fingers and screech about his "meddling in a military operation" had the mission failed, or had any soldiers died or been taken prisoner. Had President Obama instructed military leaders to change their plan to prioritize capture, and had that resulted in a similar failure, Yoo would similarly be screeching about the President's incompetence. Bin Laden is reported to have always had a weapon within reach, and he could easily have had his compound rigged with explosives - Yoo's fantasies of, "Maybe if we had sent more helicopters and more soldiers" really aren't reflective of the reality of what happens when soldiers enter a small room to engage in close quarters combat. (In fairness, perhaps Yoo learned military strategy by playing Doom.)

As it stands, the mission was a success, but success isn't good enough for Yoo. Perhaps it's too good, because people like Yoo sometimes seem to be programmed to root for the President to fail. But it's abundantly clear that, even if he thought otherwise, Yoo would have either lavished praise upon G.W. for a similar raid or, at most, kept his mouth shut. Just as he wouldn't be praising the current President for successfully capturing bin Laden, had the man been taken alive.

Yoo insists that capturing bin Laden "alive would have required the administration to hold and interrogate bin Laden at Guantanamo Bay". Why? Does Yoo believe that the U.S. never held an international criminal, terrorist, or war criminal before we built that prison in Cuba? Has he failed to review the Supreme Court rulings that have resulted from the Bush Administration's treatment of prisoners that have dramatically reduced what were intended as the benefits of the Guantanamo prison - the notion of people like Yoo that the U.S. could sequester prisoners in its custody from any constitutional protections? Perhaps he's imagining that it would become politically necessary, thanks to the hypocritical squawkings of prominent Republicans who, up to Obama's election, favored closing the Guantanamo prison.

As for Yoo's quaint notion that the President should "restart the interrogation program that helped lead us to bin Laden", I again remind him that it was not the Obama administration that abandoned the Bush era torture program as a failure. That was President Bush.

Mark Thiessen's Warning to Democrats

Shorter version: "Watch out, because Republicans are much better at lying and distorting the facts than you are."

Update: And away we go.

Professional Hack Marc Thiessen Strikes Again

It seems like only yesterday we had a President whose speechwriters had him declaring that key terrorists were "wanted, dead or alive", and (even if it meant distorting their statements) ridiculing those who suggested that we might approach international terrorism "as a law enforcement matter" instead of as a full-scale military conflict. One might recall how U.S. forces attacked the hiding place of Saddam Hussein's sons, and how the Bush Administration proudly shared with the world post-mortem photographs of Uday and Qusay. How, in 2003, Bush bragged, "nearly one-half of al-Qaida's senior operatives have been captured or killed", and how he described the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi following the bombing of his safehouse as "a severe blow to Al Qaeda and ... a significant victory in the war on terror" - a line that may have been penned by Marc Thiessen, then a member of his speechwriting team.

Oh, but that was then, this is now. Marc Thiessen would have us believe that he has his knickers in a twist over the Obama Administration's decision to bomb the hideout of "Saleh Ali Nabhan, al-Qaeda's leader in East Africa and also a senior leader in al-Shabab", when he at least theoretically could have send forces in on the ground to try to capture him for later interrogation. Crocodile tears pour down his face that, "thanks to a decision by Obama, all that intelligence was vaporized. Why did the president choose to kill, rather than capture, Nabhan?" Why, oh why....

Basically, President Obama followed the same approach as Bush, determining that there was undue risk to U.S. soldiers in trying to capture a suspected terrorist leader, and followed the same approach as Bush in bombing that person's hideout instead of attempting to capture him alive. Were Thiessen on Obama's speechwriting team, no doubt he would (perhaps again) be penning speeches in which Obama bragged about the death as "a severe blow to Al Qaeda and a significant victory in the war on terror". But he's an unprincipled hack so, instead, he's arguing that Obama erred in not treating a known international terrorist in the manner of a criminal suspect, somebody to be arrested and interrogated, but certainly not killed.

Don't fool yourself, though - had Obama followed Thiessen's after-the-fact advice and launched a raid on Nabhan's hideout, and had that raid either failed to capture Nabhan or resulted in the death of a soldier, Thiessen would be among the first to (once again) deplore the President for confusing the war on terror with a "law enforcement matter".

I can almost hear the sneer, "I wonder if Obama read Nabhan his Miranda rights."

Remember Everything Bad That Happened In The Last Decade?

It actually happened in the last year That's right, folks, in a standard regurgitation of Republican talking points, Mark Thiessen is back with a new entry for the contest.

Now, those of you with memories may recall that George W. Bush inherited a budget surplus, and immediately launched a plan to turn that into a deficit avoid paying down the deficit too quickly by granting massive tax cuts to the wealthy. No, really, I'm being too fair to Bush. As you have a memory you recall that he had a one-size-fits-all tax policy - the economy is strong so we can improve it with a tax cut; the economy is weakening so we need a tax cut to restore it; we're in a recession and nothing improves a weak economy like a tax cut.... The only economic plan he had was to cut taxes for the rich, damn the consequences. (At least so far, Thiessen's distortions are at least on par with Gerson's.)

A quick dose of reality:

That is to say, virtually all of the red ink in the budget is attributable to an economic downturn that started under George "tax cuts will make the economy perfect" Bush, two wars started by President Bush, and those tax cuts that were supposed to fix every imaginable economic problem. TARP and the bailout, started under Bush, and recovery spending represent a very small part of the picture. When Thiessen argues, "Polls show that Americans want candidates for Congress who support spending cuts and consider the national debt the greatest threat to our country, on par with the threat of terrorism", he had best take heed that he is arguing that the public views the devastation caused by his former boss as on par with the 9/11 attacks.

Needless to say, facts be damned, Thiessen wants to put the responsibility for the Bush debacle (each and every one of them, but in this specific context the budget deficit) on President Obama's shoulders:

Last week in Wisconsin, he declared "We've got to get this debt and our deficit under control." This from the man who rammed an $877 billion stimulus bill and a $1 trillion government health-care bill through Congress. In just 17 months, Obama and the Democrats have increased the national debt by 23 percent, and have put the country on track for another decade of red ink.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain....

There's also a legitimate question about whether this is the time for austerity or for stimulus spending. Yes, we can grant that Bush's economic incompetence placed the Obama administration in the position of having to deficit spend in order to fund the stimulus bill, and that it will again have to deficit spend to finance a new stimulus bill. But there's no sign that the economy is bouncing back without stimulus spending and, Thiessen's distortions aside, when the economy falters and housing prices are depressed, and unemployment is high, tax revenues go down. Perhaps Thiessen didn't notice that virtually every state is in the midst of a financial crisis, despite the austerity measures they've taken to date, because of the impact of the recession. Certainly, an argument can be made for austerity, but so far the facts suggest that additional stimulus spending is the far wiser choice.

I was agnostic on stimulus spending, and am fiscally conservative by nature - I completely disagreed with the Bush Administration's massive tax cuts backed up with their "deficits don't matter" prattle. (Where was Thiessen at that time? Oh yeah... writing speeches in defense of those policies.) I came to view the financial industry bailout as a necessary evil, albeit one that as implemented showered money on the undeserving and represents some of the worst lemon socialism in our nation's history. If the federal government is going to do something about unemployment, it seems obvious that its two principal tools are direct employment (hiring more federal employees) or stimulus spending.

One might suspect that hacks like Thiessen are arguing for cuts and against stimulus because they know as much - but feel that hurting the economy, the states, and the people of the nation will help the Republicans in the November elections. In fact, Dean Baker is presently making that argument:

While it may be bad taste to accuse a major national political party of deliberately wanting to throw people out of jobs, there is no other plausible explanation for the Republicans' behaviour. They have balked at supporting nearly every bill that had any serious hope of creating or keeping jobs, most recently filibustering on bills that provided aid to state and local governments and extending unemployment benefits. The result of the Republicans' actions, unless they are reversed quickly, is that hundreds of thousands more workers will be thrown out of work by the mid-terms.

* * *

The other argument the Republicans give is that these bills would add to the national debt. For example, the latest extension of unemployment benefits would have added $22bn to the debt by the end of 2011. This means that the debt would be $9,807,000,000 instead of $9,785,000,000 at the end of fiscal 2011, an increase of the debt-to-GDP ratio from 65.3% to 65.4%.

It is possible that Congressional Republicans, who were willing to vote for hundreds of billions of dollars of war expenditures without paying for them, or trillions of dollars of tax cuts without paying for them, are actually concerned about this sort of increase in the national debt. It is possible that this is true, but not very plausible.

The more likely explanation is that the Republicans want to block anything that can boost the economy and create jobs.

So Republican operatives like Thiessen create what can reasonably be described as a pessimism bubble (yes, I'm alluding to Douthat), in which the United States is on the verge of falling into the same trap as the weakest economy in the developed world, a line of nonsense that Douthat is unwilling to swallow:

But even now, there isn’t a major power in the world that wouldn’t happily change places with the United States. Our weaknesses are real, but so is our potential for resilience. While our rivals (in Asia as well as the West) face a slow demographic decline, our population is steadily increasing. The European Union’s recent follies make our creaking 200-year-old institutions look flexible by comparison. And China can throw up all the high-speed rails and solar panels it wants, but it won’t change the fact that most of the country is still sunk in rural poverty.

Republican fear mongering is red meat for the Tea Party Movement, a largely Republican force that the party wants to keep inside its tent. And yes, Douthat has a point that our nation does face problems that are different, and perhaps more difficult, than in the past (I would argue definitely more difficult), but that's not a justification for lies and misrepresentations designed to gin up fear about and opposition to legislation and spending initiatives that could both help the economy and position the U.S. for long-term growth.

Thiessen compares the outcome of the British election to a "Tea Party government". The election result in the U.K. is a bit odd - imagine a very close election that resulted in a Republican majority by virtue of people like Bernie Sanders choosing to caucus with the Republicans. The British government is taking the approach of austerity, in Thiessen's words, "necessitated by years of Labor profligacy, which produced the second-largest budget deficit in Europe" - recall that Labor came into power under Clinton and only lost power this year. So most of those years of what Thiessen sees as fiscal irresponsibility overlap with Bush's Presidency - yet somehow the Republican Congress that Bush inherited, and the massive tax cuts, war spending, and unfunded entitlements of the Bush era are flushed down Thiessen's memory hole.

Incredibly, in relation to a country that has a much higher tax rate than ours - and in which part of the austerity measure is to further raise taxes. Recall, Thiessen is arguing that the British budget would please the Tea Party movement. Where can I find the portion of the Tea Party platform (not that one actually exists, but let's go with the commercial ventures that are trying to profit from their organization of the Tea Party movement) or the Republican Party who is willing to admit that the people of this nation are not under-taxed? Thiessen defends the British budget as offering a "balance of spending cuts to tax increases is 77 to 23 percent" - okay, let's hear the Republican Party offer up a budget with a similar balance of tax increases and spending cuts, and see how it goes over with the Tea Party Movement. (I expect the Republican Party's silence to be deafening.)

Over the next couple of years we'll find out if Europe's new devotion to austerity delivers the robust economic growth predicted by its advocates. I'm not optimistic. I'm not going to speculate as to whether the nation's of Europe are in a position to attempt more stimulus spending, and I don't have the numbers in front of me, but (fear-mongering aside) we are - and Thiessen's propaganda having been duly considered, another major stimulus bill won't bankrupt us and, if it works, should at least party pay for itself through increased tax revenue resulting from economic growth. With a stimulus bill we would have a clear exercise in contrasts - who pulls out of the economic slump first, the budget slashers or the stimulus spenders. I suspect that people like Thiessen believe it's the latter, which is why they (and similarly positioned newly fledged deficit hawks) advocate the former.