Liberals Unaccustomed to Winning

Armbinder:

Reporters, and I can't exempt myself from this, have been salivating somewhat voyueristically for a round of public fighting between the Left, broadly represented by the Netroots, and the Obama transition entity.

It will be interesting to see whether the press plays up Obama's influence on lawmakers, or if anti-Lieberman Democrats blame Harry Reid, or blame weak-kneed Senate Democrats instead of Obama.

It's not just the Lieberman thing that will produce plenty of fireworks for the media to play up, of course. The pace of the closure of Gitmo, the disposition of the detainees from Gitmo and the secret prisons, the pace of the withdrawal from Iraq, and the most currently, whether or not Obama will investigate and try Bush administration officials for war crimes.

About that, Paul Campos says:

From the standpoint of both the demands of justice and the politically intelligent thing to do, giving off signals that criminals in the Bush administration will simply be let off the hook is a terrible idea.

Prof. Campos believes it's "politically intelligent" to move full speed ahead with planning for war crimes investigations because that would force Bush to pardon his co-conspirators.

Hilary Bok:

It is enormously important that we establish the principle that members of the government cannot break the law with impunity, and we cannot do that without being willing to prosecute them when, as in this case, there is overwhelming evidence that they violated the law. This is especially true of the most senior members of government, like the Vice President.

Prof. Bok proposes an independent counsel "with an unimpeachable reputation for wisdom, rectitude, and non-partisanship."

As a lawyer, as a human being, of course I think Campos and Bok are right: Bush administration officials - including the President himself- are likely guilty of the war crime of torturing prisoners. (Also, officials involved in the planning and deceptive marketing of the invasion of Iraq also probably committed crimes against peace.) Normatively, I say, frogmarch!

So what do Democratic leaders think of the idea of Obama trying Bush officials for war crimes?

Asked this weekend during a Vermont Public Radio interview if Bush administration officials would face war crimes, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy flatly said, "In the United States, no."

"These things are not going to happen," said Leahy, D-Vt.

Descriptively, I agree with that, too. It's an accurate prediction of what is going to happen. Our government committed the kind of crimes that we gave out life sentences for at Nuremburg, and our government is going to not punish those who committed them. Why not?

First of all, both Democrats and Republicans have been complicit in the crimes Bush committed. Congress would be a fact witness. If Obama investigates administration officials, one of the first questions that will come up is what the members of Congress on key oversight committees knew and when they knew it. If the acts of those Bush officials were criminal, then the Congress is an accessory, to the extent that it knew what was going on.

You might say, good. Let the chips fall where they may. If investigations into Bush-era war crimes reveal a conspiracy of silence (at least) throughout Washington, then Obama will have done us all a service.

There are a number of responses to this: Even on its own merits, Obama pursuing war-crimes trials would not have the effect that we'd like. It is unlikely to deter future war criminals. There will be no convictions, not least because Bush is likely to issue a blanket pardon prior to his leaving office, but also even in the absence of pardons because proving the requisite intent would be a frustrating undertaking. It's also unlikely, with the threat of life imprisonment hanging over their heads, that targets of the investigation will tell what really happened. There will be some revelations proven, but mainly what we'll end up with are many, many allegations being made that end in acquittals. Is that worth it?

Speaking of whether its worth it, what are the opportunity costs of Obama pursuing this? It would make Clinton's focus on gays in the military look like sheer genius by comparison. Literally nothing else on Obama's agenda would get done in the first year, perhaps ever. Congressional cooperation on a whole host of initiatives would evaporate. The media would focus on the investigation of charges against uniformed military personnel, which Republicans would seize on to paint Democrats as being zealously anti-military. The fight would cause Obama's public support to drop like a rock, as people asked why he was spending all this time looking at things in the past. Congressional Democrats would be slaughtered in the midterms. Pursuing a fruitless quest for legal punishment would be an enormous gift to the people lining up to oppose the eventual rollout of universal health care. It would be fatal to the broader liberal economic, social and foreign policy agenda. Is that worth it?

A larger point: What we're really talking about here is not holding specific individuals criminally liable for Bush's policies. What we're really talking about is an indictment of the political class generally. While I'd love it if a popular, crusading President could ride into the White House and successfully hold the entire crowd responsible, it's not realistic. It's not the President's job to reform the entire mindset of D.C. That is the people's job. That's our job. It's not a question of whether Obama is up for the task, because it won't matter if he is if we're not. And guess what? We're not.

The liberals who are screaming now about the priorities of the incoming administration are just exposing what incompetents they are at politics. The fact that they can't express their outrage over things we can't change in the short term and then acknowledge them as such and move on to things we can demonstrates their uselessness. The problem again is that liberals have built up a self-concept during the years Bush was in the White House. That self-image is one of principle above politics. Liberals never had to engage in the thinking about priorities and capabilities when discussing the White House because Bush was so bad. That atrophied the reflexive understanding that something being good didn't automatically make it your policy goal, because with a supine Congress there was no opportunity to make the trade-offs necessary to accomplish policy goals.

Now that Lieberman has been allowed to retain his chairmanship (supported by Chris Dodd - remember "Respect the Dodd"?), here's a key quote to focus on:

Asked what it would mean if Lieberman kept his chairmanship, one Senate Democratic aide said bluntly: "The left has been foiled again. They can rant and rage but they still do not put the fear into folks to actually change their votes. Their influence would be in question."

Absolutely. Descriptively, this is exactly right. No one fears liberal bloggers, except in marginal cases, because they're ineffective. If you want to change things, you need to get organized and become effective. And to do that, you have to understand what is possible and what is not in politics. Otherwise, you're useless.

Comments

[Max Kennerly]

I agree. Realistically, I believe the best course for Obama is to pick up the worst of Bush's policies and throw them in the garbage, which seems to be his plan.

On a political level, it will permit Obama to proceed with the rest of his platform while also making a credible showing to the rest of the world (and to ourselves) that the United States still has and follows core principles of liberty and justice.

On a normative level, it will make clear an important fact: the worst excesses of 2001-2007 were the result of a single man, not a collective fit of insanity, excesses which were halted by a single election of a single man. That will affirm, for the sake of history, that the United States did not truly take steps towards becoming Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia, because, unlike in those two examples, any arguably fascist or a totalitarian policies we had were not so firmly rooted in our governance that they could only be removed by generations of internal subterfuge and external reform.

[Mithras]

Right. The best way to show the world we've changed is to change. There's no way for one part of the political elite to lay off blame on another part, and then declare, "That's that!"

[laym]

The liberals who are screaming now about the priorities of the incoming administration are just exposing what incompetents they are at politics. The fact that they can't express their outrage over things we can't change in the short term and then acknowledge them as such and move on to things we can demonstrates their uselessness.

Help me to understand something. Or perhaps a few things.

If a person expresses outrage, but does not explicitly acknowledge the political situation, does that person not understand the political situation? Or perhaps that person has chosen not to spell out the political situation, for reasons of space, or for mental self-preservation, or any number of reasons?

Further! If that person is aware of the political situation, should that make any difference as to whether or not that person loudly speaks out for the correct principle? Shouldn't the person say exactly what he would say, on principle, regardless of the politics? Isn't that playing the long game, where you declare your principles until such a time as the politics comes around to you?

I guess what I'm getting at here is, what is the word "incompetent" doing in there? We are talking about people on the outside of politics, right? People with - ahem - blogs, that kind of thing?

[deadsteve]

Time to move on.

[zenpundit]

"Our government committed the kind of crimes that we gave out life sentences for at Nuremburg"

This will not be a popular argument here but the comparison trivializes Nuremburg.

The scale of Nazi crimes were so enormous that the Allied tribunal had Germans testifying as mere witnesses against the defendents whose own crimes dwarfed that of all war crimes committed by Western great power armies in the last fifty years combined -including the wars of Algeria and Vietnam.

To give you a few example, Rudolf Hoess was a third tier defendent at Nuremburg and a nonentity in the Nazi hierarchy - by his own guesstimate Hoess presided over the murder of 2.5 million Jews while commandant of Auschwitz. Fritz Sauckel, a second tier defendent was responsible for the enslavement of five million people. These two did not even rate being the main ( in the view of the Allied prosecution, the most culpable)defendents.

I'm not a fan of Pat Leahy but he knows the number of Americans who buy in to the Nuremburg analogy, while vocal, would be very small and that most people -not simply conservatives- would perceive such a campaign as a Democratic witch hunt to criminalize and ultimately suppress their political opposition. It would polarize the nation like no event in our lifetime.

[Thers]

Hey mang. Sorry if a comment got dropped at WF? We don't moderate comments, TypePad probably just lost it.

[Mithras]

Thers-
No biggie. I was just trying to agree with you on the treasure chest thing.

Zen-
Bush is not Hitler. I don't think anyone is arguing that the scale of the crimes committed by Bush administration officials is in any way comparable to that of the Nazis. The point is that we, along with the other Allied powers, created the very standard for international justice that the current administration is systematically violating. Because of that history, the comparison to Nuremberg is inevitable. In terms of securing our political objectives, it's an own goal of staggering proportions, as well as being immoral by our own standards of decency.

[Me-n-Julio]

And So It Goes in the Ultimately Supreme Republic of Everything

One--
Supreme Commander of Everything Master Dada Kolo watched the military procession with what he hoped would be perceived as a stern, critical gaze. In reality, he was thinking about the coming luncheon. He hoped they would have those little cheeseburgers for appetizers.

He really liked those. "Mmmmmmmmmm, cheeseburgers”, he thought, as the tanks rolled by.

His attention briefly swerved back to the parade.

"'Look at all this stuff I have to kill people with, All these soldiers and guns and rockets. It's hot here in the sun, what does it take for the Supreme Commander to get a cold beer? Geez! You'd think a guy could get a stinkin' beer, being the Supreme Commander of Everything and all”

The Republic of Everything was a small African county, but Dada's dad, Moma Kola, had seen to it that Dada received the finest education that could be extorted from western rulers for his beloved son and heir.

During Dada's years abroad he had formed invaluable relationships to the Bush family and many executives in the Halliburton organization. Dada and Dick Cheney saw eye to eye on almost everything relating to how to rule a country. An interest in torture, a hobby they had in common, had initially brought them together. He was heavily invested in the Carlyle Group (Swiss bank accounts come in quite handily). Dada had never shot anybody in the face, but hoped to do so one day.

Dada glanced over to the foreign dignitaries, whose visit had instigated the ceremonies. Damn, Jenna was HOT! Not-Jenna was pretty warm. Laura looked like shit. George (43) glumly stared at the procession. “I hope he's sober”, Dada thought.

He wasn't.

Barbara was smiling. Something about black people walking in the sun just made her happy. “This has all worked out so well for them” (the black folk), she thought.

George (41) had the thousand yard stare thing going on. Clueless.

George (43) was thinking about retiring here in Everything. The post-presidential years hadn't been kind to him. And Everything's non-extradition policy was a plus in this consideration. The Obama administration had been ruthless in its investigations and SecState Hillary looked on the former administration as a target rich environment.

Dick Cheny was mumbling, " Go fuck yourself.' to no one in particular.

Fortunately, he wasn't armed.

[Mithras]

No one puts their money into Swiss banks anymore.