foreign policy » Undiplomatic

2 December 2008 Charles J. Brown
01:10 am

Change I Can Believe In

The Obama transition website announced today that effective immediately, everything on the site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution, version 3.0. For those of you who don’t speak geek, what this means is that anyone can take anything on the change.gov website and use it on their own site without fear of copyright lawyers — as long as it’s not used for commercial purposes.

Very, very cool. And in that spirit, here’s President-elect Obama’s message yesterday on World AIDS Day:

One other technology-related note: last week, YouTube switched to a widescreen layout similar to that used on HD televisions. But even though it just happened, the Obama transition already is using the widescreen. (WordPress, on the other hand, remains stuck in old-school square-box video thinking, so you won’t get the full effect here.)

India-Pakistan: China, Obama,and the Specter of 1914

Given the increasingly heated rhetoric between India and Pakistan, two questions come to mind, one obvious, the other not so much. Will this spiral out of control and lead to war, including perhaps a nuclear exchange? And what will China do? Specifically, what happens if China comes in on Pakistan’s side?

Remember that the First World War began when a small group of Serbian nationalists committed an act of terrorism on Austrian soil (or at least Austrian-controlled soil). But things didn’t get out of hand until Russia came in on Serbia’s side and Germany did the same in the case of Austria-Hungary.

If I were President-elect Obama, I’d get Hillary on a plane now, preferably on a joint mission with The Condi. We can’t wait until January 20th to allow this thing to get completely out of control. Because the current crisis is no more about terrorism than it was in 1914.

When Stupidity Strikes

It’s good to know that really smart people are running things over at CNN (h/t: Think Progress)

It’s as if CNN learned everything they think they need to know from “Gone Quiet,” that horrible episode of The West Wing where Hal Holbrook, playing “the Assistant Secretary of State” for Curmudgeonly Old American Affairs, lectures President Bartlett. Memo to CNN (and Aaron Sorkin, for that matter): there are something like forty Assistant Secretaries of State, and none of them have anything to do with domestic constituencies.

This just demonstrates the degree to which the MSM doesn’t understand the most basic mechanics mechanisms of U.S. foreign policy. But then again, they never had to learn any of this under Bush, did they?

As If Anyone Cares

John Bolton — John Bolton! — offers his reaction to the appointment of Susan Rice as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations:

John R. Bolton, who was one of Mr. Bush’s ambassadors at the United Nations, would not discuss Ms. Rice’s selection, but said it was unwise to elevate the position to the cabinet again.

“One, it overstates the role and importance the U.N. should have in U.S. foreign policy,” Mr. Bolton said. “Second, you shouldn’t have two secretaries in the same department.”

Apparently Bolton has forgotten that Jeane J. Kirkpatrick held Cabinet rank in the Reagan administration. Last I checked, nobody has ever suggested that she was a second Secretary of State, or that her role somehow overstated the “role and importance the U.N. should have in U.S. foreign policy.” If they had, Kirkpatrick herself probably would have laughed them out of the room.

This demonstrates just how far removed Bolton is from the mainstream of foreign policy: he can’t bring himself to be gracious about the appointment of the successor to the man who succeeded him. I’m not arguing for intellectual dishonesty here, but all Bolton had to say was “I congratulate Dr. Rice and wish her the best. That said. . .blah blah blah. . .I continue to freaking hate the UN. . .blah blah blah.”

Setting aside the obvious ax he has to grind (or is it a wrecking ball?), Bolton argument that elevating the post to Cabinet rank somehow creates a second Secretary of State reminds me of a friend of a friend who was yammering on about how she didn’t think that beauty was that important in a relationship, to which my friend, who happens to be quite attractive, smiled sweetly and said, “Jealous?”

It’s must be galling to see others get what you never had: respect. It must be doubly galling to know that, unlike Bolton, Ambassador Rice will have the ear of her President. Oh, and that she’ll actually get confirmed. And that even leading Republicans will vote for her.

I’d say I feel Bolton’s pain but I’d be lying.

Now He Tells Us

Tonight ABC will run a new Charlie Gibson interview with Dubya (full transcript here). Apparently, our President-in-name-only has finally found the portion of his brain called “regret,” and is ready to admit what the rest of us figured out oh, say, SEVEN FREAKING YEARS AGO:

GIBSON: What were you most unprepared for?

BUSH: Well, I think I was unprepared for war. In other words, I didn’t campaign and say, “Please vote for me, I’ll be able to handle an attack.” In other words, I didn’t anticipate war. Presidents — one of the things about the modern presidency is that the unexpected will happen.

GIBSON: You said you were not going to be in the business of nation-building. And so much of what you had to do was nation-building.

BUSH: Well, what I said was, in the course of a debate, I said the military shouldn’t be used to build nations. In this case, it turns out the military, in my judgment, was needed to remove threats to our security, and after that removal, the military, as well as our diplomatic corps, needed to help rebuild after tyrannical situations. . . .

GIBSON: You’ve always said there’s no do-overs as President. If you had one?

BUSH: I don’t know — the biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn’t just people in my administration; a lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence. And, you know, that’s not a do-over, but I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.

You guess? You guess? Oh. My. God. I don’t even know where to start.

For someone firmly convinced that history will absolve him, Bush certainly seems to have forgotten that history is particularly unforgiving when you admit that you’ve completely screwed up.

Every time I think that Bush can’t sink any lower, he finds a new way to make himself look like an idiot. Too bad Gibson didn’t ask him to explain the Bush Doctrine. Something tells me he would have been more in the dark than Sarah Palin.

The Foreign Policy Team: No Surprises

President-elect Obama named his National Security team. No surprises.

That extends to the reaction: the MSM is focusing on the “team of rivals” meme, and the netroots are debating whether they should be concered that “centrists” will hold the three key positions. I think both are missing the key story here, which I and others outlined last night in reaction to the NYT story on the Obama Administration’s plan to mount the most ambitious restructuring of U.S. national security institutions since the Truman Administration.

I’ll have more later on ten key posts, beyond the Deputy Secretaries and Deputy National Security Advisor, to watch for as the transition moves forward.

One other note: Obama’s press conference reflects the reality that the terrorist attacks in India haven’t really percolated to the top of people’s thinking about U.S. national security. Yes, Obama did mention it, but in the context of terrorism and not its potential impact on Indian-Pakistani relations. Equally importantly, nobody in the press bothered to ask a follow-up question.

Obama’s Foreign Policy: Turning the Supertanker

The NYT is reporting that President-elect Obama picked his three key national security advisors because they share his view that we need a fundamental shift in the direction of U.S. foreign policy:

[A]ll three of his choices — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as the rival turned secretary of state; Gen. James L. Jones, the former NATO commander, as national security adviser, and Robert M. Gates, the current and future defense secretary — were selected in large part because they have embraced a sweeping shift of resources in the national security arena.

The shift, which would come partly out of the military’s huge budget, would create a greatly expanded corps of diplomats and aid workers that, in the vision of the incoming Obama administration, would be engaged in projects around the world aimed at preventing conflicts and rebuilding failed states.

Whether they can make the change — one that Mr. Obama started talking about in the summer of 2007, when his candidacy was a long shot at best — “will be the great foreign policy experiment of the Obama presidency,” one of his senior advisers said recently.

But the adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the three have all embraced “a rebalancing of America’s national security portfolio” after a huge investment in new combat capabilities during the Bush years.

Mr. Obama’s advisers said they were already bracing themselves for the charge from the right that he is investing in social work rather than counterterrorism, even though President Bush repeatedly promised such a shift, starting in a series of speeches in late 2005. But they also expect battles within the Democratic Party over questions like whether the billion dollars in aid to rebuild Afghanistan that Mr. Obama promised during the campaign should now be spent on job-creation projects at home. . . .

“This is not an experiment, but a pragmatic solution to a long-acknowledged problem,” Denis McDonough, a senior Obama foreign policy adviser, said in an interview on Sunday.

“During the campaign the then-senator invested a lot of time reaching out to retired military and also younger officers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan to draw on lessons learned,” Mr. McDonough said. “There wasn’t a meeting that didn’t include a discussion of the need to strengthen and integrate the other tools of national power to succeed against unconventional threats. It is critical to a long-term successful and sustainable national security strategy in the 21st century.”

This is nothing less than a revolutionary change in how the United States thinks about and interacts with the rest of the world. Obama’s vision, as I’ve noted before, is both pragmatic and idealistic: he sees the United States as both a leader and a model, but also recognizes that it cannot be that without the necessary resources:

[A]n Obama administration is likely to pursue a foreign policy based on sound strategic principles and coherent tactics. Realism should trump ideology, and principles should trump interests. Call it pragmatic idealism, if you must apply a label.

In addition, an Obama administration will repair America’s disastrously dysfunctional foreign policy apparatus: providing the State Department with the resources it needs; streamlining foreign assistance; reestablishing a robust and proactive public diplomacy; and clarifying the overlapping roles of State, NSC, Defense, and Homeland Security. It will emphasize both innovation and results, rewarding creativity and encouraging critical thinking.

As the Times notes, both Jones and Gates have gone out of their way to speak out for these kinds of changes. Clinton doesn’t have a similar track record, but I would be very surprised were she not to share their views.

But make no mistake: this will not be an easy task. The military-industrial complex and its allies in Congress will resist any attempt to redirect resources away from DOD (in fact, they’re already trying). Reform of the rest of the national security apparatus — particularly State, USAID, and DHS — will take considerable time and nearly infinite patience. Reestablishing some sort of public diplomacy capacity with the personnel, resources, and independence necessary to accomplish an extraordinarily difficult mission will take even longer.

This is an enormous undertaking. To use a popular cliché, Obama is trying to turn a supertanker, and that will take time. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.

One last observation: if the NYT story is correct, Hillary’s move makes a lot more sense than it did before. Obama is tasking her with nothing less than a total overhaul of the way the United States conducts foreign policy — the first such effort since Harry Truman tasked George Marshall and Dean Acheson to modernize American national security policy in the aftermath of the Second World War.

If she pulls it off, she’ll go down in history, along with Madison, Monroe, Seward, Marshall and Acheson, as one of the greatest Secretaries of State in American history. And in the process, she just might lay the groundwork for a future Presidential run — and do it with a record of accomplishment that she could not have matched had she spent the next eight years in the Senate.

This is going to be fun to watch.

Madam Ambassador

Congratulations to Susan Rice, who will be appointed U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations tomorrow as part of President-elect Obama’s rollout of his National Security team.

I’ve never worked directly for Susan, but I’ve had the opportunity to work with her, both when I was at State (and she was Assistant Secretary for African Affairs) and since then. She’ll make an outstanding Ambassador, helping to bring to an end whatever residual hostility remains from the Bolton era.

Two brief observations:

1. According to the NYT, Obama will return USUN to Cabinet rank, a position it has held for most of the past thirty years. That is a strong indication of just how seriously Obama regards the need to work multilaterally. It’s no coincidence that the longest period that USUN was not in the Cabinet was during the Bush years. This also means, contrary to some progressives’ (and Obama foreign policy experts’) fears, there will be a strong progressive voice at the Cabinet table. What is not yet clear is whether Rice also will be a member of the principals committee that usually makes most foreign policy decisions.

2. Rice faces a tremendous challenge: working with UN states to achieve a number of important US goals while at the same time pushing the UN to continue its currently stalled efforts at reform. Much like the USG itself, the UN is a mess. There isn’t much that the US can do from outside to fix the problem, but Rice should not hesitate to be a vigorous advocate for change. Her biggest obstacles will be the UN bureaucracy, which has viewed past reform efforts as challenges to their sinecures, and the developing world, which all too often has viewed the UN as a jobs program.

Weekend Link Dump

Light linking this weekend — I think everyone was too stoned on tryptophan to blog much. . .

Spencer Ackerman, writing last July, profiles up-and-coming women in national security, two of whom are now playing a key role in the Obama transition.

Spencer, again, suggests that Dick Holbrooke would be a perfect choice for U.S. Ambassador to Iraq. Kevin Drum counters that Obama should send him to Pakistan instead. And Patrick Barry asks why not make him a senior special envoy covering both countries as well as Afghanistan.

The BBC reports on the death of Jorn Utzon, the man responsible for designing the iconic Sydney Opera House.Steve Clemons makes the case why why Colin Powell should be Obama’s special Mideast envoy.

Helene Cooper profiles James L. Jones, who Obama most likely will name his National Security Advisor tomorrow.

Nate Silver patiently explains why progressives should stop freaking out about the people Obama picks and start focusing on the progressive policies he is most likely to implement.

Gayle Smith, David Sullivan, and Andrew Sweet outline the strategy President-elect Obama should use to get ahead of global crises.

Jeff Stein explains why the Mumbai attacks mark the end of the 9/11 era and the start of something that is likely to be even more lethal.

If your time is limited, start with Cooper, Silver, and Stein.

The Fake Controversy over Samantha Power

Samantha Power’s Pulitzer Prize-winning A Problem from Hell is the definitive study of the shifts in U.S. policy toward genocide over the last half of the 20th Century. Her most recent book, Chasing the Flame, looks at the career of the late Sergio Viera de Mello, who was killed by a 2003 suicide bomb attack on the UN Compound in Baghdad.

Power is one of the smartest, most able thinkers out there when it comes not only to human rights issues but aso foreign policy in general. She was one of Obama’s earliest foreign policy advisors and she is is an excellent choice for his transition team.

God forbid that any of that actually would be reported by the MSM. Noooo — all they want to talk about is that she once said something mean about Hillary:

Samantha Power, the Harvard professor who was forced to resign from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign last spring after calling Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton “a monster,” is now advising the president-elect on transition matters relating to the State Department — which Clinton is slated to head. . . [S]he is part of a team that is likely to work directly with Clinton, a potentially awkward situation for the two women.

Samantha Power

Okay, let me get this straight: Obama is smart and pragmatic in asking Hillary, who said plenty of not-so-nice things about the next President when they were rivals, to be Secretary of State. But Hillary is supposedly incapable of acting in the same way when one one person working on the transition at State happened to say something unfortunate about her six months ago.

This is ridiculous. If Hillary is who Obama thinks she is, she will pick the best and brightest to be on her team. In the case of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, she would be hard-pressed to find someone better than Power to serve as Assistant Secretary (assuming, of course, that Power wants the job). But even if she does pick someone else, it doesn’t mean she won’t rely on Power to advise her during the transition.

One other thing: they at least could understand how the transition works. Power is a member of the Agency Review Team for the State Department. There are two team leads (Tom Donilon and Wendy Sherman), and twenty-three people on the team (including some working out of USAID). In addition, there is a separate Policy Review Team, of which Power is not a member. So she is one out of something like 100 people working on national security issues, and one of roughly 30 or 40 working on State and USAID issues.

Yes, she is likely to be in the room with Hillary, particularly during briefings. But this isn’t High School Musical — it’s not like they’re going to have lockers next to each other or something. Does WaPo think they’re going to see each other in the cafeteria and reenact the gang fight from West Side Story? They’re adults, for crying out loud. They got over this a long time ago.

But in Washington — or at least the Washington found only in the MSM’s fevered fantasies — the titillation of potential conflict matters more than policy expertise. This is the Washington that reports on Rahm Emanuel’s “dead, dead!” monologue as if no one has ever seen the Godfather movies. This is the Washington that assumes that the old Obama-Hillary rivalry means that they can’t work together. This is the Washington that would rather remind the world of something someone said (and almost immediately apologized for) six months ago rather than focus on her record as an analyst and thinker.

This isn’t news, it’s gossip and speculation. The entire story is predicated on the possibility that Hillary might find it awkward to have Power on her team. There’s not a single shred of evidence that there’s any tension, or even if they’ve met (now or earlier). As such, it belongs in WaPo’s “Reliable Source” gossip column, not in the front section.

Photo: Angela Radulescu via Flickr, using a CC license.

Mumbai: Muslim Terrorists Using LTTE Tactics?

From the Guardian UK (h/t Blood & Treasure):

Eyewitnesses have provided accounts of how the gunmen involved in yesterday’s Mumbai massacre landed undetected in the heart of the port city’s bustling downtown area.

At least some of the terrorists, said to be in their early twenties and armed with AK-47 assault rifles and hand grenades, landed on the coast of Mumbai’s commercial and entertainment neighbourhood in light and fast Gemini boats, powered by small outboard motors.

These inflatable dinghies, according to Indian navy sources quoted by the Headlines Today TV news channel, were launched from a larger vessel, the MV Alfa, which arrived near Mumbai sometime yesterday and anchored offshore a distance from India’s financial capital.

According to TV reports, the navy seized one Gemini craft laden with ammunition, as well as satellite phone, which could give vital clues about the attackers. . . .

“There is no question that the armed men who landed in south Mumbai in the Gemini boats came from a larger boat anchored off shore,” said retired Rear Admiral Raja Menon, a strategic affairs expert. “The larger boat left without waiting for the men to return. The armed men were on a one-way ticket.”

What struck me about this account is not merely the sophistication of an amphibious attack, but also its use of a tactic pioneered by the Sri Lankan-based Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam — perhaps the most vicious terrorist organization in the world today:

In terms of the overall success of the LTTE, the Sea Tigers’ logistics fleet is the most important part of its armoury. It operates two classes of vessels: a fleet of around 11 ocean-going freighters and fast-moving coastal transit boats. Ships from the ocean-going fleet rendezvous with the fast coastal transit boats about 200 km off the northeast coast of the island. . . .

The Sea Tigers have also adapted a wide range of craft for suicide missions. . . .The number of crew members and armament types used in a suicide attack varies from mission to mission. Initially, the Sea Tigers’ suicide craft had a crew of two to ensure that the mission could not be terminated by killing a single operator. More recently, they have carried a crew of three to reduce this possibility further.

This, of course, is not the first time that other terrorists have copied LTTE tactics. The Tigers are widely credited with having taught the world how to go about suicide bombing:

[T]he Tigers are the fathers of modern-day suicide bombing — not only masters at keeping up a fresh supply of new recruits, but also willing exporters of their expertise. . . .Technically, the Tigers did not invent modern suicide bombing — the first such attack was against the American embassy in Beirut in 1983. They did however turn it into a vicious art form. Tigers adapted explosives so that they could be used on land, sea and air — thanks to the purchase of what Sri Lankan intelligence services say is a small squadron of microlight aircraft. Bombs were disguised to fit around, and even inside, the body.

The LTTE’s first such attack was in 1987, killing 40 Sri Lankan army troops. Since then, LTTE attacks have killed hundreds, including Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa and former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Given its past history, and given the close relationship between the Indian and Sri Lankan governments (despite the presence of a large Tamil minority in southern India), I have to wonder whether the LTTE is now exporting its naval tactics.

One other note: why is it that those operating off the Somali coast are known as pirates, but the LTTE naval operations (and this operation in Mumbai) are known as terrorists?

America Rejoins The World Day

There are so many things I want the new Obama/Clinton foreign policy team to do. But each individual item scares me a little… I think I am still very gun shy from the neo-con years. I worry that any one progressive move in international affairs will allow the right to cripple the new presidency for months. (Clinton’s early stumble on gays in the military is illustrative of this fear.)

If we simply roll out each policy initiative on its own, they will get picked apart by the right-wing echo chamber.

So… I think the answer is to roll out massive change in a single day. We need a major plan for re-engaging America with the world. And the new agenda should have so many facets that it leaves the neo-cons quaking in their boots wondering where the hell to aim first. (Newt Gingrich’s plan for the first one hundred days of his speakership gets sort of at what I mean here.)

So here are the policy changes I would include in the Rose Garden announcement on “America Rejoins The World Day.”

Close the Guantanamo prison camp
Lift the embargo on Cuba
Work toward full diplomatic relations with Cuba
Work toward full diplomatic relations with Iran
Re-sign the International Criminal Court treaty and submit it for ratification
Submit the Law of the Sea Treaty for ratification
Submit the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty for ratification
Announce a “no first use” policy on nuclear weapons
Invite the Russians to join a new round of strategic arms reduction negotiations
Pay in full all outstanding United Nations dues and peacekeeping assessments
Dramatically increase funding for the U.S. foreign policy apparatus including State Department, USAID, and Peace Corps.

What else should be on the re-engagement list?

Mumbai

Over the years, I’ve spent quite a bit of time in India, but not much in Mumbai. That said, like any visitor to India’s financial and creative capital, I made sure to the Taj Hotel, which is a national treasure.

Now it’s on fire. At least 80 people are dead, and countless more are wounded. My thoughts and prayers are with everyone in that fair city. I can only hope my friends there are okay.

Right now a domestic group known as the Indian Mujahideen has claimed responsibility, but some analysts think it may be al Qaeda.

Three things to watch as events unfold:

1. India-Pakistan. If it turns out that Pakistan-based militants are behind these attacks (or even worse, that the Indians discover evidence linking Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency to those responsible), it could spark a major regional crisis and perhaps even war. And since both India and Pakistan are nuclear powers, that means a major international crisis as well.

2. Reprisal attacks. Although Hindus outnumber Muslims by a factor of more than six to one in India, that still means there are 150 million Muslims. In the past, Muslim violence has led quickly to reprisal attacks against Muslim communities. In 2002, for example, after a Muslim mob attacked a train in the state of Gujarat, riots by Hindus led to the death of over 2,000 Muslims. In 1993-1994, Muslim-Hindu riots in Mumbai caused death of over 900 people. Regardless of whether the instigators of today’s attacks turn out to be from outside India or not, chances are that we will see reprisal attacks in very short order.

3. Domestic politics. Currently, a coalition led by the Congress Party of India is in power, and its main rival, the Hindu-nationalist BJP, has been in disarray. The attacks may change that, however, as BJP politicians have not hesitated in the past to use communal violence to whip up Hindu nationalist fervor.

Goldsmith’s Tortured Apologia

I’m surprised that I have seen absolutely nothing in the blogosphere about Jack Goldsmith’s piece in today’s WaPo, which argues that the Obama Administration should forgive and forget when it comes to the Bush Administration’s torture policies:

[Both prosecution and a bipartisan commission are] bad ideas. They would bring little benefit, and they would further weaken the Justice Department and the CIA in ways that would compromise our security. . . .

Second-guessing lawyers’ wartime decisions under threat of criminal and ethical sanctions may sound like a good idea to those who believe those lawyers went too far in the fearful days after Sept. 11, 2001. But the greater danger now is that lawyers will become excessively cautious in giving advice and will substitute predictions of political palatability for careful legal judgment. . . .

When the CIA was asked to engage in aggressive tactics early in the Bush administration, it knew from bitter experience that the political winds would change and that it might be subject to “retroactive discipline.” And so it sought approval from the president and his Cabinet, informed congressional leadership many times about what it was doing and got what it thought were airtight legal opinions from the Justice Department.

But these safeguards failed, and the CIA is once again mired in investigation and controversy. The lesson learned by many at the agency is that politically sensitive counterterrorism actions should be avoided, even if they are deemed legal and even if they have the express approval of political officials. We are going to be living with this skittishness for a long time, to the detriment of our security.

Yet another round of investigations during the Obama administration, even by a bipartisan commission, would exacerbate this problem. It would also bring little benefit. The people in government who made mistakes or who acted in ways that seemed reasonable at the time but now seem inappropriate have been held publicly accountable by severe criticism, suffering enormous reputational and, in some instances, financial losses. Little will be achieved by further retribution.

Jack Goldsmith emerged as a hero among critics of the current Administration’s torture policies, largely as a result of his tenure as head of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department. During his brief time there, Goldsmith stood up to David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, and Dick Cheney by withdrawing John Yoo’s infamous 2002 memo, which had redefined torture as physical suffering “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury” or mental suffering that had to “result in signifcant psychological harm. . .lasting for months and years.” Goldsmith deserves significant credit for his courage, and for writing The Terror Presidency, which described in detail his efforts to rein in Addington, Gonzales, and, ultimately, Cheney and Bush.

But he’s dead wrong to suggest that an Obama Administration should forget the past.

The first thing that struck me about Goldsmith’s piece is that, other than the headline (which most likely was written by someone at WaPo, not Goldsmith himself), he bends over backwards not to use the word “torture”: Instead, he uses a number of increasingly ridiculous euphemisms: “what many view as the Bush administration’s harsh, abusive and illegal interrogation program,” “interrogation and related programs,” “wartime decisions,” “aggressive tactics,” “politically sensitive counterterrorism actions,” “mistakes” and “ways that seemed reasonable at the time but now seem inappropriate.”

Goldsmith apparently can’t bring himself to admit that the Bush Administration actually tortured people. It’s not hard to recognize the reason for his reluctance: prior to becoming Assistant Attorney General, Goldsmith held other posts, including in the Office of the General Counsel in the Pentagon. Despite his decision to withdraw the Yoo memo, he could face legal jeopardy should any future investigation recommend prosecution. So, as he himself acknowledges, it is in his interest to argue against any investigation.

But there are greater problems with Goldsmith’s arguments than merely self-interest. The first is his suggestion that “Second-guessing lawyers’ wartime decisions under threat of criminal and ethical sanctions may sound like a good idea to those who believe those lawyers went too far in the fearful days after Sept. 11, 2001.” The irony, of course, is that it was Goldsmith himself who was one of the first to second-guess Addington and Yoo. His June 14, 2004 decision to withdraw Yoo’s memo was the beginning of the end of the Bush Administration’s unfettered license to do as it saw fit with those it detained. For Goldsmith now to suggest that others should not do what he already did is at best inconsistent and at worst, smacks of a cover up of other memos or actions that have not yet seen the light of day.

The second is Goldsmith’s attempt to further muddy the waters by suggesting that current investigations by Congress, Justice, and the CIA should also look at Congress’s role and potential illegalities approved under the Clinton Administration. Although I agree with Goldsmith that Clinton-era officials must be held accountable for approving the rendition of drug offenders, it is a bit disingenuous to suggest that the policies of the Clinton Administration should be put on the same footing as those of its successor. To assign equal weight to Clinton- and Bush-era policies is not unlike suggesting that someone who smokes pot occasionally should be subjected to the same level of accountability as a drug kingpin.

The third and by far most significant problem with Goldsmith’s piece is his suggestion that any investigation and/or prosecution would lead “many government lawyers to be more risk averse and politically sensitive than ever. . . .The lesson learned by many at the [CIA] is that politically sensitive counterterrorism actions should be avoided, even if they are deemed legal and even if they have the express approval of political officials. We are going to be living with this skittishness for a long time, to the detriment of our security.”

To begin with, Goldsmith’s argument that government lawyers might be more “risk averse” and “politically sensitive” in the future ignores the fact that Bush-era lawyers (with the exception of Alberto Mora and Goldsmith himself) did what they did because they didn’t want the wrath of Cheney, Addington, and Gonzales brought down on their heads. They understood that challenging the Administration’s stated determination to shred existing laws prohibiting torture and war crimes would quickly end their careers as government lawyers.

Such fears weren’t unfounded. In some cases, such as that of Jesselyn Radack, who challenged the some of Administration’s actions during the detention of “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh, the Administration not only pushed people out of government, but tried to blackball them with potential future employers. In Radack’s case, they even put her on the no-fly list.

To put it another way, part of the problem with what happened over the past eight years is that so many lawyers were exactly what Goldsmith suggests they shouldn’t be: utterly risk averse and politically sensitive. They didn’t speak out because they feared the consequences. It’s not like Goldsmith didn’t understand this — he submitted his letter of resignation two days after he decided to withdraw Yoo’s memo and, in all likelihood, before he could be fired.

Goldsmith’s concern about limiting the ability of the CIA to conduct “politically sensitive counterterrorism operations” is equally supect. Since Nuremberg, “legality” has never been a sufficent defense for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. The reality is that senior CIA officials were just as unwilling to stand up to the Administration’s desire to torture those in its custody. In fact, some in the Agency, including Cofer Black, were eager to “take the gloves off” long before Yoo started drafting memoranda.

And as the recent controversy over the possible appointment of John Brennan to serve as CIA Director demonstrates, even those not directly involved in policy decisions are now viewed as accountable merely for being in the room when some of these decisions were discussed.

In the end, Goldsmith’s arguments simply don’t stand up to closer scrutiny. They represent little more than a weak apologia for policies that he may slowed but nonetheless did not stop. In fact, had Goldsmith stayed (and, in fairness, had he not been fired), he would have had to draft a replacement for the memo he withdrew. Chances are that he would have drafted something not unlike that put forward by Dan Levin, his successor, which stated that the CIA could not be held criminally responsible for actions authorized by the Yoo memo.

It really is a shame that Goldsmith has chosen to tarnish his reputation by trying to protect the very people whom he once so courageously opposed.

Note: As is usually the case when it comes to questions of the Bush Administration’s torture policies, Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side was indespensible in helping me reconstruct time lines and roles.

Thought for the Day

Chuck Hagel would make a great U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

41 and 44

Just after the election, I made the following observation:

[A]n Obama administration is likely to pursue a foreign policy based on sound strategic principles and coherent tactics. Realism should trump ideology, and principles should trump interests. Call it pragmatic idealism, if you must apply a label. . . .

This approach is not unprecedented in American history. It represents a vision not unlike that of the first Bush Administration (which helps explain why a number of G.H.W. Bush’s senior foreign policy advisors either endorsed Obama or remained on the sidelines). It also reflects the creativity and flexibility of the postwar Truman Administration, which, under the leadership of men like George Marshall and Dean Acheson, had to build new foreign policy and national security institutions virtually from scratch.

It therefore is possible that, to use Acheson’s famous phrase, we are once again “present at the creation” of a new paradigm, one that focuses on what the United States can do for the world, not what the world can do for the United States. This may take more time than originally envisioned, in large part because the financial crisis will draw away important resources from the task. But in the end, Obama has the opportunity to remake the way the United States pursues its interests in the world.

Boy I hate when I’m right:

Many of the Republicans emerging as potential members of the Obama administration have professional and ideological ties to Brent Scowcroft, a former national-security adviser turned public critic of the Bush White House.

Mr. Scowcroft spoke by phone with President-elect Barack Obama last week, the latest in a months-long series of conversations between the two men about defense and foreign-policy issues, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The relationship between the president-elect and the Republican heavyweight suggests that Mr. Scowcroft’s views, which place a premium on an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord, might hold sway in the Obama White House.

Weekend Link Dump

Something new here at Undip: a weekly compilation of other blogs and stories worth reading (but on which I don’t have time to offer my own observations):

Bruce Ackerman on the challenge facing new White House Counsel Greg Craig: reducing his office’s power and authority;

Brian Bender on John Kerry’s new role: Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee;

Max Blumenthal on Malaak Shabazz’s condemnation of al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri’s comparing Barack Obama to a “house negro” (Shabazz is Malcolm X’s daughter);

Steve Clemons on the risks and benefits of a Clinton appointment;

Daphne Evitatar on the current conflict between State and DOD over Guantanamo detainee policy;

Anatol Lieven’s memo to Obama on what he should and should not do when it comes to foreign policy;

Robert Reich on the idiotic argument that we should save Citigroup and let GM fail;

Paul Richter on Richard Holbrooke’s delusion belief that he should be Obama’s Secretary of State;

David Schorr on the need for a coordinated State-Defense-USAID budget strategy — one that includes significant funding and personnel increases for both State and USAID;

Peter Scoblic on Marine General James L. Jones, who has emerged as the frontrunner for National Security Advisor.

Transition Watch: Anger in the Ranks

Even if you read this morning’s NYT story about the rapprochement between Obama and Hillary Clinton, you might have missed one little sentence toward the beginning of the story:

By this past Thursday, when Mr. Obama reassured Mrs. Clinton that as secretary of state she would have direct access to him and could select her own staff, the wooing was complete.

Last week, I raised the question of whether this would happen and what the impact would be on both the Obama-Clinton relationship and the morale of those in the foreign policy community who chose to support Obama rather than Clinton:

During the primaries, the Clinton campaign asked foreign policy experts to remain “exclusive” to Hillary (meaning they could not also offer advice to other candidates). That’s not an unreasonable position, even if the other leading candidates (including Obama) chose not to follow suit. I know many people in the foreign policy community who volunteered for the Clinton campaign because they thought she was the best candidate. But I also know a few who, because of ambition, felt that they had to work for her even though they preferred another candidate. When Obama ultimately won, all of them were welcomed by his campaign and integrated into Obama’s existing campaign apparatus.

If Hillary were to become Secretary of State, I presume that she, like most Secretaries, would be given significant leeway in picking most (if not all) of her senior advisors (meaning in the case of State the two Deputy Secretaries, the Under Secretaries, and those Assistant Secretary postions not assigned to career foreign service officers). It would be logical (and not unreasonable) to conclude that she probably would favor those who served her during the primaries.

But doing so could create two problems. First, the team of rivals could turn into rival fiefdoms, with Obama supporters dominating the NSC (and Defense) and Clinton supporters dominating State. Given the fact that the next Administration urgently needs to reintegrate State into existing foreign policy structures (and give it the resources both to achieve its mission and play a more robust role in intra-agency negotiations), Obama needs to end existing inter-agency rivalries, not create new ones.

Second, there was no love lost among the two camps’ advisors during the primaries. The Clintons attacked those they viewed as disloyal (such as Bill Richardson and Gregory Craig), which angered many in the Obama campaign. In addition, I heard from more than one friend that they were warned that they could forget about a role in a Clinton administration should they not support Hillary during the primaries. Given those realities, Obama risks angering those who did support him, and some of his supporters may regard Hillary’s likely selection of her loyalists to senior posts as a betrayal.

It’s too early to say whether the issue of competing fiefdoms will pose a problem, but it’s already pretty clear that Obama foreign policy types, particularly those who chose to support him back when he was far from a sure thing, are not at all happy with this development.

Even though it’s a Sunday, I’ve already heard from several bitter and angry friends. They are wondering why they stuck their neck out twenty months ago only to see Hillary’s supporters get the plum foreign policy jobs. At the time, they supported Obama not to get a job (after all, Hillary looked like a near-lock then) but because they sincerely believed that Obama represented a new and fresh approach. Most knew that they were taking a big chance — after all, they had been warned of the consequences were they not to support Hillary. (And again, I believe that most of those who supported Hillary did so because they thought she was the best person for the job.)

My friends would be less than human if they did not want some reward for the chance they took. Now, they feel, their payoff is to see the key jobs at State go to those who played it safe.

Although it’s true that Hillary might appoint some Obama loyalists to her team, most of my friends don’t think that’s going to happen.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who has been hearing such things: over the weekend, several stories reported astonishment, anger, unhappiness, and bad morale within the Obama foreign policy ranks. The Telegraph (UK):

[A] little after lunch on Wednesday two Obama aides went to a local coffee shop to talk. Both were veterans of the campaign. . . . [T]hey agreed on one thing: “He’s making a mistake.” As one of the participants told a friend later that night: “She’ll do a good job but she’ll do it for herself, not for Barack. I can’t bear the drama again.”

Then there’s this anonymous Obama team member, quoted by Michael Crowley over at TNR:

With General Jim Jones looking a strong bet for National Security Advisor, Hillary Clinton slated for State, and Bob Gates staying on at DOD, it appears increasingly likely that the three senior foreign policy positions in the Obama Administration will be filled by people who were not active Obama supporters during the campaign.

Moreover, these principals are likely to bring their own hanger-ons – Hillary alone is likely to absorb into State the foreign policy advisors from her primary campaign, not necessarily their Obama counterparts. So how do you think that makes the “Gang of 300” who staffed Candidate Obama on foreign policy issues, wrote white papers, served as surrogates for him, etc. during the long campaign feel?

I still believe that Hillary would be smart to pick an Obama loyalist to the Deputy Secretary position. As I’ve noted, if Obama can reach out to his rival, why can’t she do the same?

I have to wonder what both Susan Rice and Samantha Power are thinking. After all, they were two of the earliest to support Obama. Now Rice is likely to get no better than Deputy National Security Advisor and Power may not get anything at all — does anyone seriously think that Hillary would want someone who called her a “monster” to serve as her Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor?

Hillary: In Case You Were Wondering. . .

I’m not going to comment anymore on Hillary until it’s official. This is, after all, the fourth or fifth consecutive day that we’ve heard it’s a done deal.

Transition: Constant Leaks or Conscious Tactic?

For all the talk today (both in the MSM and on the blogosphere) about leaks springing in the Obama campaign, I find it interesting that no one has noticed that each supposed leak (Emanuel, Craig, Daschle, Holder, Napolitano, and Geither) has happened on a different day. That’s pretty remarkable timing — if the ship is leaking, why is it that there is only one leak in any news cycle?

Either there’s a single source who is sharing information as it crosses his/her desk, or there’s something else going on here: a carefully timed series of sotto voce announcements designed to ensure that there are no problems with each candidate.

For example, reports that Eric Holder is the leading candidate for Attorney General helped surface Republican concerns about Holder’s role in Bill Clinton’s pardon of rogue financier Marc Rich. Obama’s vetters knew about the issue, but they didn’t know whether it would be a major problem. By leaking Holder’s name, they gave Republicans the opportunity to raise the issue fairly early in the process, thus helping the Obama team assess whether the pardon could sink the nomination.

This isn’t the first time the Obama team has done this. Think back to the veepstakes, when numerous media outlets reported that Indiana Senator Evan Bayh was going to get the nomination. Subsequent negative reaction to Bayh — including an online campaign opposing the pick — may have helped end his chances for the job.

A slow leak tactic also would explain why a transition team that has be so careful about process has repeatedly “surprised” Senate Republicans. For example, Arlen Specter, the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee groused to the press that he had not yet been consulted, and was one of the first to raise the issue of Holder’s role in the Marc Rich saga (although he also said that he did not see it as an impediment to confirmation).

There is, of course, one outlier here: Hillary. Each day brings fresh reports — Hillary is unsure whether she wants the job, Hillary is changing her mind again, Senate Democrats are carving out a new senior position for her so as to keep her in the Senate, and this afternoon, Hillary is taking the job.

Meanwhile, every time the press reports that it’s a done deal, the timing of the announcement keeps getting pushed further down the road. Last week, it was this week. Earlier this week, it was before Thanksgiving. Now it’s sometime after Thanksgiving.

If you read these stories carefully, it quickly becomes apparent that Hillary is the exception that proves the rule. Most if not all of the leaks are coming from the Hillary camp; the Obama team has offered little confirmation other than to say that she is a candidate and that discussions remain “on track.”

I think the Obama team knows exactly what it’s doing. Stories to the contrary — including the one in today’s WaPo — are little more than idle speculation.

Where Dipnote Could Actually Be Useful

Last week I aired my complaint about the State Department’s Dipnote blog. A commenter wrote “I don’t think it’s that bad, but it’s definitely not ‘edgy.’” OK. But I want the State Department to do so much more with these powerful online megaphones.

Think about the “

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