Obama Caves to 'Scaredy-Cat Nation'

A paradox of the modern United States is that it wields unprecedented
military power in the world yet its people are constantly kept
frightened about unlikely foreign dangers. Its politics, too, are
dominated by fear.

The
way this plays out most often is that Republicans (aided by the U.S.
news media) exaggerate overseas threats and denounce the Democrats for
being "soft" on whatever the current "threat" might be: the Reds, the
yellow menace, Soviet "beachheads" in Central America, or now Islamic
terrorism.

From the Vietnam
War to today's "war on terror," Democrats have reacted out of fear of
getting blamed for not doing enough to "protect" the nation, so they
undertake misguided actions to look tough, as Lyndon Johnson did in
escalating U.S. troop levels in Vietnam or as Democrats in Congress did
in going along with George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq.

In the latest chapter, President Barack Obama is succumbing to the same
dynamic as he retreats on his campaign promises to restore the rule of
law and to put relations with the Islamic world on a more rational
footing.

Fulfilling those
promises would require political courage from Obama and the Democrats,
a commodity that remains in short supply. And it appears to be beyond
hope to expect that the Republicans and their right-wing media allies
will ever behave responsibly - when there's a chance for political gain.

So, in the Age of Obama, the mighty United States again presents itself
to the world as "Scaredy-Cat Nation," terrified about the danger posed
by a small number of suspected terrorists who might be transferred, in
shackles, from the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to super-max prisons
on U.S. soil.

All manner of
terrifying tales have been imagined about inmates using their one hour
a day outside their jail cells to organize breakouts or about terrorist
comrades crossing the U.S. border to lay siege to a super-max prison
and somehow busting the prisoners out.

Such fantasies, which sound like bad Hollywood movie scripts, have been
circulated by prominent Republicans, including Texas Sen. Kay Bailey
Hutchison and FBI Director Robert Mueller, and have been echoed by key
Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Fearing the Uighurs

The American people also are supposed to get very scared that some
Guantanamo inmates who were locked up for no good reason - like the 17
Chinese Uighurs who have been imprisoned at Guantanamo for seven years
though the Bush administration concluded that they are no threat to the
United States - might get relocated to the "land of the free, home of
the brave."

And then there's
the panic over the slim possibility that after a trial, a few suspected
terrorists might get acquitted, although in those cases the defendants
would almost surely remain locked up pending deportation.

Whatever risks remain are so ephemeral that they are vastly outweighed
by other dangers that the United States creates for itself by being
perceived as a hypocritical nation that preaches human rights for
others but not when Americans feel some remote danger.

If Americans really wanted to reduce the risk of a 9/11 repeat, they
could undertake any number of policy changes, from reducing their
dependence on Middle Eastern oil to demanding that the Israeli
government grants meaningful statehood to the Palestinians.

Instead, the United States has opted for a behavioral pattern that
veers from victimhood to bullying, from the tears that followed the
9/11 attacks and the lament "why do they hate us?" to the cheers for
George W. Bush's "shock and awe" bombardment of Iraq and the tough-guy
treatment of captives.

On May
21, former Vice President Dick Cheney defended this approach, which
relies on force to eradicate perceived threats to the homeland:

"In
the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and
half-measures keep you half exposed. You cannot keep just some
nuclear-armed terrorists out of the United States, you must keep every
nuclear-armed terrorist out of the United States. ...

"When
just a single clue that goes unlearned ... one lead that goes unpursued ...
can bring on catastrophe - it's no time for splitting differences.
There is never a good time to compromise when the lives and safety of
the American people are in the balance."

A Logical Flaw

But there is a logical flaw to Cheney's so-called "one-percent
doctrine," which holds that even if a potential terrorist threat
presents only a one-percent possibility it must be treated as a
certainty. The flaw is that reacting to unlikely dangers as certainties
is almost guaranteed to create even more dangers.

For instance, invading Iraq to eliminate a tiny risk that Saddam
Hussein might help al-Qaeda has killed 4,300 American soldiers, spared
al-Qaeda's leadership in their hideouts along the Afghan border,
strengthened Iran as a regional power, and spread anti-Americanism
across the volatile region, including inside nuclear-armed Pakistan.

In other words, reacting to every hypothetical one-percent threat may
sound reassuring to frightened Americans but the policy is almost
certain to make the situation more dangerous.

Clearly, many Americans understand this. They know that risk is part of
life and intrinsic to a Republic, especially one that operates under a
system of laws and cherishes what the Founders called "certain
unalienable rights."

Many
such Americans voted for Barack Obama in hopes that this eloquent
expert on constitutional law would break the cycle of Republican
fear-mongering and Democratic cowering, that he would uphold the
nation's principles and stop exaggerating the dangers.

However, Obama has disappointed many of these supporters. While
rhetorically stepping back from some of Bush's excesses and releasing
some important evidence on how the United States officially embraced
torture for the first time in the nation's history, Obama has
maintained much of the legal paradigm of Bush's "war on terror."

In his speech about terrorism on May 21 - right before Cheney's - Obama
said some of the Guantanamo cases would have to go before revamped
Military Commissions that would include a few more safeguards than the
Bush/Cheney model but still fall far short of civilian courts.

'Prolonged Detention'

Obama even proposed a new legal system that would allow for "prolonged
detention" of terror suspects without trial. Obama said he wanted to
involve Congress and the Judiciary in this process - seeking to
distance himself from Bush's views of unilateral presidential powers.

"In our constitutional system," Obama said, "prolonged detention should not be the decision of any one man."

However, in truth, prolonged detention has little place at all in the U.S. constitutional system, which includes habeas corpus guarantees against arbitrary imprisonment and the right to fair and open trials.

It's also unclear why an extreme step like prolonged detention is
needed. For combatants captured on the battlefield, the law of war
permits their detention as POWs for the duration of a conflict, thus
negating the argument about how such situations don't lend themselves
to the collection of evidence.

Rather, Obama's concept of preventive detention seems aimed at a
suspected terrorist who, in Obama's example, has expertise in
explosives and who may have been arrested far from a battlefield.

It's unclear why, in that situation, evidence couldn't be collected
normally or why witnesses couldn't be developed to prove the case, even
if that might require a plea bargain with one suspect to obtain
testimony against another.

Given the absence of a compelling rationale, it appears more likely
that Obama is bowing to the power of fear, political fear that he might
be blamed by fearful Americans if a jury acquitted some allegedly
dangerous terrorist because the evidence was insufficient or because
the case was tainted by torture or other government misconduct.

Surely, if an acquittal occurred - even if the defendant was then
deported to his country of origin - the Republicans and the right-wing
media would stoke fears about this dangerous terrorist let loose to
wreak havoc. Without doubt, some Americans would fall under the spell
of that fear-mongering.

Stirring Fear

The New York Times played into that pattern last week by touting a
dubious report prepared by Bush's Pentagon in December 2008, which
claimed that one in seven detainees released from Guantanamo "returned"
to militant activity. Cheney cited that figure in opposing Obama's
promise to close the Guantanamo prison.

However, the evidence in the Pentagon report - details that were buried
deep inside the Times article - identified only five released detainees
(out of 534) who "have engaged in verifiable terrorist activity or have
threatened terrorist acts," the Times reported. In other words, less
than one in 100 of the freed prisoners, not one in seven. [See
Consortiumnews.com's "NYT Helps the Bushies, Again."]

The pressure on Obama to permit "prolonged detentions" also may reflect
the Pentagon's blurring of the lines between militants and media
workers. It has become trendy inside U.S. counterinsurgency to lump
journalists who criticize American actions with combatants engaging in
violent acts.

For example,
the U.S. military in Iraq has detained Ibahim Jassam, a Reuters
cameraman, since September 2008 despite an Iraqi court order calling
for his release and the absence of any formal charges against him.

The U.S. military continues to justify his detention on the basis of
undisclosed intelligence that Jassam is a "a high security threat,"
said Maj. Neal Fisher, a spokesman for detainee affairs.

Journalists for the Arab TV network al-Jazeera also have been targeted for detention as well as for military attack.

Al-Jazeera journalist Sami al-Hajj was held at Guantanamo from December
2001 to May 2008 as U.S. interrogators unsuccessfully pressed him to
link al-Jazeera to al-Qaeda. [For more on U.S. double standards
regarding journalists, see this article by Jeremy Scahill.]

Obama's proposal for "prolonged detentions" would seem to invite
continuation of such prolonged abuses, when the intelligence data is
vague or has little direct connection to terrorist acts.

It appears that Obama is signaling to frightened Americans that even if
there is no usable evidence against detainees, he will protect the U.S.
homeland by keeping the suspects locked up for the foreseeable future
anyway.

That would be a
victory for Scaredy-Cat Nation, but it would be a defeat for the
honorable system that has guided Constitutional America for more than
two centuries. Obama's plan looks to be a cave-in to the cycle of fear
that has done so much damage to the Republic.