An American Lion

Someone at Foreign Policy probably reads my blog, religiously, and went back and read what I wrote in May of last year:

The ship of state is a peculiar thing. It changes hands when one political party takes it away at the ballot box from another political party (sometimes, there are more than two). Very little change actually happens. This allows a Republican like myself to sit and wonder at the fuss caused when liberals are on the upswing. I’ve seen it many times in my life. Jimmy Carter was supposed to be a trend, not a fad. Same with Bill Clinton. The only constant is this—power is corruption, and Americans don’t seem to realize this. Otherwise, incumbents wouldn’t be locked into a system that returns them to office far more often than not. In the Obama era, the ship of state seems to be sailing along as if George W. Bush were still calling the shots:

The Obama administration has informed a federal judge it will continue to invoke the “state secrets” privilege in a legal battle with an Islamic charity suspected of funding terrorism.

The United States has designated the Oregon-based al-Haramain Islamic Foundation as a terrorist organization. The group, which has sued the government over alleged warrantless wiretapping, is demanding classified information about the program.

U.S. officials have refused to tell the charity’s lawyers whether the group was subjected to presidentially authorized, warrantless, foreign intelligence surveillance in 2004 and, if so, what information was obtained.

In a court document filed overnight in San Francisco and released early Saturday in Washington, the Justice Department said its case-by-case review of the government’s use of the state secrets defense has not changed its position in the al-Haramain case.

The defense allows courts to block lawsuits against the government on grounds that the litigation could harm national security.

“An additional review was conducted at the highest levels of the Department of Justice to determine whether continued invocation of the privilege was warranted,” the government told the court.

“Based on that review, it is the government’s position that disclosure of classified information … would create intolerable risks to national security.”

The Obama administration has criticized President Bush’s Justice Department for invoking the state secrets defense too quickly.

The Obama people know that if they deviate from a set path, the threat of terrorism will rear up as an electoral issue. That is, if a terror attack were to happen because the Obama adminsitration abandoned common sense and started acting as if it didn’t have to protect American lives, the Obama administration would be thrown out of office as being “soft on terror.” That phrase “soft on terror” is one I would plan on hearing more about, because the Obama administration has made up its mind that it will let the Republicans have that as an issue. That being said, I have to shake my head and laugh. What did you think you were voting for, liberals? Change? The only thing that has changed is that people think they’re getting good government and the rule of law back. They’re simply not getting anything of the kind. They’re getting another administration terrified of being thrown out of office.

I hate to say I told you so, but what else can you say to this:

Sept. 11, 2001, was one of those rare and electrifying moments that waken Jacksonian America and focus its attention on the international arena. The U.S. homeland was not only under attack, it was under attack by an international conspiracy of terrorists who engaged in what Jacksonians consider dishonorable warfare: targeting civilians. Jacksonian attitudes toward war were shaped by generations of conflict with Native American peoples across the United States and before that by centuries of border conflict in England, Scotland, and Ireland. Against “honorable” enemies who observe the laws of war, one is obliged to fight fair; those who disregard the rules must be hunted down and killed, regardless of technical niceties.

When the United States is attacked, Jacksonians demand action; they leave strategy to the national leadership. But Bush’s tough-minded Jacksonian response to 9/11 — invading Afghanistan and toppling the Taliban government that gave safe haven to the plotters — gave way to what appeared to be Wilsonian meddling in Iraq. Originally, Bush’s argument for overthrowing Saddam Hussein rested on two charges that resonated powerfully with Jacksonians: Hussein was building weapons of mass destruction, and he had close links with al Qaeda. But the war dragged on, and as Hussein’s fabled hoards of WMD failed to appear and the links between Iraq and al Qaeda failed to emerge, Bush shifted to a Wilsonian rationale. This was no longer a war of defense against a pending threat or a war of retaliation; it was a war to establish democracy, first in Iraq and then throughout the region. Nation-building and democracy-spreading became the cornerstones of the administration’s Middle East policy.

Bush could not have developed a strategy better calculated to dissolve his political support at home. Jacksonians historically have little sympathy for expensive and risky democracy-promoting ventures abroad. They generally opposed the humanitarian interventions in Somalia, Bosnia, and Haiti during the Clinton years; they did not and do not think American young people should die and American treasure should be scattered to spread democracy or protect human rights overseas. Paradoxically, Jacksonians also opposed “cut and run” options to end the war in Iraq even as they lost faith in both Bush and the Republican Party; they don’t like wars for democracy, but they also don’t want to see the United States lose once troops and the national honor have been committed. In Bush’s last year in office, a standoff ensued: The Democratic congressional majorities were powerless to force change in his Iraq strategy and Bush remained free to increase U.S. troop levels, yet the war itself and Bush’s rationale for it remained deeply unpopular.

Enter Obama. An early and consistent opponent of the Iraq war, Obama was able to bring together the elements of the Democratic Party’s foreign-policy base who were most profoundly opposed to (and horrified by) Bush’s policy. Obama made opposition to the Iraq war a centerpiece of his eloquent campaign, drawing on arguments that echoed U.S. anti-war movements all the way back to Henry David Thoreau’s opposition to the Mexican-American War.

Like Carter in the 1970s, Obama comes from the old-fashioned Jeffersonian wing of the Democratic Party, and the strategic goal of his foreign policy is to reduce America’s costs and risks overseas by limiting U.S. commitments wherever possible. He’s a believer in the notion that the United States can best spread democracy and support peace by becoming an example of democracy at home and moderation abroad. More than this, Jeffersonians such as Obama think oversize commitments abroad undermine American democracy at home. Large military budgets divert resources from pressing domestic needs; close association with corrupt and tyrannical foreign regimes involves the United States in dirty and cynical alliances; the swelling national-security state threatens civil liberties and leads to powerful pro-war, pro-engagement lobbies among corporations nourished on grossly swollen federal defense budgets.

Comparisons to Lincoln, my ass.

Every day, we see new revelations that the basic, common sense security needs of a mass-transit air travel system are a privacy-invading joke. Every day we find out something they’re not doing, something some incompetent careerist has bungled, something that some political appointee has conflated or confused or obstructed or just plain lied about.

What was this about having the adults run things for a change?