Bush the Younger has been out of office for a little more than a year now. Yet the pall of his disastrous presidency still covers the land, in almost every conceivable way. Perhaps nowhere are its gloomy effects clearer than in the festering hysteria that has greeted even the most timid efforts of his successor to change the way we deal with terrorist suspects. The most recent casualty of the fear Bush the Younger instilled was the Obama Administration’s eminently sensible plan to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in New York City.
The attacks that scuppered that idea where wholly political in nature, motivated by little more than the desire to give the Administration a black eye. They succeeded wildly and the Mohammed trial, far and away the most high profile interaction between al-Qaeda and the US justice system, has been thrown into limbo. In the most recent issue of The New Yorker Jane Mayer lays out the cringe inducing details.
The entire article is required reading for anyone who wants to understand the Obama Administration’s approach to rectifying the Bush Administration’s scorched earth approach to civil liberties while still prosecuting the men they apprehended and tortured. As if that weren’t difficult enough, they have to do it in a political environment that seems to have only two moods, panic and outrage. (It goes almost without saying that both of those feelings are being aggressively stoked by well funded and high profile right wingers.) One of Mayer’s sources described the legal situation Barack Obama inherited as an “avalanche of shit”. But that phrase is just as applicable to the wider context.
Two things stand out in the article. The first is the rather craven political calculation that resulted in the military commissions being retained instead of scrapped. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel does not come off well, chasing phantom Republican support that, it seems quite obvious, will never materialize. The second is the unbelievable bureaucratic resistance to holding the Mohammed trial in New York City. As the cost of the trial kept escalating there was neither bureaucratic nor public relations pushback from the Administration and the result was an outright fiasco.
The fact that all of this is getting mainstream exposure in The New Yorker is itself indicative of the problem. The right wing made a concerted effort, headlined by A-list names like William Kristol and Elizabeth Cheney. The Administration has an article in a literary magazine best known to the general public for its cartoons. Mayer delved into some of this in an on-line question session with readers:
QUESTION FROM GUEST: What did you think of how Jon Stewart answered Newt Gingrich the other night on The Daily Show? When asked if he really wanted to see the 9/11 terrorists tried in NYC, Jon’s unequivocal answer was YES! Then he expounded on how tough New Yorkers were and would love to see these guys convicted and sentenced right here where it all happened.
JANE MAYER: I think the Obama Administration would have done a lot better if they got Jon Stewart and several dozen other real New Yorkers, including some of the 9/11 families who also favored holding the trial in NY, to speak up a little earlier.
That pretty well covers it. Obama himself hardly spoke about the decision at all and the media vacuum was filled by cowardly wingnuts like Rudy Giuliani. Both Attorney General Eric Holder and Obama himself come off quite well in Mayer’s piece, but their deep convictions and conversations with one another are publicly nonexistent and therefore politically useless.
It’s unknown whether a more concerted effort by the Administration would’ve led to a different outcome in this case. But being correct on the legal and moral merits means very little when everything can be politicized. Excellently reported New Yorker pieces are like attacking that avalanche with a plastic spork. Whatever avenue towards a civilian trial the Administration tries next, they would be well advised to realize that so long as Bush the Younger’s shadow still covers the land the politics of the thing are far more important than the legalities. That’s not a pleasant thought, nor is it the way things are supposed to be, but for now it’s how things are.
