http://obamboozled.blogspot.com/2009/09/obama-appointee-previews-imminent.html
By all accounts, the White House is going to unveil its proposal for indefinite detention within the next four to eight weeks, and it has begun dispatching proponents of that scheme to lay the rhetorical groundwork. In The Washington Post today, one of the proposal's architects -- Law Professor Robert Chesney, a member of Obama's Detention Policy Task Force -- showcased the trite and manipulative tactics that will be used by advocates of indefinite detention to win support for their radical program [anyone doubting that detention without trials is radical should recall that Obama's own White House counsel Greg Craig told Jane Mayer back in February that it's "hard to imagine Barack Obama as the first President of the United States to introduce a preventive-detention law"; New York Times reporter William Glaberson wrote that "Obama's detention policy "would be a departure from the way this country sees itself"; Sen. Russ Feingold warned that it "violates basic American values," "is likely unconstitutional," and "is a hallmark of abusive systems that we have historically criticized around the world"; The New York Times' Bob Herbert said that "Americans should recoil as one against the idea of preventive detention"; and the Obama policy's most vigorous Congressional proponents are Tom Coburn and Lindsey Graham].
According to Chesney, though, the real extremists are those "on the left" who oppose preventive detention; those who believe that radical liberties such as criminal charges, trials and due process are necessary before the state can put someone in a cage for life; those who agree with Thomas Jefferson that trial by jury is "the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." Chesney insists that such people (these "leftists") are (as always) the mirror images of the extremists on the Right, who "carelessly depict civil-liberties advocates as weak-kneed fools who are putting American lives at risk." These two equally partisan, radical, extremist sides (i.e., those who believe in due process and trials and those who oppose them) are -- sadly -- "shrink[ing] the political space within which reasonable, sustainable policies [i.e., Chesney's preventive detention scheme] might be crafted with bipartisan support."
This is how political debates are typically carried out in Washington by the Serious Centrists and Responsible Adults. Chesney writes an entire Op-Ed defending the soon-to-be-unveiled preventive detention policy without describing a single aspect of it. To Serious people, the substance of the policy is irrelevant. What matters is that anyone who opposes it is a radical, partisan, shrill extremist. Conversely, as long as the Obama administration stays somewhere in the middle of the two sides -- between Tom Coburn and Russ Feingold -- then it proves they are being sensible, moderate and responsible, regardless of how extreme and dangerous their proposal actually is, and regardless of how close to Coburn and as far from Feingold as they end up. That's the manipulative formula that always passes for "debate" in Washington and it's what is meant by "centrism" and "bipartisanship."
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Chesney's Op-Ed -- a template for how the Obama White House intends to advocate for its detention program -- is nothing more than a cascade of banal Beltway adjectives designed to demonize those who oppose their preventive detention scheme ("polarized" -- "misleading" -- "rancor" -- "vivid and provocative" -- "easy to convey in sound bites, attack ads, blog entries" -- "self-reinforcing particularly for those who confine their news consumption ... to partisan sources" -- "binary choice between black-and-white alternatives, with apocalyptic stakes" -- "distrust and polarization"). Wow -- those who think it's wrong to imprison people without trials, who harbor "distrust in the executive branch," and who believe in due process sure are disruptive, unpleasant, irresponsible, shrill and hysterical: exactly like those on the Right who want to deny trials to people. By contrast, Chesney showers himself and his fellow advocates of preventive detention with the standard Beltway Seriousness praise ("a realistic and sophisticated understanding of what each of the tools can offer" -- "sustainable" -- "effective" -- "nuanced, practical solutions" -- "shun the spirit of polarization and politicization that has come to plague detention policy from both ends of the political spectrum").
But after hailing himself as the Guardian of Serious, Substantive Debate, Chesney goes on to disgustingly accuse certain, unnamed "politicians and "advocacy groups" -- those who "criticiz[e] Republicans for alleged abuses of executive power and civil liberties" and "promiscuously invoke the post-Sept. 11 version of the Imperial Presidency narrative" -- of not really believing what they say. Instead, preventive detention opponents are only raising civil liberties concerns "to rouse the base, generate donations and maintain prominence in the media."
So according to the President's Task Force Member, the ACLU (filled with lawyers who sacrifice greatly to litigate on behalf of the most despised and oppressed), and Russ Feingold (who, representing a Midwestern purple state, defends Constitutional liberties with no prospect of political gain), don't genuinely believe in those causes. They don't really think there's anything wrong with imprisoning people with no trials. They didn't really think the Constitution was threatened by Bush radicalism, and now by Obama's embrace of many of those same policies. They're just pretending they do -- exaggerating the threats those policies pose -- because they're hungry for money and attention. That is the sober, moderate, reflective, substantive, deeply Serious National Security discussion which only Chesney and his fellow adult travelers in the middle are capable of conducting, while those on the extremes rely on "provocative rancor."
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