Executive orders on torture and detention, the closure of Guantanamo Bay, even discarding the phrase "the global war on terror" and replacing it perhaps by Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano's "man-made disasters" or the Pentagon favorite, "overseas contingency operations", dropping the term "enemy combatant" and replacing it by the more innocuous term "detainees".
There is a tendency of this administration to focus on surface-level details and accomplishments and defer consideration of the underlying, more intrinsically difficult problems of how to deal with rogue outlaws, whom are not party to any international treaty and do not extend the same considerations to their soft innocent civilian targets. In particular, what so-called rights do they get? The same as American citizens? Even at the expense of being able of the outlaw being able to demand exposure of secret sensitive information which might undermine ongoing operations and tactics? Do we really want to treat terror cells as no different than from regular armed forces, when, in fact, their objectives, methods, and knowledge of operations are qualitatively distinct than US Army troops?
It's one thing to announce closure of Gitmo; it's another thing to decide how to detain them on an ongoing basis: which American prisons, exposing what neighboring communities? The fact that the Obama Administration has spent more time discussing the rights of terrorist detainees than on building on the Bush Administration's record of decisive, undeterred, unnuanced action in putting the safety of the American people first speaks volumes of Obama's improperly-set priorities. It's time that the current administration pays less attention to the good opinion of elitist European socialists or earning chits with the ACLU and more attention on proactive, effective tactics on protecting the American people from 9/11-style attacks, which IS job 1.
Ward Churchill: It's Time for an End to Academic Tenure
A Colorado jury agreed that Ward Churchill, the infamous tenured Colorado professor best known for describing the victims of 9/11 as "little [Nazi war criminal] Eichmann's", was unjustly fired from his tenured position and awarded him $1 in damages. The big remaining question is whether the judge will order Churchill reinstated to his former position, which would be unconscionable.
To explain what I mean requires analyzing the situation. The university decided to put Churchill's record under scrutiny AFTER Churchill started abusing the concept of academic freedom by engaging in provocative actions (such as the Eichmann reference). The traditional concept of academic freedom is meant to protect faculty from teaching or communicating findings that might be politically objectionable in the status quo. It's not quite the same thing as free speech; for example, I am entitled to express my pro-life views, but not in an unrelated college course I'm teaching, and if I spoke or wrote, specifically referencing my university affiliation, I would be honor-bound to provide a disclaimer and to distinguish whether my opinons were personal or based on relevant expertise and research findings.
A clearer example of academic freedom would be, say, if a Mississippi politician boasted of significant improvements in public education under his tenure, and an education or public administration professor published peer-reviewed research findings showing no statistically significant increase in relevant achievement test scores. The outraged politician might threaten the university with cuts in funding if they didn't get rid of the professor in question.
In the case of Ward Churchill, the university put his academic scholarship under scrutiny and discovered troubling, compelling evidence of professional misconduct. Apparently the issue with the jury was NOT whether or not the university had legitimate grounds for dismissing Churchill but the motive for putting Churchill's scholarship under the white glove treatment. Indeed, why didn't the University of Colorado do due diligence at the time they hired Churchill? If anything, the hiring of Churchill was in part to stir the pot; however, Colorado underestimated how hot it would get when he stirred the pot over 9/11 with his anti-American rants, which certainly were not the product of legitimate academic scholarship.
As a legitimate victim of violated academic freedom myself (it involved how I was teaching a data structures course; among other things, I was attacked ex post facto by senior faculty for not compelling the students to write their assigned computer programs in the PL/1 language--I allowed them to write their programs in the computer language of their choice), I resent Ward Churchill's hiding behind the concept of academic freedom to rationalize his intellectually pretentious viewpoints.
It is difficult to see how the judge could order the university to rehire Churchill, given the fact that Colorado almost certainly would never have hired Churchill given what they know today about his ethical lapses in scholarship activities. Indeed, it is difficult to understand why Churchill would want to come back to an institution where he is clearly unwelcome and where he does not enjoy the support of his colleagues or administration. It's time for Churchill to move on with his life.
Perhaps it's sour grapes on my part because I myself never attained tenure during my short academic career, but I think it's time to reconsider the concept of tenure in teaching in general. It hampers the ability of college administrators to control costs and manage resources.
International Prosecution of White House Advisors
There have been periodic threats from Democrats like Speaker Pelosi and Senator Leahy to prosecute Bush Administration officials (including former Attorney General Gonzales and Karl Rove among others), primarily based on political differences over policy, such as warrantless wiretaps, Gitmo, and the like. Obama is naturally wary of these attempts, in part because it's a distraction from his current agenda, but also he recognizes the slippery slope precedent that would be set, making his own administration the likely target of future Republican majority investigations. So Obama tries to walk a thin line, promising that he won't ignore evidence of wrongdoing but making clear he doesn't want to spend the next 4 years conducting a witchhunt.
This doesn't mean that others, particularly in Europe, aren't considering unprecedented steps against an admittedly unpopular Bush Administration, attempting to criminalize policy differences. A case in point is a former jailbird lawyer whom has filed a complaint with Baltasar Garzon, a Spanish activist magistrate, demanding that Gonzales and 5 other Bush Administration lawyers be prosecuted on grounds that they provided Bush with legal advice resulting in his decisions to permit "torture" of Spanish and other detainees at Gitmo, counter to the Geneva Conventions.
Douglas Feith, one of the cited lawyers, specifically refutes the alleged charges in an April 3 Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled "Spain Has No Right to try U.S. Officials". He says he believes his implication is based on a popular text by a leftist British lawyer whom intentionally misrepresents a conversation he had with Feith. Feith says that, in fact, he strongly encouraged upholding Geneva rights in his advice to Bush, arguing the U.S. has a vested interest in maintaining the convention.
Feith notes that unlike the Nazi or Serb governments, the U.S. has a well-defined, independent judiciary (which, in fact, occasionally ruled against the Bush Administration), and any legal proceedings of American officials fall under the jurisdiction of the American judicial system. Furthermore, the criminalization of legal advisors establishes a chilling precedent and unwarranted intrusion into American internal affairs: Does Spain really want to open up Pandora's box resulting, say, in American prosecution of Spanish government lawyers over differences in policy?
It's time for the Obama Administration to stand up on principle and do the right thing: Foreign prosecution of American government officials is unacceptable. Moreover, frivolous lawsuits of American citizens based on little more than presumptuous, unsupported allegations and distortions of fact and substance will not be tolerated.
Sarkozy's Grandstanding and Scapegoating of the U.S.
It wasn't supposed to turn out this way. Sarkozy was a classic liberal (i.e., free-market conservative), an unabashedly pro-American leader, a change of pace that President Bush eagerly embraced in contrast to Sarkozy's predecessor. Chirac went out of his way to ensure Bush would not get a majority vote in the Security Council after Iraq failed to comply with 17 UN resolutions, including material violations of ceasefire terms to the first Gulf War. (Since France, China, and Russia all held vetoes and had vested interests given Hussein regime sweetheart contracts, it was clear that an authorization to liberate Iraq would not carry, but a majority vote in the Council would provide Bush moral authority.)
Obama, in his bizarro world of international relations, decided to write a letter to Chirac, no longer in office, on March 20, the anniversary of the start of the liberation of Iraq:
I am certain that we will be able to work together, in the coming four years, in a spirit of peace and friendship to build a safer world.
If there's one thing Obama knows, it's symbolism. I wonder how Obama would feel if German Chancellor Angela Merkel wrote to former President Bush, saying, "I am certain we will be able to work together, in the coming four years, in a spirit of global economic growth, responsible domestic government spending, and free trade."
But however boorish, irresponsible and reprehensible Obama's naive tactless behavior may be, I'm not going to excuse Sarkozy's subsequent behavior at the G-20, threatening to walk out if his grandstanding demand for global financial regulatory framework, blaming the global economic crisis on "Anglo-Saxon" (American and British) policymakers and bankers: "The crisis didn't start in Europe, it started in the United States." Never mind the fact that just as World Wars I and II didn't start in the United States, it started in Europe, and the U.S. liberated France on both occasions, it's not enough that the world has depended on the American consumer time and again to jump start the economies of other nations by importing their goods and services.
Need I remind Mr. Sarkozy that the real estate bubble was not isolated to the United States and foreign investors in American derivatives, e.g., mortgage-backed securities, share the blame? If investors across the board had refused to purchase secondary market products including risky (subprime and other) mortgages, if Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which dominate the secondary market, had refused to use an implicit government guarantee to finance the same securities, the original lenders would have been forced to maintain creditworthy standards, versus yield to predominantly Democratic political pressure: "It's good to spread the (mortgage money) around".
Mr. Sarkozy's politically convenient conversion to anti-American populism is a betrayal of his economically liberal philosophic roots versus the rest of us political conservatives, whom see the government and its fundamental incompetence at regulation as part of the problem, not its salvation.
A legitimate conservative response is not to cede national control (and thus responsibility) to some grandiose global financial regulatory system but to spread sunshine and transparency to the system, provide consumers, lenders and investors with improved knowledge and access to make contracts in good faith. It's time for Sarkozy to provide some responsible leadership and constructive criticism, not betray his core political beliefs.
