Big Lizards:Blog:Entry “The Democrats' First 1,461 Days: War Crimes, War Crimes, War Crimes!”

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November 13, 2008

The Democrats' First 1,461 Days: War Crimes, War Crimes, War Crimes!

Hatched by Dafydd

...And crimes against humanity, history, the environment, and "international law."

Well, it's official: The incoming Democratic majority of the 111th Congress has announced it intends to "investigate" the Bush administration... for the next four years straight:

“The Bush administration overstepped in its exertion of executive privilege, and may very well try to continue to shield information from the American people after it leaves office,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, who sits on two committees, Judiciary and Intelligence, that are examining aspects of Mr. Bush’s policies.

Topics of open investigations include the harsh interrogation of detainees, the prosecution of former Gov. Don Siegelman of Alabama, secret legal memorandums from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and the role of the former White House aides Karl Rove and Harriet E. Miers in the firing of federal prosecutors....

“I intend to ensure that our outstanding subpoenas and document requests relating to the U.S. attorneys matter are enforced,” said Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. “I am hopeful that progress can be made with the coming of the new administration.”

Actually, much of the article in the Times is devoted to examining the inconvenient truth that there is some precedent for President George W. Bush continuing to assert executive authority to withhold internal documents from Congress, and prevent former aides from testifying, even after he leaves office; the precedents flow from Harry Truman through Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan. But I find the comments from Democratic leaders like Rep. John Conyers (D-MI, 100%) more illuminating than the legal dithering.

This one, for example:

“If crimes have been committed, they should be investigated,” Mr. Obama said, but added, “I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we’ve got too many problems we’ve got to solve.”

But even if his administration rejects the calls for investigations, Mr. Obama cannot control what the courts or Congress do. Several lawsuits are seeking information about Bush policies, including an Islamic charity’s claim that it was illegally spied on by Mr. Bush’s program on wiretapping without warrants.

And Congressional Democrats say that they are determined to pursue their investigations -- and that they expect career officials to disclose other issues after the Bush administration leaves. “We could spend the entire next four years investigating the Bush years,” Mr. Whitehouse said.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI, 95%) is on both the Judiciary and Intelligence committees, well situated to make good his promise.

Democrats are obsessed with investigating the Bush administration for two reasons:

The Democratic rank and file -- and many (but not all) of the leaders themselves -- still suffer from Bush Derangement Syndrome and will likely continue to show symptoms for as long as they suck air.

To many of them, especially unreconstructed Obamatons and Kossaks, "getting Bush" (and Dick Cheney and Karl Rove) is more important than America succeeding. In fact, some may be so overwhelmed by their psychosis that they actively want America to collapse, as punishment for having betrayed ourselves by allowing George W. Bush to "steal the election" -- twice!

But even those who are more sober and responsible, such as Reps. Conyers and Barney Frank (D-MA, 95%) and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT, 93%), will support such investigations... because they realize they have no workable ideas how to solve those "many problems" that President Barack H. Obama mentioned. They need "investigations" both to distract voter attention and scapegoat the previous administration, thus taking the heat off of the incoming Obama nation.

What do they have on tap that any rational human being imagines will resolve the staggering unfunded liability of "entitlement" programs? What wonderful plan have they developed to take care of the millions of people who voluntarily reject health-care insurance because they don't expect to get sick or injured? Iraq and Afghanistan will take care of themselves, if Obama just leaves those policies alone; but what have Democrats proposed that will actually keep Iran in check, deal with Red China and Russia, or find a good compromise between civilized Israel and the primitive but militant Islamists in Hamas, Hezbollah, PIJ, and other such so-called "jihadi" groups?

By definition, this second group comprises those Democrats not infected by BDS: They may be corrupt, they may be concerned only with power, they may even be "evil" by some definitions; but they are by definition rational -- and they realize that they have nothing in their pockets but a pair of hands with some fingers on them.

But the good news is that ordinary voters have a much lower tolerance for investigations than do members of Congress; this is probably the "policy" where Democrats are most likely to overreach -- and the one that is most likely to infuriate voters, as Republicans found out in 1998. In fact, by 2010, after two solid years of investigate, investigate, investigate!, the GOP can surely use that itself as a major campaign issue: "The majority Democrats are wasting time and taxpayer money trying to 'get' a guy who isn't even in public office anymore, to cover up the fact that none of their policies is working!"

The recession will have mostly receded by then, but the underlying problems that caused it in the first place won't have. And all that "change" that Obama promised will have failed to materialized: The first two years of the Obama administration will look remarkably like the last two years of the Bush administration -- except the partisan rancor will be even worse, incubated by the mean-spirited and precedent-setting investigations themselves. The Democrats' own obsession will undercut everything voters thought they were getting by voting for B.O.

And that's good news for us. The "headwind" against Republicans will be nowhere near as intense in 2010 as it was in 2006 and 2008; in fact, the windsock may have swung around entirely by then, giving us the first tailwind we've had since 1994.

Maybe. Everything depends upon whether the pared-down GOP can finally clarify what it stands for, and whether it can make the case clearly to the American people. We must once again become the party of "hard America," not "soft America," to use Michael Barone's dichotomy. We cannot win the battle of airy-fairy hopey-changitude, where Democrats, as the party of vagueness, will always have an edge.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 13, 2008, at the time of 4:28 PM

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Comments

The following hissed in response by: Movie Badger

I'm all for this. Time Congress spends pointlessly investigating someone who's no longer in office is time they're not spending doing any of the other horrible things they could be doing.

The above hissed in response by: Movie Badger at November 13, 2008 5:30 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dishman

I have a problem with one phrase in there:
to cover up the fact that none of their policies are working

That implies that they actually have policies. I haven't seen evidence of either out of Pelosi/Reid/Obama.

The above hissed in response by: Dishman at November 13, 2008 5:46 PM

The following hissed in response by: hunter

I urge the readers to consider how show trials have been held and how they have been used in the last 100 years or so.

The above hissed in response by: hunter at November 14, 2008 5:26 AM

The following hissed in response by: snochasr

OH! I get it now, finally. "Obamanation" LOL! Yes, that's what to expect from the new Democrats Gone Wild video, available on C-SPAN in January.

The above hissed in response by: snochasr at November 14, 2008 6:27 AM

The following hissed in response by: Watchman

If Conyers, Frank and Dodd are the "more sober" members of your party, your party is falling down drunk, suffering from liver failure, and is due to apologize to Ted Kennedy any day.

The above hissed in response by: Watchman at November 14, 2008 7:22 AM

The following hissed in response by: Zelsdorf2

I think it would be good to let the congress know there are people out here who are willing to show their displeasure with such actions and are willing to demostrate such displeasure by marching on Washington. Peasefully, ofcourse.

The above hissed in response by: Zelsdorf2 at November 14, 2008 7:54 AM

The following hissed in response by: Zelsdorf2

The above hissed in response by: Zelsdorf2 at November 14, 2008 7:54 AM

The following hissed in response by: BigLeeH

Everything depends upon whether the pared-down GOP can finally clarify what it stands for.

That's the trick, isn't it? And it points to a reason that the Democrat's strategy may work.

There was a time when the Republicans had a fairly coherent set of principles which, if implemented, they believed would be beneficial for most Americans. There were various factions who had their own particular issues that they didn't share with the rest of the coalition -- the free-traders weren't that big on abortion and the evangelicals were lukewarm about elimination of trade barriers -- but everyone agreed on 80 percent of the issues and life was good. Then a disaster happened; the Republicans gained power and everything fell apart.

Things didn't fall apart right away, mind you. Reagan's first term was swell. Low tax, small government, pro-business policies were implemented and real benefits ensued. But then the various factions of the GOP started to bicker about that last 20 percent. They turned on the old auto-pilot and set it to simply oppose anything that their enemies wanted, so they could get on with the business of brooming their internal opposition out of the big tent. As a method for selecting policy the technique of selecting a few key democrats and opposing them on everything is not bad, actually, but losing track of the principles on which the whole coalition agrees is a problem. The Republicans went from a position of having enemies outside the party because they, the Republicans, had principles their enemies opposed, to a position of simply having traditional enemies outside the party with most of their intellectual energy being spent on family squabbles. They gradually forgot how to explain that their policies were beneficial to the vast majority of Americans but, instead, came to define themselves in terms of their enemies. When their grasp on power started to slip they had misplaced their positive message and had to run as the angry party. And, to make matters worse, what little theory they did have at hand was stuff they had been using to fight among themselves and they couldn't even decide what they were angry about. With no positive, coherent central message to focus their anger they managed to alienate large portions of the population who their policies were designed to benefit, and they appeared, from the outside, to have been taken over by the xenophobic fringes.

In a bullfight the picadors do not kill the bull. Their job is to distract it and to make it angry so it makes bad decisions and the matador can finish it off.

If the democratic fringe can keep the GOP confined within its role as the angry party by harassing them with the legal system then the GOP is in for a long, long session in the time-out corner.

The above hissed in response by: BigLeeH at November 14, 2008 9:32 AM

The following hissed in response by: Dishman

BigLeeH,
I think a lot of your point can be summarized with the word "nutpoking".

I think that's part of what happened to us this go round. Obama was pretty much a perfect candidate for doing that, too. He had just the right combination of questionable associations and plausible deniability.

I don't know how to defend against it, particularly since some of the nuts can be ringers. The whole birth certificate lawsuit strikes me as falling under this heading.

I think some how we need to come up with a process for figuring out which angles are going to land and ignoring the ones that won't.

The above hissed in response by: Dishman at November 14, 2008 10:45 AM

The following hissed in response by: BigLeeH

Dishman,

I agree with everything you say except the part about my much of my point being about "nutpoking." The problems with the Republican party already existed before the campaign and Obama was merely well positioned to exploit them.

Here's an example of the sort of schism I am talking about. Don't take my linking to is as an endorsement of Hawkins' position. I don't. But neither do I agree with Brooks, who Hawkins is criticizing. They are both caught in the fallacy of the excluded middle.

The above hissed in response by: BigLeeH at November 14, 2008 12:04 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dishman

I don't think there's a fundamental conflict between the two concepts.

In a way, it's both a strength and weakness of individualism, and "A pack, not a herd".

The above hissed in response by: Dishman at November 14, 2008 2:45 PM

The following hissed in response by: Da Coyote

It'll backfire. Those loons better start investigations on the cause of this economic collapse. Oops, sorry, we know where that started.

The above hissed in response by: Da Coyote at November 14, 2008 4:13 PM

The following hissed in response by: boqueronman

You gotta hope they go through with this one. Presumably the "investigations" will focus on Iraq and the domestic security efforts. What has happened since 2001? No further attacks on U.S. soil and, confirmed by no less then the NYT, a probably self sustaining and no longer mischief making Iraq. And they want to be seen to be questioning these successful policies? Ones that they have, in the main, participated in? I don't think the public will be in any way interested except possibly for their entertainment value. BTW Another thing the Repubs must be hoping for is a Jamie Gorelick nomination for AG. It would hand the Repubs a golden "teaching moment" on two very important issues: (1) the foreign-domestic intelligence firewall leading to 2001; and (2) her central role in the lead-up to the corruption and then collapse at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The above hissed in response by: boqueronman at November 14, 2008 4:36 PM

The following hissed in response by: TerryeL

Maybe the Republicans can counter by demanding investigations into the connections between the Democratic party and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. At least that would be relevant.

But if the Democrats want to squander their majority on a vendetta I guess they can do that. I don't think the American people will be interested in all that crap myself.

The above hissed in response by: TerryeL at November 15, 2008 3:04 AM

The following hissed in response by: Stupid Sexy Flanders

It would seem to me that supporters of limits to government (excuse me, "Big Evil Gummint") power would favour that actual crimes committed in the exercise of power were investigated and prosecuted for the sake of justice or at least «pour décourager les autres».

People with affection for the military and who believe in its civilian control should be particularly sensitive to those civilians' unconcern with giving illegal orders (and implicitly threatening those who would disobey).

Of course it is easy for an investigation to turn into a mere witch-hunt, but the post and responses seem to assume that no crimes were committed when to many sane, reasonable, and principled*, citizens it certainly looks like illegal acts were committed.

Do you really want Mr Addington's vision of an Executive Branch at the service of Mr Obama?

--- ---- --- --- --- ---- --- --- --- ---- --- --- --- ---- --- --- --- ---- --- --- --- ---- ---
*Of course, everyone who disagrees with you on important things must be unreasonable, stupid, or unprincipled. Of course.

Certainly many stupid and unreasonable people on my side of the political divide believe so...you of course have none such. I could never believe such fables: the axes of intelligence, sanity, honour, and political views are pretty much orthogonal in my experience...people with whom I disagree, even violently, may be all the things to which I aspire, and still just be _wrong_...which implies that I might be as well---far be it from me, even as far as in Christ his Bowelles, to suggest that you might....

The above hissed in response by: Stupid Sexy Flanders at November 19, 2008 11:40 AM