And on the Eighth Day: Hopes and Fears over The Obama Foreign Policy

Whatever else is said about Barack Obama, you cannot accuse him of being slow off the mark. A day after the Inauguration, he issued the order closing the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and CIA “black sites” and ending torture by American agencies. Two days later, he revoked the Reagan directive banning funding for any organisation carrying out abortions overseas. On 26 January, he ordered a new approach to emissions and global warming, as the State Department appointed Todd Stern to oversee policy on climate change.



Last Monday, Obama launched his “reach-out” to the Islamic world with a televised interview, his first with any channel, with Al Arabiya. Two envoys, George Mitchell for the Middle East and Richard Holbrooke for Afghanistan and Pakistan, have been appointed; Mitchell is already in the region searching for diplomatic settlements. All of this has occurred even as the Administration was pushing for approval of its economic stimulus package and engaging in fierce inter-agency debates over Iraq and Afghanistan.

The media, rightly but ritually, hailed Obama's symbolic renunciation of his predecessor George W. Bush. Much more substantial was this Administration's attention to methods. The American global image would not be projected and its position assured, as in the Dubya years, through military strength; instead, the US would lsucceed through a recognition of and adherence to international cooperation, a projection of tolerance, and a desire to listen. While the term “smart power”, developed over the last two years in anticipation of this Administration, is already in danger of overuse, it is the right expression for the Obama approach.

Yet, even in Obama's more than symbolic announcement, there were seeds of trouble for that “smart power”. The President had hoped to order the immediate, or at least the near-future, shutdown of Camp X-Ray, but he was stymied by political opposition as well as legal complications. The interview with Al Arabiya was a substitute for Obama's hope of a major foreign policy speech in an Arab capital in the first weeks of his Administrat. The Holbrooke appointment was modified when New Delhi made clear it would not receive a “Pakistan-India” envoy; Mitchell's scope for success has already been constrained by the background of Gaza.

Little of this was within Obama's power to rectify; it would have been Messianic indeed if he could have prevailed immediately, given the domestic and international context. The President may have received a quick lesson, however, in the bureaucratic challenges that face even the most determined and persuasive leader.

Already some officials in the Pentagon have tried to block Obama initiatives. They tried to spun against the plan to close Guantanamo Bay, before and after the Inauguration, with the claims that released detainees had returned to Al Qa'eda and terrorism. That attempt was undermined by the shallowness of the claims, which were only substantiated in two cases, and the unexpected offense that it caused Saudi Arabia, who felt that its programme for rehabilitation of former insurgents had been insulted. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates finally and firmed quashed the mini-coup by declaring on Wednesday that he fully supported Obama's plans.

On other key issues, however, the President faces tougher, higher-ranking, and more persistent opposition. Within a day of Obama's first meeting on Iraq, Pentagon sources were letting the media know their doubts on a 16-month timetable for withdrawal. And, after this Wednesday's meeting, General Raymond Odierno, in charge of US forces in Iraq, publicly warned against a quick transition to the Iraqi military and security forces. This not-too-subtle rebuke of the President has been backed by the outgoing US Ambassador in Iraq, Ryan Crocker, and I suspect by the key military figure, head of US Central Command General David Petraeus.

The future US strategy in Afghanistan also appears to be caught up in a battle within the Administration, with a lack of resolution on the increase in the American military presence (much,much more on that in a moment). And even on Iran, where Obama appears to be making a overture on engagement with Tehran, it's not clear that he will get backing for a near-future initiatives. White House officials leaked Obama's draft letter to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to a British newspaper, but State Department officials added that such a letter would not be sent until a “full review” of the US strategy with Iran had been completed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Still, all of these might be minor irritants, given the impact both of Obama's symbolic steps and of other quieter but important steps. For example, after the outright Bush Administration hostility to any Latin American Government that did not have the proper economic or political stance, Obama's State Department immediately recognised the victory of President Evo Morales in a referendum on the Bolivian constitution, and there are signs that the President will soon be engaging with Havana's leaders with a view to opening up a US-Cuban relationship. In Europe, Obama's phone call with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev was quickly followed by Moscow's announcement that, in return for a more productive US stance on missile defence (i.e., Washington wasn't going to roll out the system in Eastern Europe), Russia would not deploy missiles on the Polish border. There are even signals of an advance in the Middle East through a new US-Syrian relationship, although this is probably contingent on some recogntion or acceptance of Hamas by Washington.

So why am I even more concerned about the Obama foreign-policy path than I was a week ago, when I wrote of my conflicted reaction to the Inauguration? Let me introduce to the two elephants in this room, one which he inherited and one which he seems to have purchased.

Unless there is an unexpected outcome from George Mitchell's tour of the Middle East, Obama's goodwill toward the Arab and Islamic worlds could quickly dissipate over Gaza. The military conflict may be over, but the bitterness over the deaths of more than 1300 Gazans, most of them civilians, is not going away. And because President-elect Obama said next-to-nothing while the Israeli attack was ongoing, the burden of expectation upon President Obama to do something beyond an Al Arabiya interview is even greater.

Whether the Bush Administration directly supported Israel's attempt to overthrow Hamas and put the Palestinian Authority in Gaza or whether it was drawn along by Tel Aviv's initiative, the cold political reality is that this failed. Indeed, the operation --- again in political, not military, terms --- backfired. Hamas' position has been strengthened, while the Palestinian Authority now looks weak and may even be in trouble in its base of the West Bank.

And there are wider re-configurations. Egypt, which supported the Israeli attempt, is now having to recover some modicum of authority in the Arab world while Syria, which openly supported Hamas, has been bolstered. (Those getting into detail may note not only the emerging alliance between Damascus, Turkey, and Iran but also that Syria has sent an Ambassador to Beirut, effectively signalling a new Syrian-Lebanese relationship.)

Put bluntly, the Obama Administration --- with its belated approach to Gaza and its consequences --- is entering a situation which it does not control and, indeed, which it cannot lead. The US Government may pretend that it can pursue a political and diplomatic resolution by talking to only two of the three central actors, working with Israel and the Palestinian Authority but not Hamas, but that is no longer an approach recognised by most in the region and beyond. (In a separate post later today, I'll note a signal that even Washington's European allies are bowing to the existence of Hamas.)

The Israel-Palestine-Gaza situation is not my foremost concern, however. As significant, in symbolic and political terms, as that conflict might be for Washington's position in the Middle East and beyond, it will be a sideshow if the President and his advisors march towards disaster in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

On Wednesday, the New York Times had the red-flag story. White House staffers leaked the essence of the Obama plan: increase US troop levels in Afghanistan, leave nation-building to “the Europeans”, and drop Afghan President Hamid Karzai if he had any objections. On the same day, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told Congressional committees that the US would continue its bombing of targets in northwest Pakistan. (Not a surprise, since the first strikes of the Obama era had already taken place , killing 19 people, most of them civilians.)

So much for “smart power”. Leave aside, for the moment, that the rationale for the approach to Afghanistan --- Gates saying that the US had to defeat “Al Qa'eda” --- is either a diversion or a flight for reality, since the major challenge in the country (and indeed in Pakistan) is from local insurgents. Consider the consequences.

What happens to Obama's symbolic goodwill in not only the Islamic world but worlds beyond when an increase in US forces and US operations leads to an increase in civilian deaths, when America walks away from economic and social projects as it concentrates on the projection of force, when there are more detainees pushed into Camp Bagram (which already has more than twice as many “residents” and worse conditions than Guantanamo Bay)? What happens to “smart power” when Obama's pledge to listen and grasp the unclenched fist is replaced with a far more forceful, clenched American fist? And what has happened to supposed US respect for freedom and democracy when Washington not only carries out unilateral operations in Pakistan but threatens to topple an Afghan leader who it put into power in 2001/2?

This approach towards Afghanistan/Pakistan will crack even the bedrock of US-European relations. In Britain, America's closest ally in this venture, politicians, diplomats, and military commanders are close-to-openly horrified at the US takeover and direction of this Afghan strategy and at the consequences in Pakistan of the US bombings and missile strikes. Put bluntly, “Europe” isn't going to step up to nation-build throughout Afghanistan as a mere support for American's military-first strategy. And when it doesn't, Obama and advisors will have a choice: will they then criticise European allies to the point of risking NATO --- at least in “out-of-area” operations --- or will it accept a limit to their actions?

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the lack of agreement in the Obama Administration so far on a defined number of US troops means the President might not be in accord with the approach unveiled in the New York Times. Maybe the Administration will pursue an integrated political strategy, talking to groups inside Afghanistan (and, yes, that includes “moderate Taliban”) and to other countries with influence, such as Iran. Or maybe it won't do any of this, but Afghanistan won't be a disaster, or at least a symbolic disaster --- as with Iraq from 2003 --- spilling over into all areas of US foreign policy.

Sitting here amidst the grey rain of Dublin and the morning-after recognition that “expert thought” in the US, whatever that means, doesn't see the dangers in Afghanistan and Pakistan that I've laid out, I desperately hope to be wrong.

Because, if the world was made in six days, parts of it can be unmade in the next six months.

Your Obama on Top of the World Updates (22 January)

Related Post: The Joseph Lowery Benediction
Related Post: The Inaugural - The Daily Show Tribute

5:55 p.m. Mike here- one last update: Obama has called on Israel to open its borders with Gaza.

5 p.m. Well, that's Day 2 (so far) of the Great Obama Foreign Policy Journey. Tomorrow, we'll attempt an assessment of the ups, downs, and in-betweens of the initial meetings and decisions.

The President's moves not only on Guantanamo Bay but on CIA black sites were encouraging, even if they cannot be implemented soon. Less encouraging, despite all the fanfare at the State Department were the Mitchell and Holbrooke appointments, as it is not clear the Administration has really thought through its diplomatic approach. It is a blessing, at least, that Obama and Hillary Clinton did not make the situation worse by naming Dennis Ross as envoy on Iranian matters, a move only slightly less provocative than appointing Mike Tyson to keep the peace.

The emerging conflict and muddle over Iraq and Afghanistan, brought out by the Robert Gates statement and the military-White House competing briefings on Iraq, is not encouraging.

Good night and peace to all.

4:50 p.m. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has issued what is, frankly, a very strange statement on the Administration's goals in Afghanistan.

Gates, unintentionally, points to the conflict that has already broken out over troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, stating that "no decision on troop deployments to Afghanistan has been made". What is even more disconcerting, however, is his explanation that the Obama Administration's new war plan will focus on "very concrete things" such as establishing control in parts of the country, going after al Qaeda, and delivering services and security for the Afghan people.

Hmm....isn't that what the Bush Administration was doing? Apparently not: "The goals we did have for Afghanistan [were] too broad and too far into the future, [were] too future-oriented, and [were] we need more concrete goals that can be achieved realistically within three to five years."

That, to be blunt, is gobbledy-gook. One can only hope it is not reflective of the thinking in the NSC-military meeting yesterday.



4:40 p.m. And is that an Obama pre-emptive strike in the US approach to Iran? He declares that all external support for "terrorist organizations in the Middle East" must be halted.

4:35 p.m. But George Mitchell, I fear, may already be boxed in by his President. After declaring to applause that "the US will not torture", Obama firmly declared that Hamas must not re-arm and recognise Israel's right to exist.

The question is whether the US Government will discreetly talk to Hamas in advance of such a statement, hoping to move the organisation towards recognition of Tel Aviv, or set recognition as a pre-condition for any discussions. If the latter, the Mitchell mission is a non-starter.

4:30 p.m. George Mitchell's opening statement was professional and suitably non-committal. He said there was no conflict that could not be resolved and promised a sustained effort by the Obama Administration towards Middle Eastern peace.

A reader notes, "The word Palestinians was used twice, the word Ireland I lost count. Good to know they're sending a clear message."

4:25 p.m. A bit of a show at State Department as President Obama and Vice President Biden in clear show of support --- a far cry from the ostracism of the Department and its Secretary,  Colin Powell, in first term of Bush Administration.

3:55 p.m. Richard Holbrooke has also been confirmed as envoy to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. However --- and this is both unexpected and significant --- Dennis Ross has not been named as envoy on Iranian matters.

3:40 p.m. Confirmation that George Mitchell will be Barack Obama's envoy to the Middle East. The former Senator and experienced negotiator, who helped broker the 1998 Northern Ireland agreement and served as Bill Clinton's envoy in 2000 to Israel and Palestine, is of Lebanese descent. Officials and Administration contacts are keen to play up Mitchell as an honest broker:

By naming Mitchell as his personal envoy, Obama is sending a diplomatic heavyweight to the region. "He's neither pro-Israeli nor pro-Palestinian," Martin S. Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, told The New York Times. "He's, in a sense, neutral."

Mitchell is probably best known on the world stage for the Good Friday agreement he negotiated between Roman Catholics and Protestants that created a cease-fire in Northern Ireland in 1998.

2:35pm A list of all Obama's executive orders to date is being published here. (Thanks, mhasko)

1:35 p.m. It's official. Obama has signed an executive order requiring the Guantánamo Bay detention facility be closed within a year.

1:30 p.m. ABC News reports that there were no arrests at Tuesday's inauguration.

10 a.m. And so the manoeuvring within the Obama White House begins. The President, as we noted, tried to lock down any speculation over the outcome of yesterday's meeting of the National Security Council and military with the statement, "I asked the military leadership to engage in additional planning necessary to execute a responsible military drawdown from Iraq."

However, CNN has heard from "Pentagon officials [who] said the generals left believing they were not ordered to being implementing [Obama's] campaign promise to pull all US combat troops from Iraq within 16 months". So a White House official is "insisting that the President did remind the commanders of his goal to remove troops, but he wants to get their input, so he asked them to come up with a plan that's workable".

9:35 a.m. They Just Won't Go Away: All week long, The Wall Street Journal has been desperately insisting that former President Bush was jolly good for the United States and one day we'll all be grateful for his wisdom and leadership. Today it's Karl Rove's turn, as he moves from "the thoughtfulness and grace so characteristic of this wonderful American family" to declare "right about Iraq", "right to take the war on terror abroad", "right to be a unilateralist", say on AIDS in Africa, right on tax cuts, right on Medicare, etc.

Number of times Hurricane Katrina mentioned in article: 0

9:30 a.m. Dramatic, almost star-struck scenes as the new Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, addresses State Department staff. Career diplomats are standing on desks to get a glimpse of Clinton. There is huge enthusiasm when Clinton promises to remedy the "neglect" the Department has suffered in recent years.

7:25 a.m. Today's Axis of Evil Alert: Lawyer Robert Amsterdam in The Washington Post:

The administrations of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Vladimir Putin in Russia are enjoying a robust, burgeoning friendship. Though they are separated by 6,000 miles, the two leaders' bond is sealed not only by their similar tastes for repressive authoritarianism, oil expropriations and large arms deals but also by parallel trends of increasing violence and murder on the streets of their cities.

7:15 a.m. Culture of Fear Alert: Marc A. Thiessen, former speechwriter for former President George W. Bush: "President Obama has inherited a set of tools that successfully protected the country for 2,688 days -- and he cannot dismantle those tools without risking catastrophic consequences."

(Note: George W. Bush was also President from 20 January to 11 September 2001, when more than 3000 people were killed in attacks in the United States.)

7 a.m. The Dark-Horse Crisis? Under the radar of most of the media, the situation in Somalia (and the Bush Administration's policy there) continues to deteriorate. The Washington Post sounds the alarm, "With Ethiopian Pullout, Islamists Rise Again in Somalia". UN agencies are threatening to halt food distribution because of attacks on their staff.

The US-fostered and Ethiopia-implemented overthrow of the Islamic Courts government in 2006 was meant to install a "proper" Government that would support American plans in East Africa. Instead, that Somalian administration has collapsed, and "more radical" Islamic groups such as al-Shahab have emerged.

6:30 a.m. In overnight fighting in eastern Afghanistan, NATO and US military claim that 28 militants killed.

4:30 a.m. Still no significant word, however, on Obama's National Security Council meeting with military commanders, including General David Petraeus, on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Instead, after the meeting, Obama issued a holding statement:“I asked the military leadership to engage in additional planning necessary to execute a responsible military drawdown from Iraq....[I plan] to undertake a full review of the situation in Afghanistan in order to develop a comprehensive policy for the entire region.”

Dexter Filkins of The New York Times has an article, "In Afghan South, Taliban Fill NATO's Big Gaps", which highlights the tenuous situation in the country and possibly makes the Administration's case for a doubling of US troop levels.

4:20 a.m. Now, this is huge. According to The New York Times:

President Obama is expected to sign executive orders Thursday directing the Central Intelligence Agency to shut what remains of its network of secret prisons and ordering the closing of the Guantánamo detention camp within a year.

So the closure is not just of Camp X-Ray but of all the "black sites" involved in the rendition programmes pursued by the Bush Administration. Those sites, reportedly scattered across Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia have handled and hidden away far more detainees than the number remaining in Guantanamo Bay. If Obama combines this with an order that US intelligence services do not operate these covert prisons in future, that will be a major step back to legal campaigns against those who threaten American security.

One caveat: this order will not affect Camp Bagram in Afghanistan, which is run by the US military and is by far the biggest American detention facility outside the United States.

3:45 a.m. Well, He's Got Fidel's Endorsement: Castro on-line statement says, "I do not have the slightest doubt of the honesty of Obama when he expresses his ideas."

2:45 a.m. So let me understand this: a President re-takes the oath of office to ensure he adheres to the US Constitution while a former President and his advisors, who trampled all over the Constitution, don't have to do anything?

1:05 a.m. Today Obama will sign the order, which we mentioned yesterday, promising the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility within 12 months.

Morning update (1 a.m.) One of the minor setbacks for President Obama yesterday was the delay in naming a team to implement the approach to the Middle East, Iran, and Central/South Asia. Simple reason --- it wouldn't have been fitting to roll out his special envoys before Hillary Clinton was appointed as Secretary of State.

This will be remedied today with the naming of George Mitchell as envoy to Israel and Palestine, Dennis Ross as envoy to Iran, and Richard Holbrooke as envoy to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. The announcement brings back three politicians/diplomats from the global negotiations of the 1990s.

We'll offer an analysis as soon as the news is confirmed but, in brief.... Mitchell (with experience that includes the brokering of a Northern Ireland settlement) is an excellent choice but will be limited by Obama's so-far passive approach to the Gaza crisis and possibly by a policy that will not countenance any inclusion of Hamas in negotiations. Holbrooke (with his record in cases such as the Balkans talks in the 1990s) is well-qualified. Ross (as Bill Clinton's representative in Israel-Palestine talks) has experience but --- with a hard-line towards Tehran and ties with groups that countenance coercion of Iran rather than diplomacy --- could be a major error.

A Note to President Obama: The Case for Torture

A lot of woolly liberals are insisting that President Barack Obama, almost as he tosses aside the Bible (or Koran, according to Conservapedia) upon which he takes the oath of office, should forbid any use of "coercive interrogation" by American authorities. Mark Kleiman, however, still sees a need for torture to preserve the United States from wrongdoers who brought this country close to ruin over the last eight years:

Every step taken since the Bush administration took power: ignoring the al-Qaeda problem until the 9/11 attacks, covering up the role of the House of Saud in facilitating those attacks, using the aftermath of those attacks for partisan advantage rather than forming a government of national unity, allowing bin Laden's escape, failing to establish an effective anti-Taliban coalition in Afghanistan, continuing to prop up Pervez Musharraf despite his strong support for the Islamofascist ISI, failing to secure international support for the invasion of Iraq, invading Iraq, failing to prevent looting in Iraq, disbanding the Iraqi army and most of the civil service in the name of de-Ba'athification, supporting Ahmed Chalabi in his power-lust despite his ties to Iran, staffing the CPA with ignorant young wingnuts instead of professionals, allowing the looting of the CPA by contractors and cooking up legal interpretations to protect them from criminal liability, engaging in torture, failing to cover up the fact that they were engaging in torture -- Need I go on? -- has tended to weaken this country, and the West, in this existential struggle....

The President-elect should, therefore, as his first official act -- indeed, perhaps as part of his Inaugural Address -- order the immediate detention of George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales, Donald Rumsfeld, John Yoo, David Addington, and perhaps a few others, at a secret location outside the sovereign U.S., for the purposes of extracting from them evidence of the plot and the identities of the other participants, who can in turn be detained and interrogated to see what they have to say for themselves.

TORTURE: A MODEST PROPOSAL

The incoming Obama administration confronts the problem of how to deal with the criminal (by domestic as well as international law) infliction of torture by elements of the United States government, with authority coming from the very top, and not merely on important terrorists but on random innocent victims.

While the Bush administration has no doubt made errors in the course of its valiant attempts to protect us all from Islamofascist terrorists, in one respect it has displayed admirable creativity, from which the Obama administration could benefit: assuming only that the President-elect is sufficiently generous-minded (as he seems to be) to be willing to learn from adversaries.

I refer to the question of the limits of executive power, or rather the unlimitedness of executive power. To call the legal positions taken by the Bush administration "creative" would be to undervalue them: "breathtakingly audacious" would be more accurate. But those positions, and the actions taken in accordance with them, now stand as precedent, and the President-elect has expressed his admiration for audacity.

Audacity is certainly called for. Our situation today is historically unique. Not only are we (as the Bush administration and its supporters tirelessly insist) at war with an enemy so nebulous as to guarantee that the war will have no end, but we confront strong evidence of the existence of a Fifth Column, though not the particular Fifth Column the war hawks predicted.

Every step taken since the Bush administration took power: ignoring the al-Qaeda problem until the 9/11 attacks, covering up the role of the House of Saud in facilitating those attacks, using the aftermath of those attacks for partisan advantage rather than forming a government of national unity, allowing bin Laden's escape, failing to establish an effective anti-Taliban coalition in Afghanistan, continuing to prop up Pervez Musharraf despite his strong support for the Islamofascist ISI, failing to secure international support for the invasion of Iraq, invading Iraq, failing to prevent looting in Iraq, disbanding the Iraqi army and most of the civil service in the name of de-Ba'athification, supporting Ahmed Chalabi in his power-lust despite his ties to Iran, staffing the CPA with ignorant young wingnuts instead of professionals, allowing the looting of the CPA by contractors and cooking up legal interpretations to protect them from criminal liability, engaging in torture, failing to cover up the fact that they were engaging in torture -- Need I go on? -- has tended to weaken this country, and the West, in this existential struggle.

It is of course possible to explain each of those decisions individually as the product of ideology, corruption, incompetence, or some combination of the three. But surely it strains credulity to imagine that the entire pattern, tending inevitably to the end of strengthening our enemies and weakening our institutions and our alliances, was mere accident. Surely the least hypothesis is that there were, in the Bush administration and its supporting institutions, one or more Islamofascist moles. The Hansen case reminds us that the best cover for a mole is apparent fanatical hatred of whichever foreign power the mole is working for. So we should seek out our Fifth Column among those who have been loudest in denouncing Islamofascism, and especially among those most insistent on subverting our Constitution to do so.

That points directly at Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Gonzales, Addington, and Yoo. Perhaps they are innocent, but the presumption of innocence is one of those ideas Yoo properly dismissed as "quaint." Remember, it was precisely the decision to treat terrorism as a law enforcement problem (with responses constrained by the Constitution) that the Bush administration correctly identified as the key weakness of the Clinton administration in its response to terrorism.

No, this is a matter of national security, and therefore covered by President-to-be Obama's inherent and unlimitable powers as Commander-in-Chief in wartime. According to the various doctrines offered by the Bush administration, he he can order the indefinite detention, and aggressive interrogation, of anyone he deems, his sole and un-reviewable judgment, to be an enemy combatant, including anyone who has given "material support" to terrorism. And as long as those detentions and interrogations occur outside the sovereign territory of the United States -- at Gitmo or Bagram, for example -- neither the courts nor the Congress has any authority to intervene, or even to inquire: even in cases where the subjects of the detention were known in advance to be innocent of anything but boasting. Indeed, any Congressional inquiry at all into any action by the president or his aides -- even frankly criminal activity such as the obstruction of justice -- is barred by the doctrine of Executive Privilege, as asserted by the Bush administration.

The President-elect should, therefore, as his first official act -- indeed, perhaps as part of his Inaugural Address -- order the immediate detention of George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales, Donald Rumsfeld, John Yoo, David Addington, and perhaps a few others, at a secret location outside the sovereign U.S., for the purposes of extracting from them evidence of the plot and the identities of the other participants, who can in turn be detained and interrogated to see what they have to say for themselves.

Since most bullies are also cowards, I suspect that the years of maltreatment the Bush Administration inflicted on innocent Afghani peasants to get them to make false confessions will not be necessary to get Bush and his cronies to confess. A month of hypothermia, sleep deprivation, and stress positions, or a few minutes on the waterboard, should suffice. Their confessions will retrospectively justify the interrogations. And of course they cannot be given the right to counsel, since their lawyers would necessarily learn about the interrogation techniques, which are Top Secret Codeword material as intelligence sources and methods, despite the fact that everyone in the world knows what they are. (The techniques are not original: all of them were copied from the Inquisition, the Gestapo, and the KGB.)

Now perhaps some future court might decide that these methods, as applied to people whose status generally makes them "non-torturable," actually exceeded the president's powers, even in wartime. But not only would that decision be wrong on its face -- since those powers have no limits -- but even bringing the case would be wrong. As all our Wise Men agree, no senior official should ever be held legally accountable for actions in the name of national security, no matter how horrible those actions might be.

So now is the moment for the President-elect to confute his critics, and demonstrate that he has the toughness needed to deal with the Islamofascist threat, no matter who its agents may be.