Cheney Speaks

I assume that Cheney understands both the Geneva Conventions and the US Constitution as representing social contracts, rather than expressions of absolute moral standards of conduct. As such, he would consider them Very Good Things, but not necessarily applicable to those who don’t agree to abide by them. To choose an obvious example, many of the protections that normally apply to citizens under the US Constitution are denied to convicted felons, who have, under this reading, effectively forfeited those protections by flouting the Constitutionally enacted laws of the land.

I would say that Cheney’s take on these matters was virtually universal until perhaps two or three decades ago, when the idea of both the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions as absolute, universal moral codes of government conduct, applying irrespective of anyone’s acceptance of them, came into fashion in some circles. That doesn’t mean that the new view is wrong, of course, or that its adherents aren’t entitled to argue against, or even ridicule, Cheney’s position. But treating it as some kind of logical inconsistency or confusion on his part, when it’s actually both logically straightforward and historically familiar, fails to address the issue Cheney raises.

The difference here is that felons rights are supposed to be curtailed, as necessary for the administration of justice, *after* a fair trial conducted according to internationally-recognised norms – as opposed to, say, a dodgy military tribunal.

By contrast, the Bush administration’s position appears to be that the Executive branch can just decide to torture, wiretap, or imprison without trial anyone it feels like, whenever it feels like, even if the law and the constitution expressly says it cannot. Of course they don’t put it quite that starkly, but that is the sum total of what they have been arguing for. They have argued that they can classify anyone as an enemy combatant, and that enemy combatants are the scum of the earth and therefore can have their rights restricted without trial (because “they would do worse to us if they could”). There are many problems with that idea, foremost among them being: what if they are mistaken, or lying when they say that someone is an enemy combatant?

A small point. The post at TPM is by weekend contributor Steve Benen who blogs at The Carpetbagger Report.

This speech, like all his speeches, is nothing but pathological cynicism all the way down.

Personally, I find complaints that a politician’s speech is “nothing but pathological cynicism” a bit like complaints that a Broadway musical is “nothing but implausible melodrama”. But perhaps that’s just me…

dan simon:

No, not all politicians are completely full-of-sh*t, cynical, immoral, scheming, secretive, Constitution-subverting, shadow-government-running, protofascist liars.

So your comparison is inapt.

Dick Cheney has yet again dishonored his country.

Cheney makes me sick. But what also makes me sick is people still throwing the ‘pox on both your houses argument’- that all politicians are the same, so what’s the big deal about Cheney? Dan Simon will have some smart alec response about how his claim was more limited. But I’m tired of hearing apologists for these people… its been clear for a long time what this administration is about and its clear that their ideological kin are intellectually and morally bankrupt as well.

following Martin Bento’s point, Cheney merely places enemies who oppose and despise everything you know to be right alongside talk of terrorists. If we decouple them, then perhaps he’s giving a timely and generous warning to the people who will shortly be up to their necks in his armageddon strategy.

It’s not that complicated, and we fool ourselves when we think Cheney has thought deeply about such matters. All he’s saying is that we’re good and they’re evil, and the rest of us should keep our virtue in our pants where it belongs.

“This guy is a pox on U.S. politics” pretty much sums it up.

You could write a pretty good pulp biography of Cheney with a picture of his snarling maw and a big red arrow pointing to it with a comic balloon saying ‘This guy is a pox on U.S. politics’ and it would be better read than the drool of official Cheney biographer Stephen Hayes. If you want to ‘academic’ it up a little you could publish it in hardcover, add endnotes, and call it Pox Americana.

So where’s the acorn, Teddy?

It’s not exactly a policy, but the Hainan island spy-plane incident – they handled it relatively well. Without starting a nuclear war, anyway. I guess they didn’t think of themselves as the rules of the universe at the time yet.

Teddy is just reminding us of the mathematical fact that if you sit a monkey at a typewriter for a million years, at some point he will type poetry. I’m not really sure whether Cheney or Bush could manage that without fucking it up, but it sounds like a good way of keeping them occupied for a while.

I yield to nobody in my dislike of this administration, but I can think of one Bush administration policy initiative that has, on the margin, been a good thing: the National Endowment of the Humanities’ We the People Initiative to encourage the study of American history. Among other things, it has provided an infusion of funds (with no ideological strings attached) to state humanities councils. As a member of the Oklahoma Humanities Council’s board, I know that this money has done a lot of good.

On the other hand, perhaps it’s only fair to view We the People in the context of the administration’s larger set of policies related to the study of American history, which have been disastrous: e.g its incredible secrecy about the present; its reclassification of the past; its denial of visas to major overseas scholars whose politics it objects to; its bullying rhetoric about historical “revisionism”; etc. Obviously, We the People in no way compensates for this bigger picture. To the extent that it functions as a kind of political cover for the substantive ways in which the administration has harmed the study of the American past, We the People is obviously not a good thing (though I’ve never actually heard anyone attempt to defend the administration in this way).

But, taken on its own admittedly modest terms, the We the People Initiative is the one example I can come up with of a Bush/Cheney policy initiative that has worked reasonably well.

Kevin, my intervention did not actually amount to the claim “that the Bush administration must have done something right at least once”. You should have noticed that I was just saying that it would be astonishing if Bush and Cheney fucked up every single policy during their relatively long time in office. There is a whole range of things between fucking up and doing something right. For instance, if their performance is graded on a five-point scale, say, 1-very good, 2-good, 3-mixed, 4-bad, 5-very bad (fucked up), my point was simply that Quiggin’s assertion that they deserve grade 5 on absolutely everything they did is ludicrous. So I don’t see why I should be under any obligation to prove that they sometimes did something right (i.e., deserved grade 1 or 2), when my only goal was to dispute Quiggin’s preposterous statement that every single of their policies was an abject failure. Remember, my aim was not to evaluate the politics of the Bush administration but merely to warn some CT-ers of the worst form of their Bush-Cheney Derangement Syndrome. (Unfortunately the virus seems to be spreading: the new instance is Engels’s suggestion that the President and Vice-President of the United States are stupider than monkeys.)

“they slighter up to his throat.”

should be slither up to his throat

Teddy, do you suffer from some sort of brain damage that prevents you from understanding the context of words? Obviously, almost no one thinks that Bush/Cheney fucked up every single thing they did — I’m sure every bathroom break was executed perfectly. Hyperbole is an ordinary speaking technique — something tells me that you use it yourself when you’re not busy annoying total strangers on the internet. Though I suppose the brain damage prevents you from caring about your effect on others.

Why then is Cheney such a great friend to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE? Aren’t these the hotbeds of Wahhabism, the most extreme Islamic sect and don’t those regimes provide generous funding to this sect? So is Cheney a friend of those “who oppose and despise everything you know to be right, every notion of upright conduct and character, and every belief you consider worth fighting for and living for”? Cheney’s only god is Mammon. He is willing to accomodate those who “despise our values” as long as he and his cronies can profit from them.

I thought it was absolutely clear to everyone that we were discussing Bush’s and Cheney’s policies, not what they did in the bathroom

There’s a difference?

Teddy, you’re here not because you want to discuss Bush and Cheney’s policies, but because you are a masochist who likes to be insulted by strangers. My question is “why”? Is it rainy day where you are, so you decided you had nothing better to do than be insulted by strangers? Is it actually brain damage? If you really do suffer from brain damage, then I’d feel a little bad about insulting you for it.

the mathematical fact that if you sit a monkey at a typewriter for a million years

Er, that’s not a “mathematical fact”. The monkeys-and-typewriters hypothesis deals with concepts of infinity. A million years is not an infinite period.

“High degree of certainty” and “fact” are not the same either…

Ejh – You really are taking all this Very, Very Seriously.

(PS. I know they’re not the same, thanks. The “fact” is that the monkey will almost certainly do it. And if I had been trying to advance a thesis in mathematical epistemology, rather than making a childish joke at Dick Cheney’s expense, I wouldn’t have said “fact” but “mathematically proven”, or “easy to prove”, or something similar.)

Dan,

I think calling Afghanistan an “objective success” is a real stretch. The primary goal of the invasion of Afghanistan was to capture bin Laden and put Al Qaeda out of business. That aspect of the mission failed. The secondary goal was to rid Afghanistan of the Taliban and presumably replace it with a stable “democratic” government. The invasion deposed the Taliban, but hardly got rid of it. And my sense is that the Afghani government governs Kabul on a good day, and the rest of the country not so much. Thus, I would hardly call the invasion of Afghanistan an “objective success,” though I would agree that however messed up it was (and is), it’s not quite as bad as Iraq.

I would also disagree with your description of the Medicare prescription drug coverage as merely a “partisan controversy.” Many fiscally conservative Republicans (especially in the House were there are a few left) only signed on to it on the basis of the Bush administration’s intentionally underestimating the cost of the program. Medicare Part D has received much criticism from both sides of the aisle.

Recent polls have also shown that many rank-and-file Republicans are growing weary of the war on Iraq. For example, last month, a Strategic Vision poll of likely GOP Iowa-caucus goers asked “Do you favor a withdrawal of all United States military from Iraq within the next six months?” 52% said yes; 39% said no. Iraq is no longer a partisan issue. The American people, regardless of party, want out. Unfortunately for us, the Congresspeople and Senators from both major parties want to continue the war. Though there’s plenty of partisan gamesmanship in DC about Iraq, the war is no longer, in the main, a partisan issue.

I think calling Afghanistan an “objective success” is a real stretch.

You’re not kidding. It’s a truly remarkable claim. I very much doubt that the civilians who are being repeatedly bombed in air raids would concur – although it is possible that their opinions are considered of very little value. As, indeed, their lives appear to be.

It appears to me Cheney is being frustratringly allusive and non-committal in his speech. He is pointing in the direction of a debate that is surely much on the mind of every cadet in attendance. All of them have been at West Point since 2003, and through almost the entire duration of the Iraq War, and they have no doubt debated the issues related to the treatment of prisoners and torture many times among themselves, and in their classes on military ethics and law. Yet Cheney declines to endorse a clear position in this debate, allowing different listeners to draw different conclusions.

The paragraph that mentions the Geneva Conventions and the Constitution is preceded by this one:

The standards of this Academy only highlight the deepest and most fundamental difference between the United States and our sworn enemies. A month ago, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Pace, spoke to this class about each officer’s duty to follow a moral compass in all of his or her actions. In these four years you have learned the rules of warfare and professional military ethics. You’ve studied the tenets of morality. You’ve reflected on the seven Army values: of loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage. You have lived by a code of honor, and internalized that code as West Point men and women always do.

As Kieren says, there is no doubt that Cheney presents the rules, duties, standards and values as good things: they are supposed to be what distinguishes the honorable and civilized soldiers sitting before him from the contemptible and cowardly enemies of civilization comprising the enemy.

On the other hand, these rules and codes of military conduct seem to be addressed from an aloof, dispassionate distance. One could certainly make the case that Cheney is implicitly endorsing the the contractarian point that Dan Simon suggests, something like this: “The rules of warfare as we know them are conventions explicitly adopted by civilized nations, to govern the conduct of their wars with one another. But as enemies of civilization itself, our current foes stand outside of this contract and thus outside its protections.”

Another possibility is that Cheney’s attitude is closer to this: “It is your hard duty to uphold the standards of moral and professional conduct by which you are bound, and about which General Pace reminded you a month ago. However, you have my sympathies, because we all know you cannot expect that your enemy will uphold similar standards of honorable conduct.”

One thing that is clear though is that Cheney expresses no appreciation at all of the possibility that upholding these standards might be more than a sometimes irksome duty, but may actually help the country advance its interests and win its wars, by making it an object of moral admiration and emulation.

Ah yes, Dan Simon, Iraq the partisan controversy. 655,000 dead would probably want to argue it’s an objective failure, but they can’t. They’re dead.

56 should read refuring not refuting.

Not to mention that he is a liar(Atta), a war-profiteer(Halliburton fraud in the billions upon billions of dollars) and a coward(five deferments).

What no one has mentioned is the enormous psychological victory that Cheney and Bush have handed to Bin Laden. Bin Laden & co took advantage of some weaknesses in American security, got lucky and managed to kill a few thousand people. Stalin would snicker in contempt at such a paltry total. Yet by insisting we need to disregard the Geneva conventions and other legal protections, and that we need to consider “enhanced interrogation methods” (torture) Cheney and Bush have inflated Bin Laden into the equivalent of Spectre or Lex Luthor. Think of what that must do for Bin laden’s reputation and recruiting – all these mighty Americans quaking in fear, pronouncing him the mightiest enemy ever – must be better than sex for him.

We should keep our traditional laws and rights not merely out of moral principle, but to demonstrate our confidence and our contempt for the enemy. One religious fanatic punk isn’t worth scrapping our society for.

“There is a position that the Geneva Conventions (as applied to the US who has not ratified the entirety of the Conventions) do not protect actors who fail to meet the minimum requirements for protection. More simply, fight honorably and be treated honorably, fight dishonorably and be treated dishonorably. Cheney seems to be refuting to this position.”

Posted by james

That position is wrong; the Geneva Conventions apply to anybody in a conflict. Note that this is not ‘prisoner of war’ status. Most particularly, and most criminally, the GC basically says that one can’t just grab civilians at random, and torture/kill them at a whim. This is the power specifically claimed by the Bush/Cheney administration, and implemented across the world.

Note that the Geneva Conventions don’t mandate kid gloves; executing most guerrillas (after a trial) would be acceptable. Picking up and torturing people ‘because’, however does indeed violate the Geneva Conventions.

Just because no one’s come right out and said it, let me point out the obvious interpretation of Cheney’s speech. By mocking the idea of applying the Constitution and Geneva Conventions to captured prisoners, he’s encouraging Army officers to commit war crimes by torturing them.

Perhaps this is too obvious to be worth mentioning?

I find it hard to believe that a captured killer will be “quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States”.

I read the transcript of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad’s hearings and he sounded more like “you have your rules, I have mine”.

But of course it doesn’t hurt when your country’s military associate your domestic political opponents with “enemies who oppose and despise everything you know to be right”.