In his press conference
Wednesday night, Obama offered a nice little
sermonette on
"shortcuts."
Asked about his decision to release the "torture
memos" and ban waterboarding, Obama said: "I was struck by an article
that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British
during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had
200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, 'We don’t torture,' when . . .
all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and
threat. . . . Churchill understood, you start taking shortcuts, over
time, that corrodes what’s best in a people. It corrodes the character
of a country."
It’s a nice, honorable statement. But there’s not
much evidence it’s true.
Churchill and Great Britain didn’t quite
take the firm stand against "torture" that Obama suggests. During the
war, the Brits ran an interrogation center, "the Cage," in one of
London’s fanciest neighborhoods, where they worked over 3,573 captured
Germans, sometimes brutally. The Free French movement, headquartered in
London, savagely beat detainees under the nose of British authorities.
Regardless of the debatable facts, the real problem is this idea
that "taking shortcuts" erodes the character of a people. One hears this
constantly, but it is almost invariably asserted rather than
demonstrated.
First, this argument assumes society knows about
the shortcuts. After all, if the shortcut in question is kept a secret,
then it’s hard to see how the "character of a people" will be corroded
(or that such methods will be used as a "recruiting tool"). Alas, the
idea that the government should be able to do things in secret to fight
a war is out of vogue today.
The more significant shortcuts are
the public ones people can’t ignore. Churchill ordered the firebombing
of Dresden just twelve weeks before the end of World War II. No one
knows for sure how many civilians were burned alive, but tens of
thousands surely were, in no small part to deliver a psychological blow
to the Germans. If Churchill could have waterboarded a prisoner to avoid
that -- or stop the Holocaust -- would one shortcut have been preferable
to the other? Why? Or why not? Obama gives no sense he has an answer to
such questions. You can ask the same questions about the shortcuts that
flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Did these shortcuts erode the
character of the American and British people? If so, how? And what does
it say about the "greatest generation" Barack Obama invokes
relentlessly? And, again, what of the shortcuts we don’t know about?
Churchill was a heroic leader. He did right as best he could in a
bloody mess of a war. But he made countless horrible-but-correct
decisions in the process. For instance, he refused to warn residents of
Coventry that the Nazis were going to bomb, lest he betray the secret
that he was listening to Nazi cable traffic. After the war, he advocated
the shortcut of summary executions of Nazi officials.
It might
seem otherwise, but I’m not making the case for what some people see as
torture. I’m simply noting that war is always about shortcuts -- all are
horrible; some are necessary. If Obama doesn’t understand that, let’s
hope he never has to learn it.
Do You Feel Safer
After 100 days, do you feel safer? (01:24)
A Lawless Supreme Court Justice
Obama made a
short statement about the
retirement of Justice Souter in which he
outlined what he will be looking for in Souter's replacement. He stated,
in part:
"I will seek someone who understands that justice isn't
about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book. It is also
about how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives --
whether they can make a living and care for their families; whether they
feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation."
"I view
that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's
hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving as just
decisions and outcomes."
By indicating that his concern is not just
with just decisions but also just outcomes, Obama reveals the lawless
quality of his thinking. The legitimate function of a judge is to reach
just decisions, full stop. Once judges, or the president who appoints
them, start thinking about just outcomes, we are well down the path to
judicial tyranny. And once just outcomes are defined as those that
display empathy for "the people," we could be starting down the road to
banana republic status.
Obama apparently wants outcomes that will
make people feel welcome in their own nation. It's not clear to me what
he's referring to here. But whatever it is, the extent to which people
feel welcome must be determined by how their neighbors view them and, to
the extent (limited, one hopes) the law becomes involved, the rights and
benefits conferred by the language of the laws in question.
If
Obama wants to appoint a Justice who has run or worked in a soup
kitchen, that's fine. But it looks to me like he wants to appoint a
Justice who will reach outcomes that establish "soup kitchens"
regardless of whether that's the best view of the legal provision he or
she is interpreting.
Expect the worst, not just from this
judicial nomination but from all subsequent ones.
Obama's War On Free Speech
Obama and
congressional Democrats are intent on
nationalizing media in the U.S. much the same way they nationalized
the U.S. auto industry and the nation's banking and financial
institutions.
This isn't the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" --
it's much worse -- here's what you can expect in the coming weeks
and months:
• a new appointment to the position of chairman of the
Federal Communications Commission who will implement a plan to create
"community advisory boards" of community activists to monitor the
content of talk-radio programs, threatening stations that carry
dissenting content with broadcast license challenges;
• billions
of additional dollars to be invested in so-called "public broadcasting"
-- those entities already funded and controlled by government;
• bailouts of failing newspapers perceived as essential propaganda tools
for the party.
It's a program worthy of the old Soviet Union -- where
the old joke noted there was no truth in Pravda and no news in Izvestia. But this is no joking matter. The First Amendment is at stake.
The FCC is currently composed of two Democrat and two Republican
commissioners. Obama has nominated a new chairman, Julius Genachowski,
which would give Democrats a 3-2 majority once he is confirmed.
But the nominee is not just another Democrat. He's a Democrat with a
plan.
Genachowski advocates creating new media ownership rules
that promote a diversity of voices on the airwaves. In fact, Genachowski
is credited with helping craft the Obama technology agenda, which
states: "Encourage diversity in the ownership of broadcast media,
promote the development of new media outlets for expression of diverse
viewpoints, and clarify the public interest obligations of broadcasters
who occupy the nation's spectrum."
Translation? Government
control of broadcast media -- particularly the kind of talk radio
Democrats find so annoying.
The party in power wants to remain
in power perpetually. And to do so, like so many other power-hungry
parties of the past, it seeks to control the debate and stifle dissent.
Because the party in power looks to National Public Radio and
the Public Broadcasting System as the models of fairness and balance,
look for massive new "investments" in these official voices.
And, lastly, look for the bailout model to be used to keep the party's
choice newspapers on life support.
Just last week, Sen. John
Kerry, D-Mass., all but assured employees of the deeply troubled Boston
Globe, a newspaper owned by the New York Times, that he will not allow
the paper to go out of business despite falling revenues.
All of
these may seem like unrelated developments. But they are not. They are
part of a sophisticated plan to socialize the media -- preserving with
taxpayer dollars failing media institutions that support the party in
power and using the coercive power of government to crush those media
institutions that are critical of the party in power.
The plot
was not hatched inside the White House or even in the halls of Congress. It was developed by John Nichols of the
far-left Nation magazine and Robert McChesney, a self-described neo-Marxist media theoretician. The
essence of their program -- "the need to promote an understanding of the
urgency to assert public control over the media."
"Our claim is
simply that the media system produces vastly less quality than it would
if corporate and commercial pressures were lessened," they wrote in "Our
Media, Not Theirs: The Democratic Struggle Against Corporate Media."
Amazingly, they cite the founders' commitment to a free press as
their inspiration.
I guess they forgot to absorb the literal
meaning of the First Amendment that begins: "Congress shall make no law
… abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. …"
Michelle Steps Out In $540 Sneakers
Michelle
Obama has taken casual to a haute new level.
While
volunteering
Wednesday at a D.C. food bank, the First Lady sported her usual J.Crew
cardigan, a pair of utilitarian capri pants and, on her feet, a sneaky
splurge: trainers that go for $540.
That's right: These sneakers
-- suede, with grosgrain ribbon laces and metallic pink toe caps
-- are
made by French design house Lanvin, one of fashion's hottest labels. They come in denim and satin versions, and have been a brisk seller all
spring.
"They're shoes," the First Lady's reps sniffed when
curious reporters inquired about the fancy footwear.
