Responses to Obama's Security Speech

I've a host of tasks to do today (daughter hosting movie night for her friends tonight), but I want to record here (mainly for myself) some of the responses to Obama's speech yesterday morning (and Cheney's) from people with whom I often agree and others with whom I might not agree but who make me think. Here is the list:

• James Fallows, over at Atlantic.com, writes that

  The parts of Cheney's speech I saw today, and everything we know about Bush's decisions and statements in office, assumed without argument that they faced choices between due-process and national security more painful than those that George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or FDR wrestled with. A reminder that others have faced difficult choices and dire threats is useful for judging our response and placing it in the long context of American values that Obama repeatedly emphasized. (The entire piece here: "On Obama's Security Speech," May 21, 2009.

  
  
• Glenn Greenwald, over at Salon (Greenwald is particularly interested in civil liberties, and his posts indicate that interest):

  Ultimately, what I find most harmful about [Obama's] embrace of things like preventive detention, concealment of torture evidence, opposition to investigations and the like is that these policies are now no longer just right-wing dogma but also the ideas that many defenders of his -- Democrats, liberals, progressives -- will defend as well. Even if it's due to perceived political necessity, the more Obama embraces core Bush terrorism policies and assumptions -- we're fighting a "war on terror"; Presidents have the power to indefinitely and "preventatively" imprison people with no charges; we can create new due-process-abridging tribunals when it suits us; the "Battlefield" is everywhere; we should conceal evidence when it will make us look bad -- the more those premises are transformed from right-wing dogma into the prongs of bipartisan consensus, no longer just advocated by Bush followers but by many Obama defenders as well. The fact that it's all wrapped up in eloquent rhetoric about the rule of law, our Constitution and our "timeless values" -- and the fact that his understanding of those values is more evident than his predecessor's -- only heightens the concern.(See the rest here: "Obama's Civil Liberties Speech," posted and updated May 21, 2009.)

  
  
• David Brooks, with whom I often disagree but listen to avidly every week on The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, says that

  [w]hen Cheney lambastes the change in security policy, he’s not really attacking the Obama administration. He’s attacking the Bush administration. In his speech on Thursday, he repeated in public a lot of the same arguments he had been making within the Bush White House as the policy decisions went more and more the other way.
  
  The inauguration of Barack Obama has simply not marked a dramatic shift in the substance of American anti-terror policy. It has marked a shift in the public credibility of that policy. (The entire piece here: "Cheney Lost to Bush," posted in The New York Times, May 21, 2009.)

  
  
• Hilzoy (also professor of philosophy at Johns Hopkins), blogging for Political Animal at Washington Monthly, is really disturbed by Obama's promotion of "preventative detention":

  If we have a need for preventive detention, which I do not accept, it's a short-term need produced by Messrs. Bush and Cheney. The long game is the preservation of our republic. It is not a game that we can win by forfeiting our freedom.
  
  People seem to be operating under the assumption that there is something we can do that will bring us perfect safety. There is no such thing. We can try our best, and do all the things the previous administration failed to do -- secure Russian loose nukes, harden our critical infrastructure, not invade irrelevant countries, etc. -- but we will never be completely safe. Not even if we give up the freedom that is our most precious inheritance as Americans. (The rest of the piece here: "Just Shoot Me Now," posted May 22, 2009)

And now to today's tasks.