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Marc Thiessen

Yes, U.S. citizens can be held as enemy combatants

By Marc Thiessen

May 22, 2012, 12:08 pm

Matt K. Lewis, a writer whom I greatly admire, has a post up at the Daily Caller criticizing my Washington Post column on Gov. Bob McDonnell’s failure to fight legislation passed by the Virginia general assembly disassociating the commonwealth from the military detention of al Qaeda terrorists who happen to be U.S. citizens.

As I point out, the bill, HB 1160, would effectively bar Virginia state troopers from arresting a terrorist like Anwar al-Awlaki if they knew he would be put in military detention. Lewis writes:

[T]his is much more complex than the Manichean view presented by Thiessen. Al-Awlaki was an American. He was killed in Yemen, but had he been arrested in America, would his rights as a citizen have been dismissed? This, of course, raises all sorts of ethical questions — even among hawks who generally agree that being tough on terrorism is correct. For example, do we want the state to have the power to indefinitely detain American citizens?

… Civil liberties activists have made a huge deal of the provisions within the NDAA that permit indefinite detention of American citizens. Thiessen, apparently, thinks habeas corpus (the right enshrined in Article 1 of our Constitution) can be suspended indefinitely by just declaring our nation to be in a state of permanent war.

Maybe terrorism is different? But if Thiessen thinks that’s the case, he’s free to encourage an amendment to our Constitution. Until that point, it’s quite clear that McDonnell should be praised, not excoriated, for Virginia’s leadership among the states in defending our Constitution.

Well, no. The Supreme Court has ruled that the state does indeed have the power to indefinitely detain American citizens who join the enemy. In Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, the Court found that the U.S. could hold citizens who join al Qaeda as enemy combatants:

There is no bar to this Nation’s holding one of its own citizens as an enemy combatant. In Quirin, one of the detainees, Haupt, alleged that he was a naturalized United States citizen. We held that “[c]itizens who associate themselves with the military arm of the enemy government, and with its aid, guidance and direction enter this country bent on hostile acts, are enemy belligerents within the meaning of … the law of war.” … While Haupt was tried for violations of the law of war, nothing in Quirin suggests that his citizenship would have precluded his mere detention for the duration of the relevant hostilities. … A citizen, no less than an alien, can be “part of or supporting forces hostile to the United States or coalition partners” and “engaged in an armed conflict against the United States” …

As to habeas, the court ruled that:

…a citizen-detainee seeking to challenge his classification as an enemy combatant must receive notice of the factual basis for his classification, and a fair opportunity to rebut the Government’s factual assertions before a neutral decision maker.

In other words, so long as he has the right to challenge their designation as an enemy combatant before a neutral decision maker, an American citizen who joins al Qaeda can be held indefinitely for the duration of hostilities. No need to amend the Constitution, Matt!

And, incidentally, Gov. McDonnell agrees with me. As I point out in my column:

McDonnell spokesman Tucker Martin told me the governor believes “that terrorist acts against our nation by enemy groups and combatants should be dealt with for what they are — acts of war,” and that an American citizen can be held as an enemy combatant, provided he can challenge his detention in court. But once the bill had been approved by such overwhelming margins, his office says, McDonnell had only three options: veto it (and see his veto overridden) sign it, or amend it. He decided to go along with the bill and amend it with provisions to protect Virginia’s ability to cooperate in law enforcement efforts in the war on terror.

Regardless of where you come out on the constitutional question, one thing is clear: McDonnell didn’t show “Virginia’s leadership among the states in defending our Constitution.”

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Marc Thiessen

White House: Obama ‘hated’ Afghan surge, troop drawdown timed for November elections

By Marc Thiessen

May 21, 2012, 12:54 pm

In a remarkable front page story in Sunday’s New York Times, White House officials boast that President Obama “hated” the surge he ordered in Afghanistan from the start, and that after announcing it he cut his military commanders out of the loop on Afghan decision-making while systematically walking his policy back. The Times reports:

[A]fter a highly contentious debate within a war cabinet that was riddled with leaks, Mr. Obama had reluctantly decided to order a surge of more than 30,000 troops. The aide told Mr. Obama that he believed military leaders had agreed to the tight schedule to begin withdrawing those troops just 18 months later only because they thought they could persuade an inexperienced president to grant more time if they demanded it.

“Well,” Mr. Obama responded that day, “I’m not going to give them more time.”

A year later, when the president and a half-dozen White House aides began to plan for the withdrawal, the generals were cut out entirely. There was no debate, and there were no leaks. And when Mr. Obama joins the leaders of other NATO nations in Chicago on Sunday and Monday, the full extent of how his thinking on Afghanistan has changed will be apparent. He will announce what he has already told the leaders in private: All combat operations led by American forces will cease in summer 2013, when the United States and other NATO forces move to a “support role” whether the Afghan military can secure the country or not….

“I think he hated the idea from the beginning,” one of his advisers said of the surge. “He understood why we needed to try, to knock back the Taliban. But the military was ‘all in,’ as they say, and Obama wasn’t.”

Of course, Obama never gave the military the number of troops they requested and needed to carry out the surge strategy he had ordered. Then, when General Petraeus presented him with the military’s plan for a responsible completion and drawdown of the surge, Obama essentially gave him the back of his hand. The Times reports:

The key decisions had essentially been made already when Gen. David H. Petraeus, in his last months as commander in Afghanistan, arrived in Washington with a set of options for the president that called for a slow withdrawal of surge troops. He wanted to keep as many troops as possible in Afghanistan through the next fighting season, with a steep drop to follow. Mr. Obama concluded that the Pentagon had not internalized that the goal was not to defeat the Taliban. He said he “believed that we had a more limited set of objectives that could be accomplished by bringing the military out at a faster clip,” an aide reported.

After a short internal debate, Mr. Gates and Mrs. Clinton came up with a different option: end the surge by September 2012 — after the summer fighting season, but before the election. Mr. Obama concurred.

It is fascinating that the Obama aides behind this story openly brag that they consciously timed the drawdown to come before the election. In other words, by Team Obama’s own admission, the withdrawal is being driven by political rather than military considerations.

But they are factually incorrect when they say that the drawdown will occur “after the summer fighting season.” It takes months to move troops out of the country. In order to bring the troops home before the election, the drawdown must take place during the summer fighting season.

It should come as little surprise that Obama hated his own surge. In the years since he announced it, he could barely bring himself to defend the surge in public or rally the American people behind the mission our troops have been risking their lives for in Afghanistan. But it is unprecedented to see an American president boast of opposing his own policy, cutting his generals out of military decisions, timing such military decisions to benefit his re-election, and admitting that he has no interest in defeating our adversaries.

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Marc Thiessen

Obama’s additions to presidential biographies undersell his historic achievements

By Marc Thiessen

May 17, 2012, 2:14 pm

President Obama is being criticized for inserting himself into the official biographies of his predecessors on the White House website. The RNC and the conservative blogosphere have had a field day with this, pointing to it as yet further evidence of Obama’s enormous ego. I disagree. If anything, Obama was being too modest—leaving out some of his administration’s truly historic accomplishments.

Here are a few suggestions for additions to presidential bios that Obama might want to consider:

In the bio on President Bush, he could say:

•    Under President Bush, the national debt increased by $4 trillion over eight years. President Obama succeeded in increasing the national debt by the same amount in just three years—and in his first term racked up almost as much debt as all previous American presidents combined.

In the bio on Calvin Coolidge, he could say:

•    Calvin Coolidge earned the nickname “Silent Cal” for his reluctance to speak in public about his administration’s accomplishments. President Obama has used the pronoun “I” more than any other president in American history.

In the bio on President Carter, he could add:

•    Jimmy Carter became the first American president to put solar panels on the roof of the White House. Carrying on this legacy, President Obama became the first American president to lose $535 million taxpayer dollars on a failed investment in a solar panel manufacturer called Solyndra.

In the bio of President Polk, he could say:

•    President James K. Polk sent the American armed forces to Mexico as part of the Mexican-American War. President Obama also sent American arms to Mexico as part of “Operation Fast and Furious.”

In the bio of Richard Nixon he could say:

•    President Nixon kept an “enemies list” of political opponents to punish. Today, President Obama is carrying on Nixon’s legacy by drafting an executive order to require government contractors to disclose their political contributions, publicly attacking individuals who back his political opponents, and declaring in a 2011 speech, “We’re gonna punish our enemies, and we’re gonna reward our friends.”

Now that would be a more accurate telling of this administration’s history-making achievements in office.

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Marc Thiessen

Iran gloats over its success in stalling the West over nuclear program

By Marc Thiessen

May 15, 2012, 10:10 am

The Iranian regime is publicly gloating over its success in stalling Western action to stop its nuclear program. The New York Times reports:

As Iran starts a critical round of talks over its nuclear program, its negotiating team may be less interested in reaching a comprehensive settlement than in buying time and establishing the legitimacy of its enrichment program, Iranian officials and analysts said…

In continually pushing forward the nuclear activities — increasing enrichment and building a bunker mountain enrichment facility — Iran has in effect forced the West to accept a program it insists is for peaceful purposes. Iranians say their carefully crafted policy has helped move the goal posts in their favor by making enrichment a reality that the West has been unable to stop — and may now be willing, however grudgingly, to accept.

“Without violating any international laws or the nonproliferation treaty, we have managed to bypass the red lines the West created for us,” said Hamidreza Taraghi, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is close to the negotiating team.

It gets even better:

Mr. Taraghi ticked off Iran’s successes. First, he said, Western countries did not want Iran to have a nuclear power plant, but its Bushehr reactor was now connected to the national grid. Second, the West had opposed Iran having heavy-water facilities, he said, but it now has one in Arak.

Third, the West had said no to any enrichment.

“But here we are, enriching as much as we need for our nuclear energy program,” Mr. Taraghi said with a smile, referring to the thousands of cascades of centrifuges spinning for years in the half-underground facility in Natanz. Since January, dozens more centrifuges have been online in the Fordo mountain bunker complex, near Qum, built to withstand a heavy attack.

Mr. Taraghi and other officials say their policy has forced the United States to accept enrichment, though five resolutions by the United Nations Security Council have called for it to suspend it. …

“We view the nuclear episode as a heavy retreat for the Western powers,” he said. “But acceptance of our nuclear program takes time, we understand that.”

This does not sound like a regime that is living in fear of a military strike on its nuclear program. To the contrary, the Iranians are basically rubbing their success in Obama’s face before the negotiations resume. This is because, as I pointed out in the Washington Post last week, the Iranians recognize that the Obama administration’s objective in these negotiations is not to stop them from obtaining a nuclear weapon—it is to stop Israel from striking their nuclear program before the November elections. If the Iranians were worried that failure in Baghdad could lead to devastating military consequences, would they really be gloating in the New York Times about how shrewdly they are playing America?

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Marc Thiessen

The continuing U.S. retreat from Iraq

By Marc Thiessen

May 14, 2012, 1:36 pm

Last year, after President Obama announced the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq, he invited Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki to the White House and told him: “Mr. Prime Minister, as we end this war, and as Iraq faces its future, the Iraqi people must know that you will not stand alone. You have a strong and enduring partner in the United States of America.”

Citing the “untold number of Iraqis who’ve given their lives” as well as the “nearly 4,500 fallen Americans who gave their last full measure of devotion” Obama declared “we owe it to every single one of them—we have a moral obligation to all of them—to build a future worthy of their sacrifice.” Obama promised that America would be a “partner for our shared security” and that as a central part of this effort his administration would “help Iraq train and equip its forces.”

What a difference five months makes.

The New York Times reported Sunday:

In the face of spiraling costs and Iraqi officials who say they never wanted it in the first place, the State Department has slashed — and may jettison entirely by the end of the year — a multibillion-dollar police training program that was to have been the centerpiece of a hugely expanded civilian mission here.

What was originally envisioned as a training cadre of about 350 American law enforcement officers was quickly scaled back to 190 and then to 100. The latest restructuring calls for 50 advisers, but most experts and even some State Department officials say even they may be withdrawn by the end of this year.

The training effort, which began in October and has already cost $500 million, was conceived of as the largest component of a mission billed as the most ambitious American aid effort since the Marshall Plan. Instead, it has emerged as the latest high-profile example of the waning American influence here following the military withdrawal….

The Times reports that the training sessions were so bad that Iraqis refused to attend them. Moreover, with all U.S. forces withdrawn, the State Department would not let trainers hold sessions at Iraqi facilities, rather than American ones, because of security concerns.

Robert M. Perito, director of the Security Sector Governance Center of Innovation at the United States Institute of Peace, called the project a “small program for a lot of money.”

“The first problem is the State Department doesn’t operate in dangerous environments,” said Mr. Perito, who last year wrote a history of United States police training in Iraq. “As soon as the U.S. military left, the State Department was on its own. And that immediately ran the price up and restricted the ability of advisers to move around.”

The State Department is also scaling back its overall presence in Iraq:

Last year, in preparation for the withdrawal of the military, the State Department planned a large expansion of its role here, designed to maintain influence and be a counterweight to the vast political influence of Iran. Yet, after doubling the size of the embassy staff to nearly 16,000 people, mostly contractors, the State Department quickly reversed course this year — partly because of Iraqi objections to the expanded operation — and is now cutting back from the slightly more than 12,000 people presently in Iraq.

Bottom line: The centerpiece of America’s post-war engagement strategy in Iraq is being abandoned—and the American retreat from Iraq continues apace.

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Marc Thiessen

Best of the foreign policy blogs (May 5 to May 11)

By Marc Thiessen

May 11, 2012, 3:09 pm

Here is the best of what AEI’s foreign and defense policy scholars are reading this week:

Robert D. Kaplan at Stratfor Global Intelligence on NATO’s worrisome impotence in NATO’s Ordinary Future.

Yochi J. Dreazen at National Journal on improving Saudi-US antiterror cooperation in Foiled Bomb Plot Highlights Growing CIA-Saudi Arabian Ties.

Stephen Walt at The Browser gives readers Five Reasons to Care About the Middle East.

Walter Russell Mead at Via Meadia on the war on terror despite semantics in A Victory in the Non-War War.

Mollie Hemmingway at Ricochet on the punishment suffered by relatives of China’s blind activist in The Price Dissidents Pay.

The Editorial Board at The Washington Post’s View blog on diplomacy’s failure in Syria and the dangerous potential for deterioration in A Shameful Impasse on Syria.

John Hudson at The Atlantic Wire on the possibility that the Assad regime ordered a strike on its own building in Did Syria Destroy Its Own Intelligence Agency.

Barbara Starr and Adam Levine at CNN’s Security Clearance Blog on the stalled prisoner release negotiations in POW Parents Reveal Secret Talks with Taliban.

Josh Rogin at Foreign Policy’s The Cable on the frightening possibility that the Iraqi government will release captured terrorists in The Cable in Administration Struggling to Prevent Release of Hezbollah Commander in Iraq.

Alan Silverleib at CNN’s Political Ticker on the certain-to-be-vetoed House bill replacing defense cuts with domestic tax cuts in House Passes Bill Undoing Defense Cuts

Barbara Starr at CNN’s Security Clearance Blog on the AQAP’s mounting threat to the US mainland in Al Qaeda in Yemen has “whole outfit” devoted to attacking U.S.

Max Boot at Commentary Magazine on the likely political battle and looming threat to defense spending in GOP Seeks to Avert Defense Cuts.

Robert Beckhusen at Wired.com’s Danger Room on the positives and negatives of the US’s newest missile defense technology in Pentagon’s Newest Ballistic Missile-Blaster Shoots Down Its Target.

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Marc Thiessen

9/11 plotter mocks victims’ families with paper airplane

By Marc Thiessen

May 7, 2012, 3:01 pm

The Washington Post reports:

The behavior during their arraignment Saturday of the five defendants charged with orchestrating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks was a form of “peaceful resistance to an unjust system,” according to one of their attorneys who spoke at a news conference Sunday.

“The accused refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of the military commissions,” said James Connell, an attorney for Ali Abdul Aziz Ali [a.k.a. Wallid Bin Attash, who helped prepare the 1998 East Africa Embassy bombings, the bombing of the USS Cole and helped select and train several of the 9/11 hijackers]. The “arraignment demonstrates that this will be a long, hard-fought but peaceful struggle against secrecy, torture and the misguided institution of the military commission.”

To what actions was Connell referring that supposedly constitute “peaceful resistance to an unjust system”? The Post does not mention it, but CNN reports:

Bin ‘Attash made a paper airplane and placed it on top of a microphone. It was removed after a translator complained about the sound the airplane made.

This is not the first time Bin Attash had mocked his victims in this manner. Fox News national security correspondent Catherine Herridge describes Bin Attash’s last court appearance in her book, The Next Wave, where he did much the same thing:

Back in the Guantanamo courtroom, Bin Attash and [Ammar] al-Baluchi were laughing hard now. I was only twenty-five feet away, but I couldn’t hear them through the reinforced glass. The military guards were moving us along because the court was transitioning from an open to a classified session. The journalists had to go. Some days later, once I returned to Washington, D.C., a legal source explained that Bin Attash had written either the 9/11 flight numbers or the jet tail numbers inside a yellow foolscap airplane. My source was sketchy on the details because the information had been relayed to him by a military guard who had apparently retrieved the paper plane. The symbolism, and the flight numbers, in a military court laid bare the darkness of these men’s souls. It flashed before me in an instant, and the realization made me feel physically sick. You don’t see evil often, but when you do there is no mistaking it.

That was what Mr. Connell calls “peaceful resistance.” The rest of us call it sickening.

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Marc Thiessen

Ten burning questions for Obama’s secret terrorist release program

By Marc Thiessen

May 7, 2012, 11:16 am

The Washington Post reports this morning that the Obama administration “has for several years been secretly releasing high-level detainees from a military prison in Afghanistan as part of negotiations with insurgent groups”—a program “U.S. officials acknowledge poses substantial risks.” The Post writes:

[T]he releases are an inherent gamble: The freed detainees are often notorious fighters who would not be released under the traditional legal system for military prisoners in Afghanistan. They must promise to give up violence — and U.S. officials warn them that if they are caught attacking American troops, they will be detained once again.

I’m sure that threat is quite a deterrent. The paper continues:

[O]fficials would not say whether those who have been released under the program have later returned to attack U.S. and Afghan forces once again.… Unlike at Guantanamo, releasing prisoners from the Parwan detention center, the only American military prison in Afghanistan, does not require congressional approval and can be done clandestinely…. U.S. officials would not say how many detainees have been released under the program, though they said such cases are relatively rare. The program has existed for several years, but officials would not confirm exactly when it was established.

This is unacceptable. The Obama administration owes the American people some answers. Specifically:

1.    The Obama administration has been openly critical of the Bush administration for its “secret detention” of captured terrorists. Now it turns out the Obama administration been conducting the “secret release” of captured terrorists. How long has it kept the existence of this program secret from the American people, and what is the justification for this secrecy?

2.    Exactly who are these admittedly “notorious” detainees who have been released in Afghanistan and precisely how many has the Obama administration set free?

3.    Did any of these released terrorists and insurgents have the blood of American service members on their hands?

4.    Were any implicated in war crimes?

5.    An administration official tells the Post that, “When the insurgency appears to be gathering steam in certain provinces, for instance, prisoners have been released to alleviate mounting tension.” Where has this been tried, how often has it succeeded, and how often has it failed?

6.    How many of those released have, instead of helping us quell the insurgency, gone back to the fight instead?

7.    The administration keeps recidivism statistics for detainees released from Guantanamo and makes them public on a regular basis. Why has it not done the same for detainees released from Parwan?

8.    Have any of the high-value detainees released by the administration in Afghanistan been involved in the killing of American service members following their release? If so, how many?

9.    Have any released detainees been recaptured and detained again, or killed on the battlefield? If so, how many and under what circumstances?

10.    An administration official tells the Post that in some cases “the benefits of release could outweigh the reasons for keeping [the detainee] detained.” What evidence is there to back up this contention?

The administration owes the American people answers to these and other questions. Expect the House Armed Services and Intelligence Committees to demand those answers.

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Marc Thiessen

Best of the foreign policy blogs (April 28 to May 4)

By Marc Thiessen

May 4, 2012, 2:30 pm

Here is the best of what AEI’s foreign and defense policy scholars are reading this week:

John Hudson at The Atlantic Wire writes on Obama’s brutal war on terror in Ex-CIA Interrogator: Obama’s War on Terror Is Less Ethical Than Bush’s

Jamsheed K. Choksky in World Affairs writes about the divided Iranian state in Tehran Politics: Are the Mullahs Losing Their Grip?

The Economist’s Asian Banyan blog on the recent proposal to sell Taiwan American fighter jets in Arms Sales to Taiwan: Fighter Fleet Response

Donald Rumsfeld on Obama’s no-brainer to eliminate the world’s most-wanted terrorist in Not a Tough Decision to Kill bin Laden

Jonathan Kay on the blind Chinese activist’s opposition to the regime’s tyrannical population control measures in Chen Challenged China’s Abortion Regime

Rowan Callick writes on how China’s economic might does not come with moral superiority in Don’t Show China Deference

Michael A. Cohen at Foreign Policy on President Obama using Bin Laden’s death for political gain in  Hi, I Killed Osama bin Laden and I Approve This Message

Joshua Keating at Foreign Policy’s Passport Blog on the weak reemergence of Al Qaeda’s English language magazine after Awlaki’s death in Al Qaeda Magazine Returns with Two New Issues

The Wall Street Journal on Al Qaeda’s media strategy ten years after 9/11 in Letter Excerpts: What al Qaeda Thought of Fox News, CNN, ABC

John Hudson at The Atlantic Wire writes about the market rush on China’s state-run media outlet in China’s Propaganda IPO Bubble

Max Boot at Commentary Magazine writes about al Qaeda’s fractiousness in Documents Show Bin Laden was Frustrated with Regional Jihadi Groups

The Foreign Policy Initiative offers a list of great Resources on Afghanistan and the Strategic Partnership Agreement

Erika Johnsen at Hot Air on President Obama’s neglect of military spending in Video: Why does our military need the best, really?

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Marc Thiessen

Interrogation ‘truthers’ Feinstein and Levin call top former CIA officials ‘misinformed’

By Marc Thiessen

May 1, 2012, 11:44 am

This would be hilarious if it were not so sad. Senators Diane Feinstein and Carl Levin have issued a statement calling former CIA counterterrorism chief Jose Rodriguez “misguided and misinformed” for his assertions that intelligence derived from detainees in the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program played a key role in the operation that killed Osama bin Laden. They also take on former CIA Director Mike Hayden and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, calling their statements about the role CIA interrogations played “wrong.”

We are disappointed that Mr. Rodriguez and others, who left government positions prior to the UBL operation and are not privy to all of  the intelligence that led to the raid, continue to insist that the CIA’ s  so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” used many years ago were a central component of  our success. This view is misguided and misinformed.

So let’s get this straight: The man who actually led the CIA’s counterterrorism center that produced the intelligence that put us on bin Laden’s trail is “misinformed,” whereas these two legislators sitting up on Capitol Hill know the true facts?

Conveniently, Feinstein and Levin forgot to mention one former CIA official who is also apparently “wrong” and “misinformed” about the role EITs played in the bin Laden operation: Former Obama CIA Director, and current Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta.

As Rodriguez points out in his new memoir, Hard Measures:

In the immediate aftermath, some of the president’s senior staff “committed truth”—they confirmed the role the EITs played in bringing UBL to his much-deserved demise. Then–CIA director Leon Panetta told NBC’s Brian Williams, “We had multiple series of sources that provided information with regards to this situation … clearly some of it came from detainees [and] they used these enhanced interrogation techniques against some of those detainees.” Williams followed up by asking Panetta if waterboarding was part of the “enhanced interrogation techniques” that he had just mentioned and Panetta said: “That’s correct.”

So, when asked a direct question about whether EITs played a role in the bin Laden operation, Panetta confirmed that they did. If it were not true, wouldn’t Panetta and other Obama administration officials be shouting it from the rooftops? Of course they would. They don’t because they can’t.

Mike Hayden has compared those like Feinstein and Levin who deny the role CIA detainees played in the bin Laden operation to “9/11 ‘truthers’ who, lacking any evidence whatsoever, claim that 9/11 was a Bush administration plot” and “’birthers’ who, even in the face of clear contrary evidence, take as an article of faith that President Obama was not born in the United States and hence is not eligible to hold his current office.”

How sad that we have a pair of interrogation “truthers” chairing the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services Committees.

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Categories:  Bin Laden, Foreign and Defense, War on Terror   |   Tags: ,

Marc Thiessen

Former CIA counterterrorism chief offers new details of how detainees led us to Bin Laden

By Marc Thiessen

April 30, 2012, 1:52 pm

It’s no coincidence that former CIA counterterrorism chief Jose Rodriguez chose the one year anniversary of the operation that killed Osama bin Laden to finally break his silence. In his new memoir, Hard Measures, published today, Rodriguez reveals never before told details about how the questioning of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other CIA detainees made the bin Laden operation possible.

Rodriguez reveals that it was KSM’s efforts to cover for bin Laden’s courier (who eventually led the CIA to bin Laden) that put the agency on his trail. He writes:

The detainees were always trying to game the system. At one point we discovered that KSM was trying to signal his fellow detainees (using a method I cannot describe). In one message he instructed another detainee to “tell them nothing about the courier.” Short of giving us a name, you couldn’t ask for a better tipoff.

This altered the agency to focus on uncovering bin Laden’s courier network. And when another senior al Qaeda leader was taken into custody, he revealed still more information about the courier:

An al-Qa’ida operative was captured in 2004. He was quickly turned over to the CIA. He had computer discs with him that showed that he was relaying information between al-Qa’ida and Abu Musab Zarqawi… Initially, he played the role of a tough mujahideen and refused to cooperate. We then received permission to use some (but not all) of the EIT procedures on him. Before long he became compliant and started to provide some excellent information…. He told us that bin Ladin conducted business by using a trusted courier with whom he was in contact only sporadically. He said that the Sheikh (as bin Ladin was referred to by his subordinates) stayed completely away from telephones, radios, or the internet in an effort to frustrate American attempts to find him. And frustrated we were.

We pressed him on who this courier was and he said all he knew was a pseudonym: “Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti.” This was a critical bit of information about the identity of the man who would eventually lead us to bin Ladin.

Armed with this information, CIA debriefers confronted KSM with what they had learned:

Agency officers went to KSM and asked him, “What can you tell us about Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti?” KSM’s eyes grew wide and he backed up into his cell. He said no words but spoke volumes with his actions.

Then in May 2005, they captured another senior terrorist named Abu Faraj al-Libi. Rodriguez writes:

Al-Libi admitted that a courier like the one we described was the person who had informed him that he had been elevated to the status of AQ’s operational leader. That kind of information and assignment isn’t entrusted to a run-of-the-mill runner. We figured a courier empowered to deliver the news that someone had been anointed “number three” had to be well wired with “number one.” Al-Libi vehemently denied, however, that he had ever met a courier named al-Kuwaiti. His denial was so vociferous that it was obvious to us that he was trying to hide something very important….

By now we were pretty convinced that this mysterious courier by the name of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti could be the key to unlock the mystery we most wanted to solve: Where is bin Ladin? From that point on, finding Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti became one of our top intelligence-collection priorities. About two years later we learned the true name of the man we sought. That was progress, but it wasn’t enough. Now the CIA had to find him….

The courier exercised excellent tradecraft, maintaining a low profile and generally avoiding using methods of communication that might trip him up. Then, sometime after I left the CIA, he made a mistake. He slipped and did something that allowed U.S. intelligence to find him. From there, using great patience and skill, CIA officers eventually were able to trace him to the compound in Abbottabad and assemble the intelligence case that led to the successful raid on May 2, 2011. It all started with information a detainee provided after receiving EITs bolstered by information that KSM and Abu Faraj al-Libi (who both became compliant after receiving EITs) gave us, whether they meant to or not.

Rodriguez concludes:

President Obama and his national security team deserve great credit for following the trail to its conclusion and making the gutsy decision to send in the U.S. special operations forces team that performed so magnificently.

President Obama is happy to take the credit for this operation, and even use it as fodder for political attack ads. How sad that he refuses to share the credit with the dedicated CIA officers who made the greatest achievement of his presidency possible.

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Marc Thiessen

Best of the foreign policy blogs (April 21 to 27)

By Marc Thiessen

April 27, 2012, 1:18 pm

Here is the best of what AEI’s foreign and defense policy scholars are reading this week:

James R. Holmes at the Diplomat on the need to admit the possibility of China becoming a foe in Beating “Voldemort Syndrome”.

Josh Rogin at Foreign Policy’s the Cable on gaps in the Pentagon’s transmission of intelligence in Congress learned of new intel unit from media.

Walter Russell Mead at ViaMeadia reports that Chinese politician Bo Xilai wiretapped top Chinese officials in To Murder and Corruption, Add Wiretapping.

Katie Drummond at wired.com’s Danger Room details the Navy’s futuristic storm trooper uniforms in New Navy Uniform Could Monitor Sailors’ Pee for Signs of Nuclear Attack.

Adam Goldman at ArmyTimes writes on the resurfacing of a top al Qaeda terrorist in Top al-Qaida bomb maker in Yemen resurfaces.

Kenneth Anderson and Matthew Waxman at the Lawfare blog on the future of lethal autonomous machines in Law and Ethics for Robot Soldiers.

Grae Stafford at The Daily Caller writes that public mistrust of TSA agents hurts the agency’s security mission in Former TSA boss: Resentment of agency ‘dangerous to security’.

Bill Roggio at The Long War Journal on al Shabaab’s opacity on the possible death of its American-born military commander in Shabaab has not denied rumors of Omar Hammami’s death.

Alana Goodman at CommentaryMagazine.com writes on the start of the 2012 foreign policy debate in Obama Will Have to Walk Fine Line on Foreign Policy Message.

Erika Johnsen at Hot Air on President Obama’s recent foreign policy attack ad against Romney in Team Obama’s latest attack ad: Mitt Romney v. reality, the global edition.

James Poulos at Ricochet explains the GOP’s foreign policy difficulties in Rubio’s Big Foreign Policy Speech Shows the GOP Is in Deep Trouble.

Seth Mandel at CommentaryMagazine.com writes that the Cold War Is Still Sore Subject for Biden.

Katrina Trinko at National Review analyzes Joe Biden’s dubious defense of Obama’s Israel policy in Biden: Obama Greatest Friend to Israel Since Truman.

And finally, following Dany Pletka’s outstanding take at the Enterprise Blog on the manifest uncoolness of Barack Obama, Morgen Richmond at Hot Air reports on the New American Crossroads ad: Cool

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Are ‘cognitively impaired’ conservatives better informed than liberals?

By Marc Thiessen

April 23, 2012, 12:58 pm

Last month, a new scientific study was released which purported to prove that “when under time pressure or otherwise cognitively impaired, people are more likely to express conservative views.” Miller-McCune reported at the time:

A research team led by University of Arkansas psychologist Scott Eidelman argues that … if we don’t have the time or energy to give a matter sufficient thought, we tend to accept the conservative argument. “When effortful, deliberate responding is disrupted or disengaged, thought processes become quick and efficient,” the researchers write in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin….

The study questioned people about politics in different circumstances, including while inebriated, and concluded:

“Bar patrons reported more conservative attitudes as their level of alcohol intoxication increased,” the researchers reported…. “We find that when effortful thought is disengaged, the first step people take tends to be in a conservative direction.” … [Eidelman said] “The bad news for conservatives is that someone who has a knee-jerk conservative reaction may change their mind about an issue after giving it more thought.”

It seemed the Left finally had scientific evidence to back up its contention that conservatives are essentially stupid and uninformed. Except for one problem … they are not.

The Daily Caller reports on a new study from the Pew Center which finds that conservatives are actually more open-minded and better informed than liberals:

On eight of 13 questions about politics, Republicans outscored Democrats by an average of 18 percentage points, according to a new Pew survey titled “Partisan Differences in Knowledge.”

The Pew survey adds to a wave of surveys and studies showing that GOP-sympathizers are better informed, more intellectually consistent, more open-minded, more empathetic and more receptive to criticism than their fellow Americans who support the Democratic Party.

“Republicans fare substantially better than Democrats on several questions in the survey, as is typically the case in surveys about political knowledge,” said the study, which noted that Democrats outscored Republicans on five questions by an average of 4.6 percent.

The widest partisan gap in the survey came in at 30 points when only 46 percent of Democrats — but 76 percent of Republicans — correctly described the GOP as “the party generally more supportive of reducing the size of federal government.”

The widest difference that favored Democrats was only 8 percent, when 59 percent of Republicans and 67 percent of Democrats recognized the liberal party as “more [supportive] of reducing the defense budget.”

The survey quizzed 1,000 people, including 239 Republicans and 334 Democrats.

You can read the full results here. One caveat: Pew did not indicate what percentage of conservatives questioned were inebriated when they outscored their liberal counterparts.

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Marc Thiessen

Is Romney a ‘secret’ conservative?

By Marc Thiessen

April 20, 2012, 11:57 am

The Washington Post reports that Mitt Romney is slowing winning the support of the conservative grassroots, but not their hearts. Many conservatives are ready to vote for Romney because he is the best chance of beating Barack Obama, but they still worry that Romney is, deep in his heart, a secret liberal. Yes, he is saying the right things on the campaign trail—but what does he say behind closed doors, when the rest of us are not listening?

This week we got a chance to find out.

Romney recently held a private fundraiser at an estate in Palm Beach. No journalists were allowed inside to listen to his remarks at the off the record event—but it turns out his comments were overheard by reporters outside on a public sidewalk. So what does Romney say when he’s meeting in private with the scions of the GOP establishment?

It turns out Romney does have secret plans if he is elected—to eliminate entire Cabinet agencies. His potential targets, he told the gathering, include the Department of Housing and Urban Development. But, Romney is quoted as saying, “I’m probably not going to lay out [publicly] just exactly which ones are going to go.”

This is exactly the opposite of what most of us expected. If his comments are to be believed, it turns out he intends to govern more conservatively then he lets on in his public events. He’s going to shut down whole government agencies, but doesn’t want to say so in public on the campaign trail.

In other words, for those who suspected that behind closed doors Romney was a secret liberal, it turns out he may really be a secret conservative. Who knew?

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Marc Thiessen

Sorry, Truman Project, Barry is still no Harry

By Marc Thiessen

April 20, 2012, 11:01 am

You would think that a group named for Harry Truman would at least make some effort to carry on his legacy of a strong national defense and vigorous American leadership within the Democratic Party. At a time when the Democrats are dominated by the voices of withdrawal and retreat, such an institution on the center-left of the political spectrum has never been more necessary.

Alas, we have the Truman National Security Project.

As I pointed out here, the Truman Project is out with a new briefing book whose key themes are: Cut national defense, justify it on budgetary grounds, and do nothing about Iran — the biggest impending national security threat to our country. I pointed out that Harry Truman raised defense spending more than 600% during his time in office, left U.S. troops in Germany and Japan to provide the security umbrella that allowed democracy to grow in Europe and the Pacific, vigorously promoted the freedom agenda, and led from the front in Berlin and Korea. Barack Obama, by contrast, has cut defense spending in the middle of a war, withdrawn all U.S. troops from Iraq, is preparing to do the same in Afghanistan, has abandoned the freedom agenda, and led from behind in Libya, and not at all in Syria.

Here is the Truman project’s response. As you can see, they do not bother to dispute any of this.  Rather, they jump to the defense of Obama’s defense cuts, his decisions to withdraw from Iraq and soon Afghanistan, his strategy of leading from behind, and generally rant about neo-conservatives. Which is fine as it goes, I suppose. But you would think the Truman Project might want to attempt to explain how any of this is keeping with the policies of their namesake. They do make a vigorous case for more foreign aid spending (which is puzzling because as I concede in my post, it is the one area in which the Truman Project can rightly claim to be upholding the Truman legacy).

I was hoping for a more Truman-esque defense of the Truman legacy. But I guess since they’ve so obviously abandoned that legacy, there’s really no reason to even try.

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Marc Thiessen

Sorry, Truman Project, Barack Obama is no Harry Truman

By Marc Thiessen

April 18, 2012, 2:15 pm

How far has the Left fallen when it comes to national defense? POLITICO’s Morning Defense offers a clue with its “sneak peek” at The Truman National Security Project’s 2012 national-security briefing book, which it describes as “a collection of talking points and backgrounders for progressives to use as they try to gain ground this year on a topic that has long been the domain of the GOP.” Here, per Morning Defense, is a rundown of the key points:

– Give peace a chance. Things the Left should tout: Research, foreign aid, and diplomacy (the State Department). Things it should push to cut: The nuclear arsenal, force levels, earmarks, and big weapons programs (the Defense Department).

– When it comes to defense, deficits matter. The book encourages progressives to remind voters about the national debt any time questions arise about Pentagon spending levels. It offers catchphrases such as, “No country with a weak economy can be a strong power.”

– Iran is bad; war is worse. The book also offers a tip: When it comes to Iran, “avoid answering questions with policy solutions before confirming that you take the threat seriously.” Once that’s out of the way, use catchphrases like “strong sanctions,” “tough diplomacy,” and “reduce our oil dependence.”

The basic message seems to be: cut defense, justify it on budgetary grounds, and do nothing about the biggest impending national security threat to our country. I suspect Harry Truman would be appalled to see his name associated with the aforementioned policies of retreat and appeasement. Consider the Truman record compared to that of the candidate the Truman Project backs—Barack Obama:

1)      President Obama is following the Truman Project’s advice and cutting U.S. military spending. Under Obama, defense spending has dropped to about 4.6% of GDP. By contrast, Truman increased defense spending from $9.1 billion in 1948 to $52.8 billion in 1953—a nearly 600% increase. When Truman left office, America spent 11.7% of GDP on defense.

2)      President Obama has withdrawn all U.S. forces from Iraq and is undertaking a precipitous drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. By contrast, despite enormous pressure to bring our troops home after World War II, Truman kept American forces in Germany to deter Soviet aggression and kept U.S. forces in Japan as a counterweight to communist China. Together with the deployment of U.S. forces to Korea, the global military footprint Truman established served as the foundation for security and freedom in Europe and in the Pacific for the past half century.

3)      President Obama has all but abandoned the freedom agenda of his predecessor. Truman, by contrast, was arguably the father of the freedom agenda. When Greece and Turkey were under threat of falling to communism, he delivered a speech to Congress calling for military and economic aid, declaring what became known as the Truman Doctrine: “It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” His efforts saved Greece and Turkey. Reflecting on this experience, Truman declared in a speech at West Point, “We can’t have lasting peace unless we work actively and vigorously to bring about conditions of freedom and justice in the world.” Can you imagine Obama saying the same about, say, Syria?

4)      President Obama has embraced a strategy of “leading from behind.” Truman led from the front. When Stalin tested America’s resolve with a blockade of Berlin, Truman launched the Berlin Airlift, delivering supplies to the besieged city, forcing the Red Army to back down, and securing the freedom of West Berlin. Later, Truman again responded to communist aggression on the Korean Peninsula with resolve, pushing communist forces back to the 38th Parallel and securing the freedom of South Korea.

One area in which the Truman Project can rightly claim to be upholding the Truman legacy is foreign aid. Truman launched the Marshall Plan at a cost of about $100 billion in today’s dollars, which helped to save Western Europe from Soviet tyranny and led to the emergence of democratic allies that remain indispensable to the cause of peace today. But no one in Washington is contemplating making similar investments today. Obama has requested a 2% increase in the U.S. foreign aid budget, about $1.3 billion. Most Republicans—including the presumptive GOP nominee—want to cut foreign assistance.

The bottom line? Today’s idea of a “progressive” national security policy bears little resemblance to the policies espoused by Harry Truman. The fact is, Barack Obama is no Harry Truman. Indeed, based on his calls for increased defense spending and unapologetic American leadership in the world, Mitt Romney seems to have more in common with Harry Truman than the current occupant of the Oval Office.

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Marc Thiessen

Best of the Foreign Policy Blogs (April 7 to 13)

By Marc Thiessen

April 13, 2012, 12:26 pm

Here is the best of what AEI’s foreign and defense policy scholars are reading this week:

Radwan Ziadeh at TNR.com asks Why Did Anyone Believe Bashar Al-Assad’s Promises Of A Ceasefire To Begin With?

Les Gelb at TheDailyBeast.com warms that War Looms for Obama in Iran, Syria, and North Korea

John Hudson at TheAtlanticWire.com reports on The Staggering Costs of North Korea’s Rocket Launch

Adam Martin at TheAtlanticWire.com tells what happened when a North Korean press bus took a wrong turn into a part of Pyongyang usually shielded from reporters in What North Korea Really Looks Like

Adam Harmon at smallwarsjournal.com argues that an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities is inevitable in Why Israel Will Attack Iran

Mark Stokes & Russell Hsiao at the-diplomat.com on Why U.S. Military Needs Taiwan

Josh Rogin at ForeignPolicy.com on the Afghan Defense minister’s plea:  Don’t release the Taliban from Gitmo just yet

Tlaloc Cutroneo, an embedded counterinsurgency adviser to Afghan security forces, reports from the field at CNN.com’s Security Clearance blog on Reasons to be cheerful about Afghanistan

Uri Friedman at ForeignPolicy.com reports on Latin Leaders Behaving Badly

Jamie Weinstein at TheDailyCaller.com writes that Demographic trends are poised to spoil Beijing’s plans for a Chinese century

Kathleen Foster at FoxNews.com asks Are Failing US Schools a National Security Threat?

Finally, Dave Stopera at Buzzfeed.com has video of Why You Should Never Text And Walk At The Same Time

 

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Slipping GOP support for Afghan war a test for Romney

By Marc Thiessen

April 12, 2012, 10:57 am

The Washington Post reports this morning:

A majority of Republicans say for the first time that the war in Afghanistan has not been worth fighting, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll that comes as the continuing U.S. presence in that country is emerging as a key point of contention in the presidential race….

Public support for the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan has fallen to an all-tim e low, with only 30 percent of respondents saying it has been worth fighting….

Romney… has said that he would have listened more closely to his commanding generals, who have urged Obama to keep troops in place longer, and not set a specific timeline for withdrawal. Romney says that Obama’s doing so has allowed the Taliban to simply wait out the U.S. military….

For Romney’s campaign, the slip in Republican support for the war could pose political difficulties, placing him outside the majority view of his party. For the first time, more Republicans and GOP-leaning independents oppose the war than support it, with 55 percent saying it has not been worth the costs.

This will be one of the first major tests for Romney since he secured the GOP nomination.  Last fall, in a GOP debate in New Hampshire, Romney was asked by a voter, “Osama bin Laden is dead. We’ve been in Afghanistan for 10 years. Isn’t it time to bring our combat troops home from Afghanistan?” He instantly replied: “It’s time for us to bring our troops home as soon as we possibly can.”  He was hammered for pandering to isolationist sentiment.

Since then, he has taken a firm position that America must defeat the Taliban before we can come home.  Indeed, following the shootings by an American soldier and riots following the inadvertent Koran burnings by American troops, Romney was the only GOP candidate who refused to pander to GOP sentiment for retreat.  Speaking on CNN after the shootings, Romney said “You don’t make an abrupt shift in policy because of the actions of one crazed, deranged person” adding “to say we’re going to throw in the towel without getting the input of General Allen or actually making trips to Afghanistan and meeting with leaders there and meeting with our commanders there and troops there, that wouldn’t make a lot of sense. I’m more deliberate when it comes to the lives of our sons and daughters and the mission of the United States of America.”

Will Romney now hold his ground and explain to his fellow Republicans why it is essential that America succeed in Afghanistan?  Will he lay out the consequences of failure in the country where al-Qaeda planned the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and seek to rally the flagging GOP for the mission under the leadership of a new commander in chief?  Or will he soften his resolve on Afghanistan, and bow to the sentiment for withdrawal? His next statement on the subject should be telling.

 

 

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The lesson from Burma: Sanctions work

By Marc Thiessen

April 10, 2012, 3:32 pm

Fifteen years ago, the U.S. business community launched a campaign to discredit economic sanctions as a foreign policy tool.  Backed by the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Foreign Trade Council, and other business lobbying groups, they created an organization, USA*Engage, expressly dedicated to fighting the imposition of further sanctions and the repeal of existing ones.  Sanctions, they argued, simply did not work.  And one of the central examples they regularly cited to bolster their case was: Burma.

In 1999 when the Clinton administration extended sanctions prohibiting new investment by American companies in Burma, USA*Engage was apoplectic.  Vice President Frank Kittredge declared in a statement:

It is extremely difficult to see how Burma represents an extraordinary threat to the United States… We are deeply troubled that there has been no apparent analysis by the U.S. government as to the effectiveness of the Burma sanctions.  If they are not working, America should be seeking solutions that will help bring democracy and human rights to Burma — instead of continuing and ineffective policy and being content with hollow gestures.

As recently as 2009, USA*Engage Director Richard Sawaya was still railing against the Burma sanctions, declaring:

Instead of pursuing U.S. national interests through diplomacy, members of Congress embrace economic sanctions, despite all their unintended consequences….  In the case of Burma, they have in fact stiffened the resolve of its military.

Well, it’s now pretty clear that analysis was … dead wrong.  Far from “stiffening the resolve” of Burma’s military, the pressure from those economic sanctions finally forced the regime to undertake democratic reforms — leading to last Sunday’s parliamentary elections in which Aung San Suu Kyi and her opposition National League for Democracy swept almost all of the 44 parliamentary seats being contested.

In an editorial entitled “Sanctions worked in Burma,” the Wall Street Journal — which has criticized U.S. sanctions policies in the past — explained precisely what brought about these changes:

President Thein Sein persuaded Ms. Suu Kyi to run and ensured the by-elections went smoothly so the country could get out from under measures imposed by the U.S., EU and others that restrict trade and investment…. Sanctions don’t always work, especially against a regime that is determined to stay isolated or doesn’t care about the pain it imposes on its own people.  But the stick of sanctions did seem to have made the difference in moving Burma’s generals toward reform.

Anticipating the push from business and other corners to lift sanctions immediately following last weekend’s elections, the Journal writes that this would be a mistake.  Calling sanctions “a stick that should not be withdrawn entirely,” the paper declares:

Ms. Suu Kyi will have to walk a delicate balancing act to maximize her influence without being co-opted by the government. Her first challenge is what to say about sanctions…Should Ms. Suu Kyi publicly urge that sanctions be lifted, the authorities’ treatment of the opposition could revert to previous practices of arbitrary imprisonment, fixed elections and violent reprisals.  On the other hand, if she opposes liberalization, she opens herself to the charge of hurting the Burmese people and endangering the reform process.

The sanctions-wielding countries can help lift the burden from Ms. Suu Kyi by announcing that sanctions will be lifted gradually as more progress is made. That’s contrary to what the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations called for this week: They want all sanctions removed promptly. But as Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr noted, “We want to go far enough to encourage the government to continue to move and roll out democratization. But we don’t want to remove all the pressure to do the good work.”

Sanctions are by no means a panacea.  It took the combination of sanctions and ascendancy of a new leader in Burma who was willing to take the necessary steps to bring his country out of isolation in order for sanctions to achieve their aims. The U.S. embargo in Cuba (another target of USA*Engage and other business interests) will not likely bring change to Cuba so long as the Castro brothers are alive.  But the Burmese example shows that it will be a critical tool in shaping Cuba’s democratic transition once the Castros are dead and new leaders come to power who are determined to end Cuba’s isolation.

The experience of Burma shows that sanctions can be a critical tool in affecting the behavior of recalcitrant regimes. It is also a black eye for the business lobbyists who were all too willing to get in bed with Burma’s military junta as it repressed its people and kept Ms. Suu Kyi under house arrest.

Something to keep in mind the next time USA*Engage comes up to Capitol Hill lobbying against economic sanctions.

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Benedict leaves, Castro still an atheist dictator

By Marc Thiessen

April 9, 2012, 3:51 pm

In February, I wrote about the rumors that Fidel Castro might convert to Catholicism during the visit of Pope Benedict. Not only did Castro not become Catholic, he and his brother Raul are back to their old ways, rounding up dissidents who dared to speak out during the Holy Father’s visit. The Wall Street Journal editorial page reports:

Pope Benedict XVI’s recent trip to Cuba was described by the Vatican as way to spread the gospel to a nation captured by an atheist state.…The irony of the Pope’s visit is that it has provoked a crackdown on dissent  Agence France Press reports that in the last week at least 43 dissidents in the eastern province of Santiago, one of the stops during the Pope’s three-day Cuban sojourn, have been detained by the police.

They include former political prisoner José Daniel Ferrer and his wife Belkis Cantillo.  Mr. Ferrer was one of the 75 arrested in Cuba’s “Black Spring” in 2003, and he was among 12 who refused to accept exile as a condition of release in 2011. He is the leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba. Ms. Cantillo is among 10 members of the Ladies in White—Catholic mothers, wives and sisters of political prisoners—who were arrested in the sweep.

The Ladies in White had lobbied the Vatican through the papal nuncio in Havana for a meeting with the Pope. Cuba’s Jaime Cardinal Ortega told them that the Holy See’s schedule was too tight.  This request was widely publicized before the visit. So it was hard not to miss the contrast of the Pope’s inevitable meetings with the Castro brothers, Raúl and Fidel, and even with the ailing Venezuelan strongman, Hugo Chávez, in the country for medical treatment.

How sad that Benedict — no doubt on the advice of Cardinal Ortega — failed to meet with these suffering Cubans. What a slap in the face to the Holy Father for the Castros to begin rounding up those who sought such a meeting. The Church may take comfort that the Castro brothers did grant Benedict’s request that Good Friday be made a holiday. Unfortunately, hundreds of Cuban dissidents spent that holiday rotting in Castro’s tropical gulags.

 

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Photo doctoring in Moscow ain’t what it used to be

By Marc Thiessen

April 9, 2012, 3:01 pm

In Stalinist Russia, photo doctoring became a high art form, as purged Communist Party officials would mysteriously disappear — both in real life and from all official photographs.  The practice was brilliantly documented in this 1999 book, The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin’s Russia.   The cover shows examples of the work of Stalin’s photographic censors.

One would think that the advent of Photoshop and other electronic editing tools would bring the art form to another level.  Alas, photo doctoring ain’t what it used to be in Moscow.

The New York Times reports:

Facing a scandal over photographs of its leader wearing an enormously expensive watch, the Russian Orthodox Church worked a little miracle: It made the offending timepiece disappear.

Editors doctored a photograph on the church’s Web site of the leader, Patriarch Kirill I, extending a black sleeve where there once appeared to be a Breguet timepiece worth at least $30,000. The church might have gotten away with the ruse if it had not failed to also erase the watch’s reflection, which appeared in the photo on the highly glossed table where the patriarch was seated.

The church apologized for the deception on Thursday and restored the original photo to the site, but not before Patriarch Kirill weighed in, insisting in an interview with a Russian journalist that he had never worn the watch, and that any photos showing him wearing it must have been doctored to put the watch on his wrist….

The church, after removing the doctored photo, blamed photo editors in its press service for the “technical mistake.”

“A gross violation of our internal ethics has occurred, and it will be thoroughly investigated,” the church said in a statement. “The guilty will be severely punished.”

That would have had a different meaning eight decades ago — which I suppose is a sign of progress.  No one (that we know of) is being sent to Siberia for this mistake.  And at least today, it is watches, not Commissars, that are being disappeared.

You can see the before and after photos here.

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Best of the Foreign Policy Blogs (Mar. 30 to April 6)

By Marc Thiessen

April 6, 2012, 1:19 pm

Here is the best of what AEI’s foreign and defense policy scholars are reading this week:

Adam Levine at CNN.com on efforts to create a Facebook-like site for terrorists in A social network site for jihadists?

Max Boot at CommentaryMagazine.com discusses Misha Auslin’s proposition that we would Blow Up North Korea’s Missiles for Peace in  Should U.S. Shoot Down N. Korean Missile?

Jonathan Tobin at CommentaryMagazine.com writes that despite evidence of a major expansion of Iran’s nuclear program, the CIA is still claiming Tehran hasn’t decided to build a bomb in CIA: Iran Expands Program But No Nukes?

Alana Goodman at CommentaryMagazine.com on what President Obama’s budget will mean for national security in The Future of Defense Spending

David Rothkopf at ForeignPolicy.com writes on Obama’s palpitations at the prospect of high oil prices in Dear Ayatollah Khamenei: Go Ahead, Shut Down That Strait

Mong Palatino at the-diplomat.com on Burma’s Election Revelations

Tom Joscelyn at LongWarJournal.org on reports that Osama bin Laden helped plan Mumbai attacks

Allison Barrie at FoxNews.com writes about a world beyond Kevlar in Is Liquid Body Armor Coming?

Finally, at POPSCI.COM, DARPA Wants Humanoid Robots That Can Drive Tractors, Open Doors and Save the Day

 

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Obama’s Supreme hypocrisy

By Marc Thiessen

April 5, 2012, 2:59 pm

While all eyes have been on the Supreme Court — and the president’s extraordinary warning to the Justices not to take the “unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress”– some may have missed the action this week in a federal courtroom in Boston.

On Wednesday, oral arguments took place over another law passed by a “strong majority of a democratically elected Congress” — the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Indeed, both cases feature the same lawyer — former solicitor general Paul Clement — who delivered the argument against Obamacare before the Supreme Court last week and in defense of DOMA before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit this week.

Why is Clement, and not the Justice Department, defending this law in federal court? Because the Obama administration announced last year that it had decided that it would no longer defend DOMA in court. Quite the opposite, the Justice Department is actively urging district courts around the country to … you guessed it … overturn this law.

But wait, you may ask:  Wasn’t DOMA passed by “strong majority of a democratically elected Congress”? Yes, indeed. Unlike Obamacare — which was rammed through Congress in a party-line vote using extraordinary parliamentary procedures — the Defense of Marriage Act is an example of genuinely bipartisan legislation. It was passed in the House by an overwhelming vote of 342-67 and in the Senate by a vote of 85-14, and signed into law by Obama’s Democratic predecessor, Bill Clinton. If that’s not a “strong majority” I don’t know what is.

Never mind that, says Attorney General Eric Holder. In a letter to House Speaker John Boehner last year, Holder declared:

After careful consideration, including a review of my recommendation, the President has concluded that given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny. The President has also concluded that Section 3 of DOMA, as applied to legally married same-sex couples, fails to meet that standard and is therefore unconstitutional. Given that conclusion, the President has instructed the Department not to defend the statute in such cases. I fully concur with the President’s determination.

So let’s get this straight: When it comes to Obamacare, the president considers a failure by the Supreme Court to uphold the law “judicial activism.” But when it comes to DOMA, Obama is just fine seeing “an unelected group of people … overturn a duly constituted and passed law.”

Of course, Obama would argue that in the case of Obamacare he believes the law is constitutional, while he has determined that DOMA is unconstitutional. But the Constitution does not appoint him as the final arbiter of what is constitutional. It assigns that role to the Supreme Court. That is why we have an independent judiciary.

Today, Attorney General Holder answered a federal judge’s demand that he submit a letter explaining whether the Obama administration believes federal judges have the authority to strike down federal laws. He reportedly acknowledged that “the power of the courts to review the constitutionality of legislation is beyond dispute.” That is progress. Perhaps he can go on to explain why the administration believes it would be “unprecedented” for the Supreme Court to strike down Obamacare even as it is urging federal courts to do just that when it comes to DOMA.

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Ryan Crocker on the state of al Qaeda: ‘We’ve killed the slow and stupid ones’

By Marc Thiessen

April 3, 2012, 12:24 pm

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta recently declared that al Qaeda’s “leadership is decimated” and “doesn’t have the ability to put command and control together to make the kind of plans for the kind of attacks we saw on 9/11.”

Not so says Ryan Crocker, the Obama-appointed U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Crocker says al Qaeda remains dangerous and determined to carry out another 9/11:

Mr. Crocker, who took up his post in Kabul last year, said al-Qaeda remained a potent threat despite suffering setbacks. “We have killed all the slow and stupid ones. But that means the ones that are left are totally dedicated,” he said.

“We think we’ve won a campaign before our adversaries have even started to fight. They have patience, and they know that we are short on that.”

Crocker painted a dire picture of what might come to pass if the U.S. were to withdraw prematurely from Afghanistan:

Crocker told The Daily Telegraph that if the West was to leave Afghanistan too early, al-Qaeda would be able to increase its presence.

With the US preparing to withdraw the majority of its combat forces from Afghanistan next year, Mr Crocker warned: “If we decide we’re tired, they’ll be back.

“Al-Qaeda is still present in Afghanistan. If the West decides that 10 years in Afghanistan is too long then they will be back, and the next time it will not be New York or Washington, it will be another big Western city.”

Amen.  I recently outlined some of the catastrophes that could come to pass if the U.S. withdraws prematurely from Afghanistan, both in the Washington Post and here at the Enterprise Blog. But don’t take my word for it.  Listen to the warnings of Obama’s man in Kabul. If we retreat from Afghanistan, al Qaeda will follow us home.

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Marc Thiessen

Best of the foreign policy blogs (Mar. 24 to Mar. 30)

By Marc Thiessen

March 30, 2012, 12:03 pm

Here is the best of what AEI’s foreign and defense policy scholars are reading this week:

Must see TV: Jon Stewart, via Mediate.com, absolutely savages Barack Obama’s “intimate moment” with Medvedev.

John Rizzo, former CIA general counsel, writes at Hoover.org on the CIA and Congress’ crippling failure to communicate in The CIA-Congress War.

Benjamin Wittes at the Lawfareblog.com on police interviews of one of Osama Bin Laden’s wives who was living with him in the Abbottabad compound in Mrs. Bin Laden Speaks.

Pam Benson at CNN.com’s Security Clearance blog reports that the U.S. and Pakistan are talking about changes in drone ops.

Also at CNN.com, the Security Clearance Blog reports on a new CNN poll that shows just 34% of Americans say the U.S. is winning the war in Afghanistan and 55% want to pull out before 2014 in Afghan war support hits new low.

And Jill Doherty reports that the Syrian opposition leader is going to ask Hillary Clinton for arms and more help.

Scott Snyder at the-diplomat.com explains How to Stop Kim’s “Satellite” Test.

Sebastian Strangio at the-diplomat.com reports on the excitement in Burma as Aung San Suu Kyi prepares to take her seat in parliament, but asks if the junta is using her as a fig leaf, in Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi Fever.

Spencer Ackerman at Wired.com reports on a key defect in Obama’s plans to patrol the vast Pacific Ocean and build the U.S. naval presence in the Middle East in Shrinkage: Navy Won’t Build as Many Ships as It Planned.

Finally, from thekidshouldseethis.com comes this jaw dropping video of a new DARPA military robot that can jump 30 feet in the air—scaling roofs and steep cliffs with a single bound!

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