Burn after (or before) reading

Tue, 04/21/2009 - 4:28pm

By Christian Brose

I still find a few particular things that Philip Zelikow wrote today remarkable and worth repeating: That the legal implication of the OLC memos is that, for reasons of national security, an American citizen could be subjected to the same "enhanced interrogration techniques" here in the United States, and it would not constitute "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" treatment. I'm not a lawyer and can't speak to that, but if true ... whoa. And what's more, when Philip presumably raised such arguments in an interagency memo critiquing the OLC's legal reasoning, the White House sought to collect all copies of his memo and destroy them. That's never been reported before.

In response, Spencer Ackerman asks what many others are undoubtedly thinking: "why didn't he resign?" Philip can answer that himself if he wants. All I would say is this: I much prefer to have anyone in government I believe is on the right side of the issues stay and work to move policy more in that direction, because there are always opportunities, however small, to do so. I know this sense that the potential for a shift in policy was always just around the corner was what led people at the staff level like Philip, and John Bellinger, and Matt Waxman, and others to stay in the government and work to achieve it. And I for one feel fortunate that they did.

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"Techniques" and their use against citizens...

by Philip Finn on Tue, 04/21/2009 - 6:55pm

The prospect that our own government might use "enhanced interrogation techniques" against it's own citizens should come as a surprise to no one, since virtually every government agency so empowered during times of "national emergency" has been turned against it's own people...

Mr. Brose, one need not be a lawyer to speak to it - if rule of law is disregarded, "legal implications" become a trivial footnote. And if a Bush fiat could strip someone of humanity, of what possible protection is citizenship?

Think Stasi, Kempei Tai, KGB, the list goes on...

As does the list of nations and regimes who's use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" signaled the beginning of their steady, irreversible slide onto the dung heap of history.

Future generations, if any, will mock us.

resigning?

by AllanGreen on Wed, 04/22/2009 - 3:44am

Why should he resign? He covered his bases - he dissented. He contributed more to stop the problem, than if he had resigned. Cheney didn't care if you resigned, he relished it.

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com

by jerrytrm on Wed, 04/22/2009 - 4:10pm

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/04/21/zelikow_on_rachel_maddow

Zelikow's response to the Ackerman question, from Passport.

The Bravery of Resignation

by richardbelldc on Thu, 04/23/2009 - 1:42am

The argument that one can better serve the country by dissenting privately inside the government against a policy with which one profoundly disagrees sets up a slippery slope that ill-serves our country.

The temptation to stay inside the government when one disagrees with policy is a deeply seductive one. Humans have always struggled to resist the allure of power, or even of proximity to power. It's always easy to tell oneself that while one has lost the battle today, if one just hangs in there, there's a chance to make things a little better tomorrow.

In some cases, this analysis may be more than self-serving. But think about how very rare it is that executive branch officials resign in protest about anything. Might our country not have been better served during the Vietnam War, for example, if some of those who dissented from escalating the war had resigned, and taken their objections to the public?

A quite resignation for the sake of salving one's own conscience is of little use to the country as a whole. In the media-drenched world in which we now live, an official who is ready to resign and go public with his or her reasons for resigning can dramatically change the terms of the public debate. As we are seeing in spades with the Bush torture memos, when the President decides to authorize illegal or unconstitutional actions which the public has no knowledge of, there is very little check against launching such actions except for public disclosure through resignation.

I am glad to learn that there were people like Zelikow who wrote memos attacking the descent into torture. And perhaps Zelikow did have some positive effect by staying on. But I think our country and the rest of the world would have been much better served if he had been willing to resign in protest and let the rest of his fellow citizens know what was really going on behind the closed doors at the White House.

Whistle-blowers of any stripe are usually not well-treated, especially when they first pipe up. And in Zelikow's case, there would have been the threat of criminal prosecution for disclosing classified information. But as the history of the Vietnam War, or the falsification of evidence in the run-up to the Iraq War, or the development of the torture regime, show us, we could use braver men and women when blood, treasure, and the country's moral standing in the world are on the line.