The Liberal Blogosphere Wins One
John Brennan, a member of Barack Obama’s transition team and on his short list for Director of Central Intelligence or Director of National Intelligence, has withdrawn his name from consideration, in the wake of an outcry, mostly from liberal bloggers, that he is “intimately linked to controversial C.I.A. programs authorized by President Bush.
Brennan’s withdrawal letter, sent to Obama, said he has been “a strong opponent of many of the [Bush administration's policies] such as the preemptive war in Iraq and coercive interrogation tactics [such as] waterboarding,” and that he “was not involved in the decisionmaking process for any of these controversial policies and actions. …”
Glenn Greenwald points out that this is not why the possibility of Brennan being named to a top intelligence post was unacceptable to progressives [emphasis in original]:
… Whether he “was involved in the decision-making process for any of these controversial policies” is not and never was the issue. Rather, as I documented at length when I first wrote about Brennan, he was an ardent supporter of those policies, including “enhanced interrogation techniques” and rendition, both of which he said he was intimately familiar with as a result of his CIA position. As virtually everyone who opposed his nomination made clear — Andrew Sullivan, Digby, Cenk Uygur, Big Tent Democrat and others — that is why he was so unacceptable.
In a piece about Brennan written before he took his name off the list, Scott Horton writes that giving Brennan a central role in Obama’s administration would completely undercut the president-elect’s campaign promise to end torture:
… The problem isn’t John Brennan’s lack of credentials. He was a career intelligence operative who gets consistently strong marks for his effectiveness and intelligence from people who have worked with him. But he has a critical shortcoming: his completely ambiguous and inconsistent views about the CIA’s use of torture and torture by proxy as techniques. As a company man, Brennan was quick to justify and support what was done. As an “independent” analyst for broadcast journalists, he also provided support and cover for practices from waterboarding to the use of psychotropic drugs. As an adviser to the Obama campaign, Brennan experienced an unconvincing epiphany and came to reject President Bush’s “program” along the same lines as his boss. The timing and circumstances of Brennan’s conversion suggest that it was dictated by political expedience and not ethics.
No one is saying that the CIA has to play by the Marquess of Queensbury rules–no one is even saying that CIA operations have to square with the law around the world. No intelligence service does that. But CIA operations do have to respect the law of the United States, and specifically they have to respect the legal prohibition on torture that the Bush Administration spun so feverishly to avoid. President Obama has promised to put an end to torture. In the political geography of the Bush Administration, real torture was relegated to the dark quarters of the CIA. If Obama wants to convince the world of his commitment to end this national nightmare, then he must appoint a Director of Central Intelligence who can believed when he says “we do not torture.” Both of the last two directors made this statement and lied through their teeth.
So, who will be DNI? (h/t The Liberal Journal).
Let’s hear it for blogtopia and 200 psychologists and allied professionals.
A few days ago, Glenn wrote a piece in which he expressed surprise at liberal bloggers’ surprise that President-elect Obama had yet to name a single genuine progressive to a major staff position. Why should he, if there are no consequences for not doing so?
It goes without saying that there will be Obama policies, both in the foreign policy and domestic realms, that are vastly superior to what we’ve seen the last eight years and to what we would have seen had McCain/Palin won. And as the second-tier positions begin to fill out, there will probably be a handful of appointees who progressives consider to be one of their own. And as Digby points out, the magnitude of the financial crisis may compel him to embrace policies that are deemed to be quite progressive (from massive stimulus packages and government intervention in the economy to a diminution of our foreign adventurism).
But Barack Obama is a centrist, establishment politician. That is what he has been since he’s been in the Senate, and more importantly, it’s what he made clear — both explicitly and through his actions — that he intended to be as President. Even in the primary, he paid no price whatsoever for that in terms of progressive support. As is true for the national Democratic Party generally, he has no good reason to believe he needs to accommodate liberal objections to what he is doing. The Joe Lieberman fiasco should have made that as conclusively clear as it gets.
The point isn’t that this reality should just be passively accepted and nothing done about it. The point is that for anything to be done about it, the reality needs to be accepted. The campaign we began earlier this year with Accountability Now and are now vigorously developing and pursuing — to devote all resources and energies to defeating incumbents in primary challenges — is grounded in the premise that one’s political beliefs and principles will be ignored until there is a price to pay for ignoring them. Democrats don’t perceive there is a price to pay for ignoring progressives, and so they do. That isn’t surprising. What would be surprising is if, under those circumstances, anything else happened.
What happened with Brennan is the proof:
I wonder if this good news will help to convince some Democrats that hard-nosed advocacy is more effective than silent hand-wringing or wishful thinking or worst of all, mere cheerleading for Democratic rule? That demanding reform is a mark of loyalty to their principles, rather than an embrace of the opposite? That the time to raise one’s voice is before, not after, disastrous ‘compromises’ have been set in stone? That Democratic politicians respond to pressure, not to its absence?
Tags: Barack Obama, Director of National Intelligence, John Brennan, torture
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