Search Results for: The CIA Forces A Constitutional Crisis

Things are getting ugly, fast:

In the capital, Bamako, a political settlement between the military junta that overthrew the constitutional government and an interim civilian government supported by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is still elusive. The interim president has just returned after two months of hospitalization and recuperation in France following a beating by a mob in his own palace. Amnesty International has released a report documenting atrocities committed by junta forces in response to a failed counter coup. … And over the weekend, Ansar Dine stoned to death an unmarried couple in front of 300 witnesses, according to graphic and chilling reportage by the New York Times.

Apparently the US is considering military intervention, possibly because its Libya invervention helped arm the Tuareg secessionists. Harvey Glickman explains how Islamists have taken over the separatist movement:

Marc Lynch believes Egypt's transition has failed:

Weeks before the SCAF's scheduled handover of power, Egypt now finds itself with no parliament, no constitution (or even a process for drafting one), and a divisive presidential election with no hope of producing a legitimate, consensus-elected leadership. Its judiciary has become a bad joke, with any pretence of political independence from the military shattered beyond repair.

Tony Karon labels SCAF's actions a "coup":

The events that saw Mubarak unceremoniously wheeled off stage-left in February 2011, and later imprisoned, were more of a palace coup than a revolution. A junta of generals responded to the crisis presented by the massive protests in Tahrir Square and elsewhere to ease out the helmsman in order to save the regime. They weren’t guided by a clear plan or even a coherent strategy; the generals and their allies have simply improvised their way through the political turmoil of the past 18 months to emerge in an improbably dominant position.

Zeinobia, who's live-blogging in Egypt, concurs. Max Fisher is unsure:

Is it a coup? A number of the more liberal-minded Egyptians who dominate its social media seem to think so. Members of Muslim Brotherhood, who just saw their power-hold on Parliament dissolve and have to wonder if their candidate will get a fair race against Shafiq, are unlikely to be happy…. But calling it a coup might be giving the military and its pawns a little too much credit. Whatever the motivation behind the dissolution of Parliament, like so many of Egypt's painful post-Mubarak moments, it looks less like a master-mind conspiracy and more like the kind of panicky, by-the-seat-of-their-pants stumbling that has long characterized the still-creaking Mubarak machine. 

Michael Koplow unfavorably compares Egypt's situation to Turkey's coup-prone past:

Today on the Dish, Andrew detailed Obama's substantive and conservative accomplishments, and recalled how he and Bruce Bartlett were tea-partiers avant la lettre. The unemployment hole remained deep and the economy in trouble, and so naturally Roger Simon called for Obama's resignation. The right's economic theories contradicted basic macroeconomics, Fareed stuck to his guns on … Continue reading The Weekly Wrap

"[W]hen the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American Constitution is such as to grow every day more and more encroaching. … The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society," – John Adams, as cited by Jim Sleeper.

"Those of us in public office can respond to this reality by playing it safe and avoid telling hard truths. We can do what's necessary to keep our poll numbers high and get through the next election instead of doing what's best for the next generation.

But I also know this: If people had made that decision 50 years ago or 100 years ago or 200 years ago, we wouldn't be here tonight. The only reason we are is because generations of Americans were unafraid to do what was hard, to do what was needed even when success was uncertain, to do what it took to keep the dream of this nation alive for their children and grandchildren," – Barack Obama, last night.

My foreboding sense is that America may have already passed the point of no return in terms of civil, constitutional governance. I do not believe that in the Bush administration, the United States was effectively governed by its Constitution. The forms were still there, but the reality wasn't. Beneath it all, the desire for despotism ran, fueled by the despot's greatest ally, fear. Fear of foreigners, fear of terrorists, fear of gays, fear of immigrants, fear of the inevitable uncertainties of real reform.

It was entrenched by the military's own embrace of the role of imperial adventure, by the CIA's embrace of torture, by the president's assertion of total, extra-legal power in a never-ending war that now encompassed the US as well as abroad and citizens alongside non-citizens, and by a resurgent, right-wing partisan media that saw its job as fomenting propaganda rather than seeking any kind of truth, and liberal mainstream media so afraid of its own shadow and so intimidated by accusations of elitism that it became the equivalent of Harry Reid.

And I share Sleeper's deep dismay at the myopic, callow crowd in this capital city, more obsessed with passing instant phony judgments on political fortunes than with addressing with seriousness the vast challenges this struggling and ailing and now fast-declining republic faces.

I've lived in Washington for twenty years. I saw in Obama the real hope that something constructive could emerge from the corruption and decline of the recent past. I saw last night the civil tone that marks a responsible politics, rather than the glib cynicism and mock heroism that has marked us in much of the new millennium.

by Andrew

I'm on vacation, I know, but a speech of this maturity and magnitude demands some kind of comment on a blog that has been deeply disturbed by and engaged in these questions of the laws of war, torture, abuse, detention, interrogation and the like over the last few years. I reprint it here in its entirety, as I have many such speeches from Barack Obama since the beginning of his campaign for the presidency.

I regard it as the national security equivalent of his Jeremiah Wright speech. Why? Because it managed to reach a place apart from, while being fully part of, the furious debates we have been having. These debates are vital, and the notion that we can simply move on from the Bush-Cheney era without some accounting or reform is both empirically and morally false. We are struggling for a sustainable, long-term balance between security against a ruthless and unprincipled and lawless enemy – and a law of war, and a judicial system and a civilization that we rightly love and want to defend. This struggle will be a long one, and an extremely difficult one, and the most profound of the insights that the president offered today is as banal as it is central:

There is a core principle that we will apply to all of our actions: even as we clean up the mess at Guantanamo, we will constantly re-evaluate our approach, subject our decisions to review from the other branches of government, and seek the strongest and most sustainable legal framework for addressing these issues in the long-term.

This speech, to my mind, was a conservative one by a conservative president who seeks first and foremost to use existing institutions to address the new challenges of the moment, and then seeks pragmatic compromises, always open to future checks and balances, in those places where such institutions clearly need reform and adjustment. The speech does not shrink from clear positions but it always does so from a place of reason and authority as opposed to politics and power. It is a presidential speech – from a man who seeks to unite and lead this country forward, rather than someone who sees fear and division as a tool to be exploited.

I'm going to ponder some of the specifics over the next few days. Such a thoughtful speech deserves our time and reflection. And that is also why I'm not going to linger on the politics of all this today. I have no idea whether Obama or Cheney will "win" this news cycle. I do know that this is far too important a question to be judged in that fashion.

I can say this after watching the speech and reading its text: by his sobriety and balance, care and precision, Obama has sketched a way forward that is a function of both war and law, seeking no shallow political edge in an area that should never have been abused by Rovian cynicism in the first place. At first blush, I find the balance near pitch-perfect – on detention, torture, interrogation and Gitmo.

Like the president, I am under no illusions as to the enemy we face and the need to fight it. But like the president, I was deeply disturbed by both the tools that the last president used – above all the tool of torture – and the rationale of uncheckable and lawless executive supremacy that underpinned it. Something very profound went very wrong. We all need to understand that at a minimum, however we want to move forward.

I wish the war could be over. It isn't. More important, I do not want America to be over, and, thanks to this remarkable figure in a terribly divided and difficult time, it isn't. The system which relies on law not men, on decency not barbarism, on democratic balance not autocratic deciderism is the system we are fighting for. It won, as Obama noted, even before the last election when two anti-torture candidates, McCain and Obama, emerged from the pack. But its long-term victory was never assured.

I feel much more confidence now that victory – for both our system and the war against Jihadism – is possible. Civil liberties purists will quibble and fight. Cheney-dead-enders will continue to stoke fear and division. I think this is the right balance – and deserves our vocal and persistent support.

The full speech is after the jump:

Sam, I’ve waited a while before my final response – and the end of this dialogue – because this debate is about as important a one as we can have in any time, and yet it seems particularly urgent at this time. The reason I have found our dialogue helpful is because we actually agree … Continue reading Pax Christi