Third Way Dispatch: Category National Security

Trick or Treat: National Security as the October Surprise

contact@thirdway.com (Matt Bennett, Vice President for Public Affairs) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 06:44:00 -0600

NOTE: This article was authored by TW National Security Policy Advisor Scott Payne and also appeared on the Huffington Post

In the fall of 2004, a video hit the airwaves that brought back America’s fear of terrorism and helped seal John Kerry’s fate. No, not the Oct. 29th video released by Osama bin Laden. That hurt Kerry, but the thing that probably put George W. Bush back in the White House was an ad by Progress for America,” a 527 group, that was called Ashley’s Story.

In the spot, 16 year-old Ashley Faulkner, who’s mother died on 9/11 in the Twin Towers, tells the camera: “He’s the most powerful man in the world and all he wants to do is make sure I’m safe, that I’m OK.”

It was moving and it was potent. The ad was funded in part by the Home Depot founder to the tune of $17 million — John Kerry could hear the pounding of these do-it-yourselfer campaign titans hammering the last nails into his campaign’s coffin. The ad ran nearly 30,000 times in battleground states, starting on Oct. 19.

“Ashley’s Story” reminded voters what they liked about President Bush’s response to 9/11, ten days before the bin Laden reminded them what they feared. Effectively, it served as a gateway to the bin Laden video—priming voters to see Bush as their protector.

While this election is vastly different than 2004, with the economic crisis dominating the news and the shock of 9/11 having receded, McCain and his allies will try to use national security to catch up. As Arianna noted in her post Tuesday, John McCain’s only bright spot at the moment is his continued lead on national security and terrorism.

This is not a new phenomenon. The ten-point lead in the Newsweek poll reflects the findings of many others. Third Way’s extensive public opinion research this summer showed Democrats losing on national security by 14 points and on terrorism by 15. Democracy Corps recent poll also shows Obama losing national security by 13 points. It is clear that despite the fiasco in Iraq, the failures in Afghanistan and the multiple other Bush screw-ups around the globe, the national security credibility gap, which has persisted for almost forty years,) continues to plague Democrats.

With these numbers in mind, we’ve seen the Republicans return to the old party playbook—trying to make Democrats appear weak and unable to defend the country. It has worked many times before: they labeled Dukakis) as risky and Kerry as indecisive on national security and undermined both as credible leaders that would protect the country. Now, they are trying to do it to Obama, with ads that suggest he is “too dishonorable, dangerous and risky” to be President. These supplement Sarah Palin saying that Obama “pals around with terrorists,” Cindy McCain getting “chills” after Obama’s vote on an Iraq supplemental, and surrogates using his middle name as a slur. On its own, it doesn’t look like this will be enough to swing this election to McCain. However, should another October surprise like the bin Laden tape emerge, these efforts could be the ground work that knocks Obama off the path to victory in the same way that “Ashley’s Story” did in 2004. The focus of the last few weeks will remain on the economy. Still, the Obama campaign must address national security squarely if they are to neutralize a potential October surprise.

While Arianna is right to argue that Obama should highlight McCain’s shortcomings on national security, the critique has to be more than laundry list of his failings—it requires a frame that quickly allows people to see the trend behind these failures but that also speaks to the nature of the man. On the flip side of that, Senator Obama needs to advocate a set of policies that highlight his ability to lead and his desire to protect the nation. As Third Way laid out this summer, Obama needs to frame John McCain as “reckless and out of touch” and advocate a set of policies that are “tough and smart.” In this frame, the laundry list of mistakes takes on a more significant meaning.

McCain’s policy to not negotiate with enemies is out of touch with the advice of U.S. military commanders; his refusal to draw down troops in Iraq and deploy forces to Afghanistan is reckless; his inability to realize that Spain is a NATO ally and friend of the United States is out of touch; his choice of a Vice Presidential candidate whose only foreign policy bona fides is a hazy view of Russia is reckless.

From Afghanistan, to Iraq, from military readiness to bad remakes of Beach Boys’ songs, John McCain is reckless and out of touch with America’s national security interests.

In contrast, Barack Obama has offered policies that are both tough and smart. His proposal to strike terrorist targets in the Pakistan tribal regions: tough; securing all loose nuclear material in Russia in four years to keep it out of the hands of terrorists: smart; sending troops from Iraq to secure Afghanistan and hunt down bin Laden: tough; a timeline to turn over control of Iraq to the Iraqis: smart; returning military deployments to a normal tempo and increasing benefits to recruit more troops: smart.

Because these frames reinforce perceived qualities about the two candidates, they are likely to be accepted by voters. McCain’s ‘fundamentals of the economy are strong’ quote was clearly out of touch and his response to the economic crisis is seen by voters as reckless. Obama, however, came across as a steady hand who understood the problem (smart) and wants regulation to prevent it from occurring again (tough).

If the campaign can get voters to transpose their concerns about McCain’s leadership on the economy to his ability to lead on national security, and reinforce that Obama is a leader ready to confront and solve America’s problems, then Obama will be well positioned should there be an October surprise. However if a surprise occurs and Obama is caught on the back foot, we could see McCain get the second wind he has been desperately trying to find for the past few weeks. It may be the only way McCain can claw his way back into an election that Obama seems to have done everything else to sew up.

Framing Iraq: A 50-50-50 Plan

contact@thirdway.com (Matt Bennett, Vice President for Public Affairs) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:26:00 -0600

For too long, those of us who support a drawdown in Iraq have offered a laundry list of reasons without a unifying rational. With more than 4,000 American fatalities and tens of thousands of life-altering injuries, it has cost too many lives; at $5,000 per second, it is costing too much money; with our allies looking on in disgust, it is tarnishing our image abroad; with a dizzying array of sectarian conflicts, it is a confusing and unpolice-able civil war; with its pretext long-since exposed as a fraud, it is based on a lie; and with the President’s legacy as “Worst Ever” firmly in place, it is a fruitless attempt to rescue the Bush place in history.

All of these are true, but none of them, together or separately, can convincingly beat back the cynical and preposterous claim by the Bush administration and McCain camp that we are weak, that a withdrawal is abandoning the troops, and that, as Vice President Cheney has put it, that we propose to commit “an act of betrayal and dishonor.”

We can rail all we want about the unfairness of it all, and there is no doubt that history will judge us as correct. Still, in the context of the current Iraq debate, we must have is a framework that explains why we want to end our massive commitment to Iraq in the only terms that really matter when it comes to warfare: the national security interests of the United States. And the fact is, we can now make that case, and make it persuasively. Our security requires that we drawdown in Iraq for two reasons. First, if we don’t, we risk losing the fight against our real enemies: Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Our troops there need immediate and large-scale reinforcements.

Second, without a major drawdown, the US Army will come unraveled. It is on the brink of a major crisis now, and it cannot sustain this pace much longer. We have 170,000 troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan with a force that can sustain deployments there of only 100,000 at a time. Without a drawdown (or the extremely unlikely initiation of a draft), the exquisite machinery of our ground forces will seize. Plus, we simply have got to restore a “ready brigade” of troops prepared to deploy on a moment’s notice to hotspots elsewhere in the world. It is practically criminal that the Bush administration has been such a poor steward of our safety that we no longer have soldiers or Marines we can send into the breach to protect the United States if the call comes—as we’ve discovered, fancy ships and planes get you only so far on the 21st century battlefield.

In a new memo, we lay out the national security case for drawing down in Iraq, and we offer up a new 50-50-50 Plan: 50,000 for Afghanistan (about a doubling of US troops there); 50,000 for Iraq (down from the current level of around 140,000); and 50,000 for the future (expanding the Army to meet future contingencies). This plan would let the United States take on and finally destroy al Qaeda where it actually is, provide us with an achievable mission in Iraq, and restore our military to a sustainable course.

We hope you’ll take a look.

Yoo-thenizing the Constitution

contact@thirdway.com (Matt Bennett, Vice President for Public Affairs) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 11:36:00 -0600

NOTE:This Dispatch is by Third Way Senior Fellow Jonathan Morgenstein:

While I was living in Mexico City in February 1995, the newly elected Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo arrested Raul Salinas, the brother of Zedillo’s powerful and wealthy predecessor, Carlos Salinas. Raul was arrested for a high profile assassination among other suspicions. It was a glorious moment in Mexican history.

As a friend told me the story at the time, Carlos, despite having completed his Presidency a few months prior, sent security forces loyal to him and his allies, to intervene in the arrest. In response, Zedillo sent the military to ensure the arrest took place. Additionally, Zedillo made a grand declaration that would fundamentally alter the future of Mexico and begin its transformation from a corrupt third-world banana republic into a free, liberal democracy. Zedillo asserted that “Today, nobody… absolutely nobody, is above the law. We are no longer a country of powerful men, but a country of powerful laws!” Because, in essence, THAT is the difference between democracy and dictatorship, the difference between freedom and authoritarianism. The rule of laws and equal justice under the law for all, rather than the rule of the whims of men regardless of how they arrived at their position.

This is why the memo revealed this week, written by the then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General, John Yoo, for the Department of Justice (how ironic is that?) is so terrifying. Yoo seemed to feel that by fiat, authorized by no written law and certainly by nothing written in the Constitution, the President could suspend the Constitution. Yoo wrote that, “Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations.” Since Yoo felt no official declaration of war by Congress was even needed to conduct “military operations” within the U.S., it effectively gives the President unlimited powers to unilaterally end Constitutional rule (if the 4th amendment, which guards against unreasonable search and seizure, is arbitrarily dispensable, what part of the Constitution isn’t?).

Yoo asserts that because the President holds the title of “Commander-in-Chief” that this “sweeping grant vests in the President the ‘executive power’,” and allows him to usurp “specific enumeration of the powers-those ‘herein’-granted to Congress in Article I.” Yoo claims that this unlimited power is a simple pragmatic reading of the Constitution, because of, “the functional consideration that national security decisions require a unity in purpose and energy that characterizes the Presidency alone.”

Particularly in the midst of the “War on Terror,” a war without foreseeable end, what limits on presidential power would this view of government recognize? How would we be different than a dictatorship, with Congress allowed to write laws only when the President sees fit, and the President allowed to declare anything he wants to be law? Officers of the military, cabinet members and the President himself have sworn to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” But Yoo’s take would turn this pledge on its head. The President cannot both abrogate the Constitution and preserve, protect and defend it as well.

In fact, I argue that John Yoo himself is an enemy of the Constitution, one from whom it needs protection and defense. But if we kick him out, where is he to go? He can’t go to Mexico, since it has become a more democratic country than Yoo wants. Maybe he would feel more comfortable in Russia with Vladimir Putin or in Iran with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Then he can fully appreciate what it means to live in a country where limits on Presidential power reside in the desires and mind of, “the Presidency alone.”

To Our Friends and Critics on the Issue of Telecom Immunity

contact@thirdway.com (Matt Bennett, Vice President for Public Affairs) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 10:08:00 -0700

Think back for a moment to the days after 9-11, to the range of emotions we all felt: horror, sadness, anger, frustration. But we felt other things as well: determination and patriotism. We were resolved as a nation that no band of two-bit thugs was going to attack this country and murder Americans without us damn well doing something about it.

Now, imagine that you were specifically asked to do something about it and were told that your actions would hold the lives of innocent Americans in the balance. Imagine that you were Mary Smith, a senior executive of a telephone company and that an FBI agent came to you with a letter that asked for your help in tracking down terrorists. The letter assured you that the President and the Attorney General certified that what they were asking you to do was legal. Imagine that the FBI made it clear that if you failed to cooperate, Americans could die.

What would you do? Do you assist the government based on their representations that the help was both legal and urgently needed, or do you decline and risk the consequences?

Not everyone would have made the same decision, but we would submit that, given the circumstances in the wake of 9-11, many Americans would have agreed to help.

Now, fast-forward to today. The telecom companies are being sued on allegations that they helped the government invade privacy and violate the rights of private American citizens. The question is whether to allow these suits to go forward.

We have argued that they should not – you can read our fuller explanation here. In arriving at that judgment, we have relied on three main principles:

The first is fairness and due process. The evidence against the companies is classified. They are being asked to defend themselves without the ability to offer the evidence that may prove their innocence of wrongdoing. Sound familiar? That’s exactly what’s happening to the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. We have long held that those proceedings are travesties of justice because the defendants cannot mount a defense in a case involving secret evidence. That’s not due process, and it should not be weighed any differently for cases against terrorism suspects or against the telecom industry.

The second principle is the value of representational government. The potentially exculpatory information in this case is beyond top secret. It falls under a category known as “eyes only,” which prohibits even those with top secret clearances to view the documents. If Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama wanted to see them they would be denied. But the elected members of the Senate Intelligence Committee have seen them. When they took a look at all of the secret evidence – the letters, the documents, the testimony of key players – they voted 13-2 in favor of immunity. Because we cannot see the evidence for ourselves, we must decide whether to place our trust in the judgment of those who have. Among this group were some of the most unimpeachable progressives in the Senate, like Sheldon Whitehouse, Barbara Mikulski and Chairman Jay Rockefeller. These members played a role not too dissimilar from a grand jury when they emphatically decided that this case should not go to trial. We decided to trust in their judgment.

In addition, two people who were appointed to act by the Congress have reached the same judgment. As 9-11 Commission Chairman Lee Hamilton and Commissioner Bob Kerrey have both written persuasively, it is absolutely vital that American industry agree to help in terrorism investigations when they believe in good faith that it’s legal and important for them to do so. If the telecom companies are left holding the bag for the government’s misconduct here, we worry that future companies – be they phone companies, rental car agencies, flight schools or gun stores – might refuse to help track down terrorists and leave our nation at risk.

The third principle is holding the proper party to account. There is no question that the private sector must be required to act legally and responsibly, and when they don’t they should be punished. In these cases, however, we believe that the wrong defendant is in the dock. It is the Bush administration and government actors who are responsible for the violations of civil liberties and the invasions of privacy that the lawsuits allege. It was the government who took the information and misused it, without telling the industry how or why. It is the government that can choose to mount a real defense by declassifying the material. And it is therefore the government – not those who thought they were doing their patriotic duty to assist the government – that should be held to account.

We waded into this debate mindful of the passions on the other side. We know that a huge swath of the progressive community disagrees with us on this point. But while we share their outrage and demand for justice, we chose to enter this fray because we believe that important principles are at stake here. We hope you’ll read our new memo that more fully lays out our rationale and choose for yourself. FISA and Immunity

The Democrats' Nuclear-Free Zones

contact@thirdway.com (Matt Bennett, Vice President for Public Affairs) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:22:00 -0700

I’ve been around politics a long time (circa the Mondale “surge”), and I’ve heard enough pandering and disingenuous nonsense spouted to keep aloft a flotilla of blimps. I’ve heard paeans to farmers of useless crops, love letters to members of narrow interest groups, and poetic praise to colorless down-ballot politicians. And all of this from candidates I support!

But rarely have I heard such dispiriting nonsense as that to which we were subjected during Tuesday night’s Democratic debate in Nevada, when the candidates turned to the subject of nuclear power.

Now I’m not totally naïve – I understand that, whatever the merits of the Yucca Mountain spent fuel repository, the candidates in a tight race for the nomination are not likely to come out strongly in favor of storing America’s nuclear waste in the center of an early caucus state.

But what was truly appalling was the way in which the candidates jockeyed for the position of most opposed to nuclear power generally.

John Edwards led the charge: “I am not for it [nuclear power] or agnostic. I am against building more nuclear power plants, because I do not think we have a safe way to dispose of the waste. I think they’re dangerous, they’re great terrorist targets and they’re extraordinarily expensive. They are not, in my judgment, the way to green this—to get us off our dependence on oil.”

Next, while giving a backhanded acknowledgment of his earlier support for nuclear power, Barack Obama trotted out all the other old – and wrongheaded – arguments against building new nuclear power plants: “Now, with respect to nuclear energy, what I have said is that if we could figure out a way to provide a cost-efficient, safe way to produce nuclear energy, and we knew how to store it effectively, then we should pursue it because what we don’t want is to produce more greenhouse gases… Now, if we cannot solve those problem, then absolutely, John, we shouldn’t build more plants.”

Not to be outdone, Hillary Clinton dismissed nuclear power from our future with this: “I have a comprehensive energy plan that I have put forth. It does not rely on nuclear power for all of the reasons that we’ve discussed.”

As George Will would say: “Well.” All of the objections to nuclear power that these candidates have offered are simply red herrings. As Third Way has written before, global climate change poses the greatest threat that mankind faces, perhaps the greatest our species has ever faced. If we are to confront this crisis effectively and in time, we simply must produce power without producing carbon. And the only way to get there from here is to build a LOT more nuclear plants, and to do so fast. One simple point: nuclear energy produces about 20% of US power usage today. Solar is about .02%. You triple solar power, you get to .06%. You triple nuclear, you get to 60%. The math isn’t hard.

I could reiterate the reasons why nuclear is NOT unsafe or too expensive, or why the waste problem is NOT too burdensome, but many others have done so more eloquently and persuasively. To that end, I strongly recommend that any skeptics read Gwyneth Cravens fantastic new book, Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy. Cravens, herself once a nuclear opponent, takes the reader on a complete tour of nuclear power generation from beginning to end, and she simply demolishes the opposing viewpoints, as well as the notion that we can escape our climate change problem exclusively through the use of renewable sources (she quotes scientists who call the fairy dust we’d need to do so “Unobtainium”).

But back to the politicians. The leading Republican candidates, to their credit, have been almost universally supportive of nuclear power. McCain mentions it favorably on his website, as does Huckabee, Romney and Giuliani. (Fred Thompson doesn’t, and he questions climate change, so he’s every bit the loser you thought he was.)

By contrast, Clinton’s wonky energy plan is nuclear-free, as is Obama’s and, of course, Edwards’). The best you could say for these guys is that they didn’t pronounce in nuke-you-ler.

Opposing Yucca is one thing (Mike Dukakis found a love for belgian endive farming when he went to Iowa – caucuses are powerful things). But coming out foursquare against nuclear power is totally ridiculous. If one of these Democrats becomes our next president, here’s hoping they get out a knife and fork and eat those words by supporting a massive new round of nuclear plant construction. The world’s future may well depend on it.

3,000 Splendid Sons

contact@thirdway.com (Matt Bennett, Vice President for Public Affairs) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 10:45:00 -0700

(NOTE: This piece was authored by Third Way’s Senior Policy Fellow for National Security, Jonathan Morgenstein.)

Yesterday, the Department of Defense announced the expected deployment of about 3,000 Marines to shore up the NATO mission in Afghanistan. The decision to increase troop levels in Afghanistan, the actual central front in the War on Terror, although yet to be finalized by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, is crucial, if very, very tardy. If the Bush administration hadn’t waited six years to talk about such an idea, let alone implement one, perhaps Afghanistan wouldn’t be slipping back toward general chaos right now.

We give credit to Secretary Gates and his staff for making the shift and finally listening to the progressives who have been calling for such action for a long time. Although many progressive leaders in and out of Congress—and many field commanders for that matter—have been calling for a much greater expansion of US forces in Afghanistan than the 3,000 Marines offered by the administration, this is a good start. Of course, our NATO allies have to pick up the slack and strengthen their presence there as well. However, they will remain reluctant as long as the United States shirks its leadership responsibilities and doesn’t seriously commit the resources needed to win there.

Kudos to both the progressive national security voices who have been pushing for this kind of action, as well as to the progressive majority that took over Congress in 2006. This new majority was responsible for the President finally forcing out Donald Rumsfeld and his myopic staff that bungled so badly everything but the initial phases of the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It was this progressive pressure that prompted the appointment of a new, reality-based Secretary of Defense, who then ushered-in more capable and less ideological Pentagon leadership.

Indeed, if there is progress as a result of this new deployment, let’s be clear where the credit should lie. This change made at the top of the Pentagon, was forced by progressive pressure and the overwhelming message of disapproval delivered by the electorate in November 2006. And, it was only this change that facilitated the possibility of refocusing on—and winning—the war that we’ve needed to fight from the beginning to actually defeat al Qaeda … Afghanistan.