Un-Cheneyed Melody

It's one thing to talk about reaching a higher moral ground, but another thing to get there. That's one thing Barack Obama has certainly learned since assuming the U.S. presidency. Case in point: he's encountered resistance to delivering on one of his most widely-supported promises, made almost immediately after taking office, to close the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay. Resistance from the Democrat-controlled Senate, no less, which won't fund the closure until Obama's administration outlines a comprehensive plan detailing just what's going to be done with Guantanamo's 240 residents.

That kind of resistance is entirely fair. As much of an outrage as Guantanamo, indefinite detention and torturous interrogation has been, and as much as it's cost the U.S. and the entire Western world in credibility and goodwill, the fact is that there are almost certainly a few among the Guantanamo prisoners who would immediately set about planning an attack if they were ever to get free. Maybe more than a few. The administration does have an obligation to deliver a real plan that addresses how the terrorist true believers and those who stepped more innocently into the American military dragnet will be identified, separated and treated accordingly. It's a process that will require careful thinking and shouldn't be unduly hindered by a politically motivated deadline - although Obama's January 2010 goal does seem reasonable.

The kind of resistance that isn't so fair is the kind offered up by former vice president Dick Cheney, who today followed an Obama speech reiterating the call for Guantanamo's closure with an address to the right-wing think tank American Enterprise Institute chastising Obama for compromising U.S. security. It's clear that Cheney, who largely drove the Bush Administration's national security policy, isn't about to let his legacy die quietly. 

Nor is he going to be any more bound by the rules of logic in his criticism than he was by the rule of law in giving the go-ahead to torture. Taking a dig at those who say that the Bush Republicans abandoned American values in prosecuting the "war on terror," Cheney said, "...no moral value held dear by the American people obliges public servants to sacrifice innocent lives to spare a captured terrorist from unpleasant things."

Here are three reasons why this one sentence constitutes a remarkably brazen rhetorical dodge:

1. "Captured terrorist." One of the fundamental problems with the Bushies' detention and torture philosophy was that it flouted the presumption of innocence. Imagine denying everyday citizens the right to a fair trial because the very fact of their arrest makes them "captured criminals."

2. "Unpleasant things." Cute. Waterboarding is certainly unpleasant, so much so that it's been recognized for centuries as a form of torture. If Cheney really stands behind torture, he should have the guts to call it by its true name.

3. The whole construction of the sentence conjures an image of a public servant that allows innocents to die in order to prevent "unpleasant things" from happening to "captured terrorists." In reality, the proactive element has worked the other way - U.S. interrogators, supported by Cheney and his ilk, were the perpetrators of the "unpleasant things." Public servants certainly don't have an obligation to throw innocent civilians in front of a bus in order for the bus to swerve away from detainees, but they do have an obligation not to be the ones who use the bus as a weapon.

What makes Cheney's objections all the more laughable is that he's now said more in the few short months of Obama's presidency than he did in eight years as vice president. He built these detention and interrogation policies behind a veil of secrecy unlike almost any other in U.S. history, and after so much time spent refusing to be held publicly accountable, he's ill-deserving of his role as Obama's harshest public critic.