America in the World

George W Bush says 'waterboarding' of terrorist suspects saved London from attacks

Many people in the world call it torture but George W Bush and the CIA insist on calling "waterboarding" a form of enhanced interrogation. The former US president believes that waterboarding is not torture because it causes no physical damage and is always conducted in the presence of medical personnel. Barack Obama has disowned the procedure, earning a rebuke from Dick Cheney.

President Bush has been silent since leaving the White House but has just published his memoirs, Decision Points, and in interviews to promote the book, the 43rd US President has defended waterboarding:

"In an interview with The Times, the former US President offered a vigorous defence of the coercive interrogation technique: “Three people were waterboarded and I believe that decision saved lives.” He denied that waterboarding, which simulates drowning, amounted to torture. Asked if he authorised the use of waterboarding to get information from the captured al-Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he was unequivocal: “Damn right!” In his new book he writes: “Their interrogations helped break up plots to attack American diplomatic facilities abroad, Heathrow airport and Canary Wharf in London, and multiple targets in the United States.”"

Many British people will be sympathetic with the President's arguments. A YouGov poll, conducted over the weekend, found that 50% supported Britain’s security services using information passed to them by other countries that might have been obtained by torture. That compares with 31% who think it should not be used.

Other highlights from the Times interview:

• Tony Blair is compared to Winston Churchill.
• America will remain the main superpower because of China's internal problems.
• “There were things we got wrong in Iraq, but that cause is eternally right.”

Read more here, behind The Times' paywall.

The Guardian has much more including on his programme for tackling AIDS in the developing world, a programme he describes as "a medical version of the Marshall Plan".

VIDEO FROM NBC ON THE MEMOIRS:
 

Obama is warned against "Rumsfeldian half-measures" in Afghanistan

Critics of President Bush's invasion of Iraq often complained that the necessary war in Afghanistan was being starved of resources because of the decision to topple Saddam Hussein. AmericaInTheWorld has always supported the Iraq war but it is difficult to argue with the contention that the campaign in Afghanistan was neglected. Barack Obama vowed to correct that while a candidate for the White House and has already committed another 21,000 US troops to the country.

He will soon receive another request for more troops from his commander in the field, General Stanley McChrystal, but that request will come at a time of mounting opposition to the campaign among US voters.  A recent Washington Post opinion poll found 51% of Americans believing that the war is not worth fighting.  Among the President's own Democratic party opposition is even higher, at 70%.  Nearly twice as many voters want troop numbers reduced as support extra troops.

All this comes at a terrible time for Obama.  The politician who could do no wrong is facing difficulties on multiple fronts.  His flagship domestic reform - on healthcare - is unpopular.  Earlier today unemployment hit at 26-year high of 9.7%.  The budget deficit is exceeding the Obama White House's own forecasts.  His net approval rating is down to 11.7%.

Obama sets up new unit to interrogate high value terrorist detainees

The interrogation techniques used during the Bush years became a major new source of anti-Americanism.  The Bush administration approved techniques such as waterboarding (a simulation is pictured) and sleep deprivation (defended recently by Dick Cheney) but we are also now learning that other unauthorised techniques were used.  These included threatening to kill a detainee's children and revving a power drill near next to the head of a hooded detainee.  The Obama administration is now investigating whether CIA operatives who used unauthorised detainees should be prosecuted. 

Present Obama has said that there need be no conflict between American safety and American ideals and has set up a new unit to ensure ethical and scientific interrogation of suspects who could help provide information about America's enemies.

The High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group will be headquartered at the FBI but will include expert operatives from other parts of the security establishment.

The Washington Post reports:

"Members of the new interrogation unit will have the authority to travel around the world to talk to suspects and will be trained to handle certain high-interest people, such as al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Linguists and cultural and interrogation specialists will be assigned to the group and will have "some division of responsibility" regarding types of detainees, a senior administration official said. Most of the group's members will work there full time, although they will have part-time support from the FBI. Interrogators will not necessarily read detainees their rights before questioning, instead making that decision on a case-by-case basis, officials said. That could affect whether some material can be used in a U.S. court of law. The main purpose of the new unit, however, is to glean intelligence, especially about potential terrorist attacks, the officials said."

> Background on the HVDIG from the State Department.

Obama unhappy at release of Lockerbie bomber

Earlier today Barack Obama - echoing Hillary Clinton's earlier remarks - expressed his unhappiness at the decision of the Scottish government to release the Lockerbie bomber on 'compassionate grounds':

For Janet Daley of The Daily Telegraph the release is another proof that Obama has made America more likeable but not necessarily more influential:

"The rehabilitation of America’s standing in the world was going to be one of the great gains, if you remember, of the Obama election victory. No more was the voice of the US to be held in contempt by its old allies. The Obama White House would restore the moral authority of the nation, and thus its influence in the world. So much for that. As the Scottish Justice Secretary intoned his ruling that Megrahi was to be permitted to go free because he was “a dying man”,  most Americans (even of the liberal Obama persuasion) would be wondering what a life sentence meant if it did not involve dying in prison. But the important political lesson will have gone home. The President and his Secretary of State could do nothing - for all their administration’s  supposed global prestige - to prevent what they considered to be an outrage. On yet another score, Mr Obama could not deliver the goods."

Obama and Cheney clash over human rights and national security

In the debate about the closure of Guantanamo Bay perhaps the most interesting contribution was made by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates. Mr Gates, who was appointed by George W Bush and retained by Barack Obama, said that the Guantanamo detention facility was one of the best prisons in the world but its name was too potent a cause for America's enemies and critics:

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Yesterday, in clashing speeches President Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney set out competing visions on national security and human rights. The table below has Obama's words in blue and Cheney's in red (click on the graphic to enlarge):

Taken from the Washington Wire.

Despite the rhetorical differences between Obama and Cheney the Wall Street Journal suggests that recent administration decisions owe much to Bush era doctrines:

"Yet for all of his attacks on the Bush Administration, which he accused of making "decisions based upon fear rather than foresight," Mr. Obama stuck with his predecessor's support for military commissions, adding some procedural bells and whistles as political cover to justify his past opposition. For the record: Both the left and right, from the ACLU to Dick Cheney, now agree that the President has all but embraced the Bush policy."

In contrast David Brooks in the New York Times writes that the Cheney policy ended her Bush:

"The reality is that after Sept. 11, we entered a two- or three-year period of what you might call Bush-Cheney policy. The country was blindsided. Intelligence officials knew next to nothing about the threats arrayed against them. The Bush administration tried just about everything to discover and prevent threats... By 2005, what you might call the Bush-Rice-Hadley era had begun. Gradually, in fits and starts, a series of Bush administration officials — including Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, Jack Goldsmith and John Bellinger — tried to rein in the excesses of the Bush-Cheney period. They didn’t win every fight, and they were prodded by court decisions and public outrage, but the gradual evolution of policy was clear."

Obama u-turns on prisoner abuse photographs and military trials

As candidate Barack Obama was pledged to release photographs of abuse of prisoners by the military and to end the mililtary commissions that George W Bush established to try the inmates of Guantanamo Bay.

In recent days President Obama has reversed both of those positions.

He has decided that the release of abuse photographs will only risk inflaming opinion towards America and towards US forces in particular.  He has also reluctantly decided that military commissions - with reform - are the only effective way of trying prisoners who were captured in theatres of war.

Rich Lowry of National Review welcomes the White House's double shift:

"To the extent Guantanamo Bay has stoked terrorist recruitment, it probably has more to do with the photos of the facility from its earliest days — with captives bound, in orange jumpsuits — than anything that happened there. The most infamous photo from Abu Ghraib — of a man with a black hood over his head, his arms outstretched — has negatively branded the War on Terror for millions, no matter how sincerely we hope to protect Muslims from the depredations of the vile murderers in their midst. Obama isn’t going to subject us to another self-inflicted disaster in the information war. At least not yet. If he wants to keep the photos permanently under wraps — and show he’s truly willing to buck the loudest faction in his own coalition — he can’t rely on the courts, where he’s now appealing the decision to release them. He’ll have to issue an executive order exempting the photos from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act."

Cheney defends Guantanamo Bay and coercive interrogation of terrorism suspects

In an interview for Politico, former Vice President Dick Cheney has defended some of the most controversial anti-terror measures adopted by the Bush administration and has suggested that there is a “high probability” that terrorists will attempt a nuclear or biological attack in coming years.

Key quotes:

"If it hadn't been for what we did - with respect to the terrorist surveillance program, or enhanced interrogation techniques for high-value detainees, the Patriot Act, and so forth - then we would have been attacked again. Those policies we put in place, in my opinion, were absolutely crucial to getting us through the last seven-plus years without a major-casualty attack on the US."

The "ultimate threat to the country", was a "9/11-type event where the terrorists are armed with something much more dangerous than an airline ticket and a box cutter - a nuclear weapon or a biological agent of some kind" that is deployed in the middle of an American city that could kill perhaps hundreds of thousands of people.

"If you release the hard-core al-Qaeda terrorists that are held at Guantanamo, I think they go back into the business of trying to kill more Americans and mount further mass-casualty attacks. If you turn 'em loose and they go kill more Americans, who's responsible for that? When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an al-Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry".

Protecting the country is "a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business".  "These are evil people. And we're not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek."

Obama approves first controversial military action of his Presidency

Associated Press is reporting the first serious military operation of the Obama Presidency:

"Missiles fired from a suspected U.S. spy plane killed seven people Friday on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border, a lawless region where al-Qaida militants are known to hide out, officials said. The strike was the first on Pakistani territory since the inauguration of President Barrack Obama. Pakistani leaders had expressed hope Obama would halt the attacks, more than 30 of which have been launched since the middle of last year, reportedly killing several senior militants."

Barack Obama's approval of the raids that began under Defence Secretary Bob Gates - kept on by America's new President - should not come as a surprise.  When, in August 2007, he first advocated sending US troops into Pakistan to kill terrorist leaders the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial headline 'Barack Obama, Neocon'.

Dr Liam Fox, Defence spokesman for Britain's Conservatives, will be supportive.  He recently said that disruption of Pakistan's al-Qaeda-Taliban network should be celebrated.

Barack Obama's first executive order requires closure of Guantanamo

The new President has also ordered an end to aggressive interrogation techniques... or has he? Two leading articles in successive days in the Wall Street Journal warn that (1) there are loopholes that would allow US intelligence officers to press suspects harder in tough cases and (2) a version of Gitmo's military commissions may be simply re-created on US soil.

Popularity can never be the primary objective of US foreign policy

President-Elect Barack Obama has always been confident of his ability to tackle anti-Americanism.  He said this in November 2007, campaigning in Iowa:

"The day I'm inaugurated, not only will the country look at itself differently, but the world will look at America differently."

Early reaction to his election has indeed been very positive. We noted some of the warm response last week.

But popularity shouldn't be the primary objective of US foreign policy as Jeff Jacoby noted in Sunday's Boston Globe:

"Great nations have great interests in the world - interests that cannot always be secured through patient negotiation or Security Council resolutions. As the foremost military power, the United States must at times be "the world's reluctant sheriff," using force to maintain order or defend liberty. President Obama may speak more softly than his predecessor, but he will still be carrying a very big stick. Like other presidents, he will be loudly condemned when he uses it."

Many thought anti-Americanism - a plague that has beset every recent US administration and, for that matter, every 'top dog nation' in history - had suffered a terminal setback on 9/11.  It hadn't, of course.  Anti-Americanism resumed because of America's assertive response to those attacks and also because that response was often pursued incompetently and ineffectively.

Barack Obama's foreign policy options divide into four broad categories. We list them below with some example policies:

RIGHT FOR THE WORLD, RIGHT FOR ANTI-AMERICANISM

• An and to aggressive interrogation techniques including waterboarding and the closure of Guantanamo Bay.
• The continuation of the Bush administration's Africa policies which have included large increases in aid spending - particularly against malaria and HIV/AIDS.

RIGHT FOR THE WORLD, WRONG FOR ANTI-AMERICANISM*

• Perseverance in Iraq until the benefits of the surge are safeguarded.  Many in Europe and the Middle East will be disappointed at a measured withdrawal of forces but a precipitate exit would not just endanger Iraq's transition to stability but, in the medium term, contribute to a lack of confidence in American power.
• A surge of troops into Afghanistan and greater commitment of European soldiers to the task of defeating the Taliban.

WRONG FOR THE WORLD, RIGHT FOR ANTI-AMERICANISM

• Submission to the UN. The world will initially appreciate multilateralism but many will come to resent the lack of action that results from prolonged summitry.

WRONG FOR THE WORLD, WRONG FOR ANTI-AMERICANISM*

• Anti-free trade policies as supported by many US Democrats and union leaders. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is urging the President-Elect to resist protectionism.

* When we say "wrong for anti-Americanism" we only mean in the short-term. Policies that are "wrong for the world" - pursued for a long enough period - will progressively undermine confidence in US policy and power.