(updated below)

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the extreme disconnect between reality and reporting in the John Brennan controversy.  Specifically, the case against John Brennan as CIA Director -- from the beginning -- was based almost exclusively on comments he made on television, after he left the CIA, in which he supported rendition and what he called "enhanced interrogation tactics."  Anyone without any lingering confusion or doubts about that, or about whether Brennan made such statements, should see here.

The anti-Brennan case was not based on any claims that he helped implement those programs at the CIA.  It was not based on the theory that anyone in a top level position at the CIA in this decade should, for that reason alone, be deemed "tainted."  It was, instead, based on the post-CIA, pro-rendition and pro-"enhanced interrogation tactic" comments he made -- period.  It is obviously p0ssible to dispute the opinion that those comments from Brennan should disqualify him from consideration for CIA Director, but it is not reasonably possible to dispute that (a) Brennan made these statements in support of rendition and "enhanced interrogation tactics" and (b) the campaign against Brennan was based almost entirely on those publicly expressed viewpoints of his.

Nonetheless, no matter how many times that is pointed out and documented, journalists and Brennan allies continue to recite the mantra -- like mindless, programmed zombies wholly unaffected by external stimuli -- that the case against Brennan was grounded in his critics' unfair theory that merely being at the CIA makes someone "tainted," or, more inaccurately still, based on the critics' false accusation that Brennan himself helped to implement the CIA's torture program.  Those claims are pure fantasies; they had nothing to do with anything.  Yet like so many total myths that take root in our political discourse, it's impossible to dislodge this storyline, no matter how much linguistic clarity and factual documentation are marshaled against it.  After awhile, one feels as though one is speaking a different language, or residing in Alice in Wonderland.

I bring all of this up again only because, roughly two weeks ago, I was interviewed for about 20 minutes by Fox News' Jim Angle regarding the Brennan withdrawal, and last night, his report was broadcast on Brit Hume's Special Report.  Angle was fully aware of and conversant about the case made against Brennan.  Still, knowing that the media was systematically mis-reporting the story, I made certain to weave into almost every answer I gave a clear statement that the case against Brennan was based on the pro-rendition-and-torture comments he made, and not any claim that he was "tainted" merely by virtue of his service at the CIA.

Just watch how little good that did.  Marvel at the total nonsequiturs on which the entire report was based.  As though it were anything other than pure fantasy, Brennan allies marched forward to decry the outrageousness that "bloggers" had sunk Brennan based on the patently unfair theory that Brennan's mere service at the CIA rendered him tainted, or due to "their" false accusation that Brennan helped implement the programs.  Granted, this is Fox News, but there was nothing they did that everyone else reporting on this story -- from The New York Times to NPR -- didn't do (and which they continue to do).  If anything, the Fox report was actually better, since they at least included a quote from me referencing Brennan's pro-rendition-and-torture statements -- though I might as well have spoken in Farsi given what little impact that had on the rest of the commentary:

 Here is what the Brennan reporting has sounded like to me from the beginning:

REPORTER:  Critics of Brennan say that his service at the CIA during the time these controversial programs were implemented renders him "tainted."

BRENNAN CRITIC:  Actually, the case against Brennan wasn't about that at all.  It was about the statements he made, once he left the CIA, defending rendition and torture.  Mere service at the CIA wouldn't disqualify anyone.  It was the fact that Brennan, with his television comments, made clear he supported many of these programs.

BRENNAN ALLY:  What the bloggers did here is really outrageous.  They're saying that any high-level service at the CIA disqualifies you from a top intelligence post because it makes you tainted.  They're also lying and claiming that Brennan helped to implement the torture programs.

REPORTER:  The torpedoing of Brennan raises a vexing question:  is it even possible for Obama to find any qualified person for CIA Director, given that bloggers on the Left continue to object that anyone who worked at the CIA during the last eight years should be deemed disqualified?

And on and on and on . . . . That method is hardly unique to this story.  One just sees it more vividly as a result of direct involvement in a story.

* * * * *

Also embedded throughout this narrative -- not just on Fox but in all of these reports -- are the sneering references to "bloggers" and "blogs."  Given that virtually every establishment media outlet now regularly writes in this format, I'm really not sure -- nor is anyone else -- what distinguishes a "journalist" from a "blogger" these days.  The terms have no real definition and no real purpose other than to allow the former some instrument for demonizing, sneering at, and feeling superior to the latter. So while these terms have long ago lost their definitional clarity, their true purpose means they're unlikely to disappear any time soon.

In any event, my comment about blogs was somewhat distorted by the truncated nature of the cable news format (which I wrote about here).  My statement about whether Obama should ignore blogs was made in response to Angle's observation that the Brennan controversy was "strange" because it had been confined to "the blogs," and hadn't even been mentioned in newspapers or "on cable" -- as though nothing matters until Fox talks about it. 

As I pointed out, it's unlikely in the extreme that the Brennan withdrawal happened due exclusively to opposition on blogs (far more likely is that the anti-Brennan evidence marshaled on blogs signaled that it could easily grow into a larger controversy).  Nonetheless, the audience size for some political blogs is larger than some cable news shows, and thus, it's foolish to to ignore what is said on blogs and only pay attention to what cable news shows discuss, particularly since blog commentary often foreshadows what will eventually occur in the wider discourse.

Just compare the daily visitor count at Daily Kos with the most recent Total Viewership Numbers (in thousands) for the various cable shows in Brit Hume's time slot and in the hour before and after:

The number of visitors to Kos is roughly equal to the viewership of the prime-time CNN shows, greater than the MSNBC shows for this time period, and roughly half of the viewership for the Fox shows. It's true that total blog visitors (which can count multiple same-day visits as unique visitors) and Nielsen TV viewer statistics aren't the same, and Kos is the largest of the liberal blogs by a fairly sizable margin.  But the point is still clear:  the number of people who read blogs -- and who, in particular, are exposed to a story when (as was the case with Brennan) many large blogs discuss it and thus amplify each other's coverage and multiply the numbers who are exposed -- is in the same general range as those who are exposed to a story covered by cable news. 

A story covered extensively on large blogs is going to reach (at least) hundreds of thousands of high-information, highly engaged political consumers, as well as most opinion-makers in politics and the media -- still almost certainly a lesser quantitative reach than cable news shows currently have, but only by degree, not by level.  It's simply a myth that if a story appears only on "blogs," it's reaching only a small, fringe audience as compared to what happens if it's discussed on cable news.  And whatever mild disparity does still exist is diminishing by the day.

* * * * *

Speaking of invented storyline myths becoming entrenched in our media discourse and then never dissolving no matter how factually inaccurate it is, here is a superb video compiled by Jed Lewison documenting the completely fact-free reporting that has driven the tawdry media attempt to connect Barack Obama (through Rahm Emanuel) to the Blagojevich scandal.  Obviously, it's perfectly appropriate to ask questions about Obama and Emanuel's involvement, but the media simply invented a pure fiction to implicate Obama in order to drive the story -- a fiction that has had a considerable impact on public perception:

That's almost certainly damage that will never be undone. That's why it is, in my view, worthwhile to dissect the Brennan coverage -- what one finds there is a deceitful methodology that is used in almost every story.

* * * * *

Finally, as a bonus, here is the type of email that one receives after appearing on Fox.  I really don't think this is representative of anything other than the specific individuals sending the email, but since a long-time favorite tactic of the right-wing noise machine (including Fox News) is to highlight individual cases of bad behavior on "the Left" in order to imply some unwarranted generalized inference, it's worthwhile to illustrate now and then how cheap and easy that tactic is.

UPDATE:  Both Digby and Bob Somerby have much more on the sleazy, dishonest tactics used by many in the media to pump up the Blagojevich scandal and link Obama to it even as they recognize there is no linkage.  Of particular note is the painfully inane Meet the Press "discussion" which Somerby documents between David Gregory, NBC's Erin Burnett and NPR's Michele Norris, though Digby cites some equally painful instances of extreme media inanity on this issue. 

(updated below - Update II - Update III)

Dick Cheney's interview yesterday with Fox's Chris Wallace was filled with significant claims, but certainly among the most significant was his detailed narration of how the administration, and Cheney personally, told numerous Democratic Congressional leaders -- repeatedly and in detail -- about the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program.  And, according to Cheney, every one of those Democrats -- every last one -- not only urged its continuation, but insisted that it be kept secret: 

WALLACE: Let's drill down into some of the specific measures that you pushed — first of all, the warrantless surveillance on a massive scale, without telling the appropriate court, without seeking legislation from Congress.

Why not, in the aftermath of 9/11 and the spirit of national unity, get approval, support, bring in the other branches of government?

CHENEY: Well, let me tell you a story about the terror surveillance program. We did brief the Congress. And we brought in...

WALLACE: Well, you briefed a few members.

CHENEY: We brought in the chairman and the ranking member, House and Senate, and briefed them a number of times up until — this was — be from late '01 up until '04 when there was additional controversy concerning the program.

At that point, we brought in what I describe as the big nine — not only the intel people but also the speaker, the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate, and brought them into the situation room in the basement of the White House.

I presided over the meeting. We briefed them on the program, and what we'd achieved, and how it worked, and asked them, "Should we continue the program?" They were unanimous, Republican and Democrat alike. All agreed — absolutely essential to continue the program.

I then said, "Do we need to come to the Congress and get additional legislative authorization to continue what we're doing?" They said, "Absolutely not. Don't do it, because it will reveal to the enemy how it is we're reading their mail."

That happened. We did consult. We did keep them involved. We ultimately ended up having to go to the Congress after the New York Times decided they were going to make the judge to review all of — or make all of this available, obviously, when they reacted to a specific leak.

But it was a program that we briefed on repeatedly. We did these briefings in my office. I presided over them. We went to the key people in the House and Senate intel committees and ultimately the entirely leadership and sought their advice and counsel, and they agreed we should not come back to the Congress.

Cheney's reference to the "additional controversy concerning the program" that arose after 2004 and that led to additional Congressional briefings is ambiguous and creates a somewhat unclear time line:  is he referring to late 2004, when the White House learned that The New York Times knew about the NSA program and was considering writing about it (only to then obey the President's orders to keep it a secret), or is he referring to the time when, more than a full year later, in December 2005, the NYT finally got around to writing about it, once Bush was safely re-elected?  

Either way, Cheney's general claim is as clear as it is incriminating.  According to him, key Congressional Democrats were told about the illegal NSA spying program in detail, and they not only actively approved of it, but far beyond that, they insisted that no Congressional authorization should even be sought, based on what was always the patently inane claim that to discuss the fact that the administration was eavesdropping on our conversations without warrants (rather than with warrants, as the law required) would be to reveal our secrets -- "our playbook" -- to Al Qaeda.

It is certainly true that Dick Cheney is not exactly the most scrupulously honest public servant around.  In fact, he's almost certainly the opposite.  Still, what he said yesterday was merely an expanded and more detailed version of what has previously been publicly reported and, to some degree, confirmed about the knowledge and support of Democratic leaders for the NSA program.  Cheney's claims encompasses the following key Democrats:

• Nancy Pelosi (Ranking Member, House Intelligence Committee, House Minority Leader);
•  
• Jane Harman (Ranking Member, House Intelligence Committee);
•  
• Jay Rockefeller (Ranking Member, Senate Intelligence Committee);
•  
• Harry Reid Tom Daschle (Senate Minority Leader).

Unsurprisingly, Pelosi, Harman and Rockefeller all voted last July to legalize warrantless eavesdropping and to immunize telecoms from liability, thereby ensuring an end to the ongoing investigations into these programs.  And though he ultimately cast a meaningless vote against final passage, it was Reid's decisions as Majority Leader which played an instrumental role in ensuring passage of that bill.

One would think that these Democratic leaders would, on their own, want to respond to Cheney's claims about them and deny the truth of those claims.   After all, Cheney's statement is nothing less than an accusation that they not only enthusiastically approved, but actively insisted upon the continuation and ongoing secrecy, of a blatantly illegal domestic spying program (one that several of them would, once it was made public, pretend to protest).  As Armando says, "The Democratic members who participated in this meeting have two choices in my mind - refute Cheney's statements or admit their complicity in the illegal activity perpetrated by the Bush Administration."

I'm going to spend the day calling these members and trying to get some response to Cheney's claim.  If I'm unable to obtain any responses, I'll post their numbers and encourage everyone to make similar calls.  As I wrote on Saturday -- and documented before:  "As a practical reality, the largest barrier to any route to prosecution -- including this one -- is that the Congressional Democratic leadership was complicit, to varying degrees, in the illegal programs."  That's true not only of the NSA program, but also the Bush/Cheney torture program.

One last point:  there is much consternation over Dick Cheney's "Nixon/Frost moment" yesterday, where he expressly endorsed the idea that, as a "general proposition," a "wartime" President can do anything he wants -- even if it violates duly enacted statutes -- as long as it's justified in the name of national security.  In one sense, Cheney was being so explicit yesterday about his belief in Bush's lawbreaking powers in part because he's taking pride in being so defiant on his way out the door -- daring a meek and impotent political class to do anything about his lawlessness -- and also because Chris Wallace conducted one of the best interviews (and, revealingly, one of the only interviews) about the Bush/Cheney view of executive power.

But that this was the Bush administration's central operating principle is something that -- as was true for Cheney's involvement in America's torture regime -- was long known.  As I wrote all the way back in December, 2005, days after the NSA scandal was first revealed:

These are not academic questions. Quite the contrary, it is hard to imagine questions more pressing. We are at a moment in time when not just fringe ideologues, but core, mainstream supporters of the President -- not to mention senior officials in the Administration itself – are openly embracing the theory that the President can use the power and military force of the United States to do whatever he wants, including to and against U.S. citizens, as long as he claims that it is connected to America’s "war" against terrorists – a war which is undeclared, ever-expanding, and without any visible or definable end.

While Bush advocates have long been toying with this theory in the shadows, the disclosure that Bush ordered warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens in undeniable violation of a Congressional statute has finally forced them to articulate their lawless power theories out in the open. Bush got caught red-handed violating the law, and once it became apparent that no argument could be made that he complied with the law, the only way to defend him was to come right out and say that he has the right to break the law. So that debate -- over the claimed limitlessness of George Bush's power -- can't be put off any longer.

By itself, the long-disclosed September 25, 2001 Yoo Memorandum left no doubt that our Government had formally and explicitly adopted an ideology of lawlessness.  As a country, we just chose to ignore all of that, chose to do nothing about it.  The absues and extremism of the last eight years began as a Bush administration initiative, but it culminated as something for which both political parties, our leading political and media institutions, and our citizenry generally bear collective responsibility.

* * * * *
On a somewhat related note, this creepy little post inserted onto Matt Yglesias' Center for American Progress blog by Jennifer Palmieri, the CEO of CAP's "Action Fund", is a vivid exhibit illustrating how Washington works, for reasons which Matt Stoller, Markos Moulitsas, and Brendan Nyhan all describe.  Matt very well may not consider it to constitute interference with his editorial autonomy, but it nonetheless illustrates the potential constraints that can come from writing for an organization like that.

When I first joined Salon, the commitment they made, which for me was non-negotiatiable, was absolute editorial independence.  Though that's an unusual commitment for a magazine to make, they did make it, and they never once -- in almost two years of my being here -- even came close to violating it.  Even as I've waged quite acrimonious mini-wars with friends and former colleagues of top editors and officers here, and even as I've aggressively advocated views that were, at times, the opposite of the ones top editors here were advocating, there's never been a hint of interference or even pressure, and I couldn't even fathom their doing anything like sticking a note onto my blog of the type Palmieri just inserted onto Matt's blog. 

Editorial independence is quite rare and quite valuable.  It's still one of the key distinguishing features between blogs/alternative media outlets and establishment media.  As Atrios suggests:   "contemplate the issue of editorial independence, and the various revenue models which make it possible or not."  It's worth supporting the bloggers who practice it and the media venues that allow and encourage it.

UPDATE:  As I said, Cheney's time line is unclear, and it's possible, when he references an "additional controversy," he's referring to the DOJ's objections to the NSA program in March, 2004 -- not anything having to do with the New York Times.  That would mean the detailed, expanded briefings he's describing would have included then-Minority Leader Tom Daschle, but not Harry Reid (who only became Minority Leader in 2005, once Daschle lost).  If Cheney is describing 2005 briefings, they would have included Reid.  That's all the more reason why responses from leading Democrats here is required.

That key Democrats were briefed on the NSA program is anything but new.  USA Today reported in 2006 that Democratic leaders including Pelosi were repeatedly briefed on the program.   There is some marginal dispute about what they were and weren't told, but no dispute about the existence of the briefings and the complete lack of any real efforts by Democrats to stop it or even object.

UPDATE II:  Via email, several very knowledgeable bloggers -- including Marcy Wheeler and Christy Hardin Smith -- are arguing, persuasively, that Cheney did not really disclose any specific new facts yesterday about Democratic complicity, that while he may have emphasized more clearly than ever before the approval he claims Democrats gave, all of the facts, in one venue or another, have been previously disclosed. Cheney yesterday was almost certainly talking about the March, 2004 White House briefing (that would have included Pelosi, Harman and Rockefeller -- but not Reid), which has been reported.

Re-examining what Cheney said, they're probably right. But none of that, as Spencer Ackerman points out, undermines at all the need for Congressional Democrats finally to give a full accounting of what they knew, what they were told, and what they said about these programs.  Particularly given how publicly Cheney is taunting them for having approved of the NSA program, they should respond specifically to Cheney's claims -- confirm the parts that are true and deny the parts, if any, that aren't.

The reason the law requires that Congressional leaders be briefed on intelligence programs is not because it's nice in the abstract for someone to know. It's because Congressional leaders have the right and the obligation to take action to stop illegal intelligence programs -- something all briefed Democrats clearly failed to do. Cheney, on his way out the door, is answering questions about what he knew and approved. It's way past time for Pelosi, Harman and Rockefeller, at the very least, to do the same.

UPDATE III:  Last week, I was interviewed by Fox News' Jim Angle regarding the John Brennan controversy.  For those interested:  his story will air tonight on Brit Hume's Fox News broadcast, at 6:00 p.m. EST.

(updated below - Update II - Update III)

The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus today perfectly expresses the consensus view of establishment Washington regarding the exemption which political elites should and do enjoy from the rule of law, and, in doing so, she unintentionally highlights -- as vividly as possible -- the glaring flaw in this mentality.  Marcus reviews the life of Mark Felt, the number 2 FBI official under J. Edgar Hoover who died this week.  Felt is most famous for having been Bob Woodward's "Deep Throat" source in the Watergate investigation but, as Marcus details, he was also convicted in a 1980 criminal trial for having ordered illegal, warrantless physical searches of the homes of various friends and relatives of 1960s radicals.

Less than 24 hours after Felt was convicted, he (along with an FBI co-defendant) was pardoned by Ronald Reagan, who justified the pardon by citing Jimmy Carter's pardon of Vietnam War draft evaders and then saying, in words obviously relevant now to growing demands for prosecution of Bush officials: 

We can be no less generous to two men who acted on high principle to bring an end to the terrorism that was threatening our nation. . . .

[The men's convictions] grew out of their good-faith belief that their actions were necessary to preserve the security interests of our country.  The record demonstrates that they acted not with criminal intent, but in the belief that they had grants of authority reaching to the highest levels of government.

Marcus quotes Felt's Special Prosecutor, John Nields, as angrily protesting Reagan's pardon, pointing out that central to our form of Government is the proposition that our highest political leaders are constrained by the Constitution and the rule of law -- a principle Reagan subverted by protecting these criminals.

Like the good, representative establishment Washingtonian that she is, Marcus announces that -- when it comes to the growing controversy over whether Bush officials should be investigated and prosecuted for their crimes -- she "find[s herself] more in the camp of Reagan than Nields."  Her reasoning is a perfect distillation of conventional Washington wisdom on this topic:

I understand -- I even share -- Nields's anger over the insult to the rule of law. Yet I'm coming to the conclusion that what's most crucial here is ensuring that these mistakes are not repeated. In the end, that may be more important than punishing those who acted wrongly in pursuit of what they thought was right.

Leave aside Marcus' revealing description of government crimes as "mistakes."  Even on its own terms, even if one accepts her premise that Bush officials broke the law "in pursuit of what they thought was right," this argument makes absolutely no sense.  In fact, it is as internally contradictory as an idea can be. 

Along with the desire for just retribution, one of the two principal reasons we impose penalties for violations of the criminal law is deterrence -- to provide an incentive for potential lawbreakers to refrain from breaking our laws, rather than deciding that it is beneficial to do so.  Though there is debate about how best to accomplish it and how effective it ultimately is, deterrence of future crimes has been, and remains, a core purpose of the criminal law.  That is about as basic as it gets.  From Paul Robinson, University of Pennsylvania Law Professor, and John Darley, Psychology Professor at Princeton, in "The Role of Deterrence in the Criminal Law":

For the past several decades, the deterrence of crime has been a centerpiece of criminal law reform. Law-givers have sought to optimize the control of crime by devising a penalty-setting system that assigns criminal punishments of a magnitude sufficient to deter a thinking individual from committing a crime.

Punishment for lawbreaking is precisely how we try to ensure that crimes "never happen again."  If instead -- as Marcus and so many other urge -- we hold political leaders harmless when they break the law, if we exempt them from punishment under the criminal law, then what possible reason would they have from refraining from breaking the law in the future?  A principal reason for imposing punishment on lawbreakers is exactly what Marcus says she wants to achieve:  "ensuring that these mistakes are not repeated."  By telling political leaders that they will not be punished when they break the law, the exact opposite outcome is achieved:  ensuring that this conduct will be repeated.

* * * * *

Just contemplate how stupid and irrational everyone would think a person was being if they wrote an article advancing this argument:

Much more important than punishing murderers or getting caught up in protracted disputes about prior murders is the need to prevent murders from occurring in the future.  Therefore, we ought to abandon our quest to impose punishments on people who get caught having murdered someone.  To expend resources trying to punish murderers is to squander vital resources on the past, to waste energies that could instead be more productively devoted to preventing future murders.

There are too many important challenges we face to waste time bogged down litigating past murders.  Let's allow murderers to go unpunished so that we can move beyond the past and concentrate instead on the more important priority of minimizing the number of murders in the future.

The argument, of course, is self-refuting.  If we adopt a policy of not punishing murderers, we will obviously not be preventing future murders.  We will be doing the opposite:  ensuring and even encouraging a massive increase in murders, since people will know that they are now free to do it with impunity.  The prime barrier to most crimes -- the main deterrent -- is the threat of criminal punishment, of a lengthy prison term.  That's not true of all crimes (the criminal law has had a negligible effect, for instance, on drug usage, and may not deter poverty-motivated crimes), but it's certainly true of most serious crimes, especially by those with power.  If you abolish that punishment, then you inevitably ensure many more crimes in the future, no matter how many noble efforts you devote towards "making sure it never happens again" -- whatever that might mean.

The evidence demonstrating that this is an exact analogy to what Marcus is advocating, an exact analogy to what we've generally been doing with political leaders and are doing now, is equally self-evident.  A central observation in Marcus' column is that the controversies that have now arisen over Bush lawbreaking in the areas of interrogation and surveillance are not new.  As she points out, these are the very same controversies that we've been confronting for decades.

That's exactly right.  The same controversies over government lawbreaking arise over and over.  And why is that?  Because our political leaders keep breaking the law -- chronically and deliberately.  And why do they keep doing that?   Because there is no deterrent against it.   Every time they get caught breaking the law, the Ronald Reagans and Ruth Marcuses of the world step in to insist that they should not be punished, that the criminal law is not for elite leaders in political office, that those involved in the noble function of ruling America are too intrinsically well-intentioned to warrant punishment even when they commit crimes, that it's more important to look forward than back.  

Every time we immunize political leaders from the consequences of their crimes, it's manipulatively justified in the name of "ensuring that it never happens again."  And every time, we do exactly the opposite:  we make sure it will happen again.  And it does:  Richard Nixon is pardoned.  J. Edgar Hoover's lawbreakers are protected.  The Iran-contra criminals are set free and put back into government.  Lewis Libby is spared having to serve even a single day in prison despite multiple felony convictions.  And now it's time to immunize even those who tortured detainees and spied on Americans in violation of numerous treaties, domestic laws, and the most basic precepts of civilized Western justice.

* * * * *

If someone wants to argue that America is too good and our Washington elite too important to allow our powerful political leaders to be subjected to the indignity of a criminal proceeding, let alone prison, they should argue that.  As warped as that idea is, at least it's candid and coherent.  It's the actual animating principle driving most of this. 

But this claim that we have to immunize political leaders from the consequences of their lawbreaking in order to -- as Marcus wrote -- "ensure that these mistakes are not repeated" is manipulative and Orwellian in the extreme.  It's contradictory on its face.  It's just a Beltway buzzphrase, a platitude, completely devoid of specific meaning and designed to do nothing but obfuscate what is really going on.

Whenever you hear that claim being made -- that what matters is not punishment, but ensuring that it never happens again -- notice that none of the Serious guardians who advocate it ever, ever answer or even acknowledge this question:  other than punishing people for breaking the law, how is it even theoretically possible to ensure it doesn't happen again in the future?  We already have unambiguous laws in place with substantial penalties for violations.  We already impose disclosure obligations, and substantial oversight duties on the Congress and courts. 

All of these laws and safeguards were blithely disregarded and violated.  Other than making sure that leaders know they will be punished -- like all Americans are -- when they break the law, how and why does anyone imagine that we can ensure this "never happens again," especially as we simultaneously affirm -- yet again -- that political leaders will be exempted from the rule of law if they do it?  What's the answer to that?

UPDATE:  The opening address of Robert Jackson at the Nuremberg Trials is undoubtedly one of the most important speeches of the last century.  It established the basic precepts of Western Justice.  War crimes, Jackson observed, are such that "civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated."  And, contrary to the blatantly self-contradictory claims from today's Washington elite, he pointed out that the only way to ensure they don't happen again is through real accountability and punishment:

The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power . . . .

It's irrelevant whether crimes rise to that same level or are of the same magnitude.  These were principles of justice that were supposed to endure and govern how we conducted ourselves generally, beyond that specific case.  In fact, Justice Louis Brandeis, 20 years earlier, observed that it's probably more important -- not less -- to enforce the rule of law when government leaders commit crimes than when ordinary Americans commit them:

In a government of law, the existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

We haven't just forgotten these principles.  We're deliberately -- consciously -- choosing to renounce them.

UPDATE II:  At Talk Left, Armando points out one other towering, destructive flaw in Marcus' "logic" -- logic which, I want to re-iterate, is worth examining only because it's the predominant mentality in the Washington establishment.  As Armando writes:

[Marcus] claims her ambivalence stems from "How much can and should government infringe on personal privacy and individual liberties in the name of guarding against risks to public safety? What should be the role of criminal law when government officials overstep permissible bounds in the name of national security?"

The answers to these questions are so obvious that it strikes me again that Ms. Marcus is providing us the question 'is she an idiot or a malevolent dissembler?' Those questions are answered by the laws we make. This is called democracy Ms. Marcus. The permitted level of government infringement on liberty is that which our laws and Constitution allow. No more. If we wish to give away our freedoms, we do it by lawful means. To grant the Executive Branch the power to determine which laws to follow is precisely what the Founders fought against.

Why does that even need to be pointed out?  We already weighed the competing considerations between freedom and security and then enacted laws which authorized certain behaviors and criminalized others.  If that balance should be altered, the solution -- in a society that lives under the rule of law -- is for the laws to be changed democratically, not for political leaders to decide at will and in secret that they will break those laws and then argue after the fact that the laws they broke were bad ones.  Political leaders aren't vested with lawbreaking power.  To the contrary, the Constitution explicitly requires that they "faithfully execute" those laws, not violate them at will.

Isn't this all so painfully basic?  When the predominant Beltway argument is stripped of euphemisms, it amounts to nothing less than the claim that our political leaders should be -- and are -- free to break our laws.   And that's the system we've adopted.  It's why Dick Cheney feels free to smugly admit in public that he authorized these war crimes.   He knows that the Ruth Marcuses of the world will intervene to defend him.  Still, it's one thing to argue that American political leaders should have the power to commit crimes. It's another thing entirely to advance the insultingly deceitful and Orwellian claim that doing so is necessary so we can focus on preventing similar lawbreaking in the future.

UPDATE III:  This Kos diarist makes a good case that the most effective way Obama could ensure meaningful investigations and prosecutions is to appoint someone like Patrick Fitzgerald -- or, even better, Fitzgerald himself -- to the role of Special Prosecutor, and vest him with all the power he needs to undertake a real investigation, wherever it might lead.  That's the same recommendation I made several times with Bill Moyers last week, in this clip.

That option has the advantage of insulating Obama from responsibility for overseeing any investigations and ensuring that it is treated purely as a criminal, not a political, matter.  As a practical reality, the largest barrier to any route to prosecution -- including this one -- is that the Congressional Democratic leadership was complicit, to varying degrees, in the illegal programs.  But of all the various ways investigations could be pursued, the appointment of a fearless prosecutor with a proven record of independence (and who is a Republican to boot) would be the most effective.

(updated below)

The disparity is stark between the actual importance of the Inaugural invocation and the anger triggered by Obama's choice of Rick Warren to deliver it.  Obviously, the controversy is a proxy for numerous pre-existing conflicts and agendas that have nothing to do with Rick Warren.  The Obama supporters justifying the choice are defending what they really believe is Obama's new approach to create a new politics.  And those who are angered by the decision are driven mostly by what Marc Ambinder aptly describes as "the gay community['s being] unusually sensitive to getting the shorter angle of presidential triangulation."

I don't want to re-hash those arguments.  Probably the strongest argument I read opposing Obama's choice of Warren is this piece by Michelle Goldberg, which every Obama defender would be well-advised to read.  And probably the strongest pro-Obama defense I've read is this post by John Cole, which those opposed to Warren's selection ought to read.  

Ultimately, these disputes can't really be resolved until Obama is in office.  Only then will we know whether Obama's embrace of every establishment and even right-wing figure he can find is a reflection of what the substance of his governing will be, or whether -- as many of his supporters claim -- it's a master strategy designed to diffuse tension and hostility in order to enable easier enactment of his progressive agenda.  If Obama devotes genuine efforts to repealing DOMA and don't-ask-don't-tell, I doubt anyone will care how many times he hugs Rick Warren -- just as if Obama really closes Guantanamo, withdraws from Iraq and forges a diplomatic peace with Iran, few people will care how much he embraces Joe Lieberman -- though obviously those are very, very large "ifs."  Only time will tell.

But there is one aspect of the worldview of many Obama supporters that I find genuinely difficult to understand.  These supporters insist that by symbolically including and sometimes compromising with even those on the Right with whom he vigorously disagrees, Obama will be able to chip away at the partisan hostilities and resentments, and erode the cultural divisions, that have inflamed and paralyzed our politics.  People on the Right may disagree with him, claim these supporters, but they won't be wallowing in rage, suspicions, and hatred towards him.  Instead, they'll feel respected and accommodated.  They therefore won't be distracted by petty sideshow controversies.  As a result, he'll encounter less reflexive resistance to implementing the key parts of his progressive agenda.   A New Politics will emerge:  one of respectful and civil disagreements, but not consumed by crippling partisan and cultural hatreds.

The one question I always return to when I hear this -- and we've been hearing it a lot to explain the Warren selection -- is this:  in what conceivable sense is this approach "new"?  Even for those who are convinced this will work, isn't this exactly the same thing Democrats have been doing for the last two decades:  namely, accommodating and compromising with the Right in the name of bipartisan harmony and a desire to avoid partisan and cultural conflicts?  This harmonious approach may be many things, but the one thing it seems not to be is "new."

In fact, wasn't this transpartisan mentality exactly the strategic premise that drove the Bill Clinton presidency, exactly what Dick Morris' triangulation tactics were designed to achieve?  Clinton spent the entire decade extending cultural fig leafs to the Right, from V-chips to school uniforms.   Here's how The New York Times explained the 1996 unveiling of his "school uniform" policy:

By supporting measures like the school-uniform option, Mr. Clinton is trying to use the President's bully pulpit in this election year to articulate a moderate Democratic agenda that steps into the area of social issues that have long been the province of Republicans.

Courting evangelicals was a particular priority of Bill Clinton from the start.  Here he and Hillary are, praying with Rev. Billy Graham in 1993:

In 1996, Clinton signed into law the single most pernicious piece of anti-gay federal legislation ever passed -- the Defense of Marriage Act -- with overwhelming Democratic support in the Congress.  Scorning the "Far Left," especially on social issues, was a Clinton favorite.  He is the inventor, after all, of the Sister Souljah technique.  Bill Clinton was the ultimate non-ideological pragmatist.  He was driven by the overriding desire to win over his opponents.

What did all of those post-partisan, cultural outreach efforts generate?  Hatred so undiluted that it led to endless investigations, accusations whose ugliness was boundless, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, and ultimate impeachment over a sex scandal.  Bill Clinton was anything but a cultural or partisan warrior.  He was the opposite.  And that was what he had to show for it.

Then there were the Democrats of the Bush era.  From 9/11 onward, they were probably the single most cooperative, compliant, and accommodating "opposition party" ever to exist.  There wasn't a partisan or ideological bone in their body.  To the contrary, they were compromise and accommodation finding its purest and most submissive expression.  Their eagerness to accommodate was so severe that, at the end of 2007, it actually led The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin to observe:  "Historians looking back on the Bush presidency may well wonder if Congress actually existed."  

Did any of that dilute the Right's anger and resentments towards Democrats?   Democrats spent 2002 giving George Bush everything he wanted -- including authorization to attack Iraq -- and the Right then promptly attacked them as Saddam-allied, Osama-loving subversives.  In 2004, Democrats got frightened away from nominating an actual combative liberal, because they feared he'd be too divisive and culturally alienating, and replaced him with a mild-mannered, inoffensive war hero, who then had derisive purple band-aids waved at him by the GOP convention throngs, who spent months mocking him as a weak, effete, elitist loser.  In 2007, Congressional Democrats even voted overwhelmingly to formally condemn their own largest grass-roots political group, MoveOn, to placate the Right's anger over a newspaper ad the group had placed.

When have Democrats not been eager to accommodate the Right, to sacrifice their ideological beliefs and partisan goals in pursuit of post-partisan harmony, to jettison the "Left" in order to attract the Mythical, Glorious Center?  When haven't they done exactly that?  Isn't that everything they've been doing for two decades now, what has defined the Party at its core?  In what conceivable way is this new, and why does anyone expect that it will generate different results now?

Ultimately, the reason politics is unavoidably "divisive" is because people have really divergent and irreconcilable views on passion-provoking controversies.  That's what politics is.  It's what it always has been.  At some point, Obama either will or won't repeal DOMA and don't-ask-don't-tell; he either will or won't rescind Bush's anti-abortion regulations and appoint new Supreme Court Justices likely to re-affirm Roe; he either will or won't close Gitmo; he either will or won't withdraw from Iraq; he either will or won't investigate Bush war crimes; he either will or won't deliver on his promises to unions, etc.  People feel very strongly -- and very differently -- about those issues. 

Someone is going to be angered and feel alienated by what decision he makes, by the outcome, and symbolic paeans to inclusion are unlikely to soothe that.  Those who are eager to escape confrontation, divisions, and angry disputes can probably do so only by renouncing any actual political principles, and are probably best advised to avoid politics altogether.  Because of the very nature of politics -- to say nothing of the nature of the contemporary American Right -- politics is highly unlikely to exist without angry, often ugly, conflicts of that sort.

Reasonable arguments can certainly be advanced in defense of the virtues of Obama's post-partisan theory of politics.  But it's simply unreasonable to depict any of it as new.  It's exactly what Democrats have been clinging to, desperately and mostly with futility, for two decades at least.  Trans-partisan harmony comes only when Democrats agree to sacrifice what they claim their beliefs are and to show contempt for the "Left," and even then, the "harmony" is fleeting, insatiably greedy and inch-deep.  It's certainly possible things will be different this time around, but in the absence of actual evidence, it's really hard to understand why so many people have become so intractably convinced that it will be.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan says he disagrees that what Obama is doing is the same as what Democrats have been doing for the last two decades:

I think Obama is different. I think the earnestness and sincerity of his campaign, and its generational force, have given us a chance for something new, and I fear that in responding too viscerally to the Warren choice, we may be throwing something very valuable away far too prematurely. . . . But we should also understand Obama's attempt to bridge some gaps in America that the Clintons, with their boomer baggage and Dick Morris cynicism, couldn't and didn't. This is what matters. Do gays and lesbians want to be a part of this - or sit fuming on the sidelines at symbolic slights?

We'll see soon enough, won't we?  I agree that declaring Obama to be a fake and a failure is wildly premature and unwarranted.  He's still not even inaugurated yet. 

But placing one's faith and trust in him and lavishing him with praise that he hasn't earned yet is every bit as irrational, counter-productive and wildly premature.  Obama is entitled to be praised for genuine convictions once he actually demonstrates that he has them, once he can point to results achieved as a result of pursuing them.  That's how all politicians should be judged.  Faith and proof-free trust are not appropriate or healthy for the political realm.

Andrew's argument here is the one that Obama loyalists generally are making:    yes, what Obama is doing might appear to be exactly the same as what Democrats have been doing since forever -- the accommodationist embrace of the Right, the effort to establish centrist credentials by scorning the Left, running away from cultural issues for fear of being depicted as amoral radicals, surrounding oneself with establishment and conservative figures, etc. etc. (Bill Clinton also had a Republican Defense Secretary).  Yes, that may look exactly like what the capitulating Bush-era Democrats and the triangulating Bill "the Third Way!" Clinton spent years and years and years doing.

But this time, say Obama supporters, everything will be different.  This time, it's all being done for different -- for more noble -- purposes.  When Obama does it, it's not merely a cynical political calculation the way it was when Dick Morris in the 1990s and Rahm Emanuel this decade did it.  Instead, in Obama's hands, it's a master strategy for bringing the country together and transforming politics -- all to enable Obama to fulfill his authentically-issued promises and achieve his progressive goals. 

As I said, it's certainly possible that will be true -- like many people, I hope it is -- but I would also hope, particularly in light of how familiar this strategizing seems, that people will demand some actual proof before believing in such lavish claims of transformative and transcendent change.  People are suspicious of this sort of Democratic maneuvering precisely because they've seen it so many times in the past and know how it ends.  It seems perfectly rational not to trust it until there is evidence that warrants that trust.

(updated below)

Pam Spaulding, the writer and blogger at Pam's House Blend and Pandagon, is one of the country's most trenchant writers on issues of gay equality and race.  She's my guest on Salon Radio today to talk about the implications of the repellent selection of Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at Barack Obama's inauguration.

Of all the preachers Obama could have selected to elevate and validate (and, in every sense, it was Obama's choice), Warren is one of the most destructive -- not only having been one of the most vocal supporters for Proposition 8, but also using the most inflammatory rhetoric on gay issues generally, expressing anti-abortion views in the most fanatical terms possible, and even sitting with Sean Hannity recently and urging the murder of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (making his prominent inclusion in Obama's inauguration -- as Atrios notes -- a rather odd step for a President who claims devotion to a diplomatic resolution with that country).

There is a respectful and civil (even if clearly wrong) case to make against gay marriage, or against abortion, or in favor of a hard-line towards Iran.  But in each case, Warren opts for the most hateful, not respectful, rhetoric to defend his position.  Embracing someone like Warren is no more "inclusive" than inviting a White Supremacist or, for that matter, a Christian-hater to deliver the invocation.  People like that espouse views that are shared by many Americans; why not include them, too, or have Pat Robertson deliver a nice prayer?  Obama's "inclusiveness" mantra always seems to head only in one direction -- an excuse to scorn progressives and embrace the Right.  Not even Bill Clinton's most extreme Dick-Morris-led "triangulation" tactics involved an attempt to court Jerry Falwell.

That this selection is principally symbolic makes it, for reasons I discuss with Pam, worse, not better.  In many ways, this is vintage Obama -- at least the worst side of him -- and it also illustrates the truly disturbing willingness of so many of his most blindly loyal "progressive" followers to reflexively defend, or at least justify, whatever he does -- because he does it (that mentality is quite redolent of the age-old theological question:  does God do what he does because it is the right thing, or is it the right thing because God does it?).   Though there is some debate about the motivations behind Obama's choice here, I think Digby's analysis of what Obama is up to is almost entirely accurate.

My discussion with Pam is roughly 20 minutes and can be heard by clicking PLAY on the recorder below.

UPDATE:  Here's Jane Hamsher with CNN's Rick Sanchez earlier this afternoon, discussing Warren.  Sanchez can't comprehend the difference between (a) sitting down to speak with enemies in an effort to forge compromise and (b) endowing someone with a validating platform who has a history of expressing repellent views.  Note, too, his inability to identify any rationale to explain why, if Warren should be invited to speak in the name of "inclusiveness," then anti-semites or KKK leaders or, for that matter, Dick Cheney shouldn't be invited to speak as well.  They all espouse views to which large numbers of people subscribe:

On a very related note, Chris Bowers notes an emerging standard media theme -- that it is good for Obama when he infuriates the Left.  Along those lines, Chris writes briefly about a meeting held in Washington, DC this past weekend -- sponsored by Accountability Now -- for the purpose of creating an infrastructure to launch and fund numerous primary challenges against incumbent Democrats as a means of addressing exactly this problem.  The meeting was very well-attended -- large advocacy groups, unions and others -- and I'll write more about it shortly.

For obvious reasons, the most blindly loyal Bush followers of the last eight years are desperate to claim that nobody cares any longer about what happened during the Bush administration, that everyone other than the most fringe, vindictive Bush-haters is eager to put it all behind us, forget about it all and, instead, look to the harmonious, sunny future.  That's natural.  Those who cheer on shameful and despicable acts always want to encourage everyone to forget what they did, and those who commit crimes naturally seek to dismiss demands for investigations and punishment as nothing more than distractions and vendettas pushed by those who want to wallow in the past.

Surprisingly, though, demands that Bush officials be held accountable for their war crimes are becoming more common in mainstream political discourse, not less so.  The mountain of conclusive evidence that has recently emerged directly linking top Bush officials to the worst abuses -- combined with Dick Cheney's brazen, defiant acknowledgment of his role in these crimes (which perfectly tracked Bush's equally defiant 2005 acknowledgment of his illegal eavesdropping programs and his brazen vow to continue them) -- is forcing even the reluctant among us to embrace the necessity of such accountability. 

It's almost as though everyone's nose is now being rubbed in all of this:  now that the culpability of our highest government officials is no longer hidden, but is increasingly all out in the open, who can still defend the notion that they should remain immune from consequences for their patent lawbreaking?  As Law Professor Jonathan Turley said several weeks ago on The Rachel Maddow Show:  "It's the indictment of all of us if we walk away from a clear war crime."  And this week, Turley pointed out to Keith Olbermann that "ultimately it will depend on citizens, and whether they will remain silent in the face of a crime that has been committed in plain view. . . . It is equally immoral to stand silent in the face of a war crime and do nothing."

That recognition, finally, seems to be spreading -- beyond the handful of blogs, civil liberties organizations and activists who have long been trumpeting the need for this accountability.  The New York Times Editorial Page today has a lengthy, scathing decree demanding prosecutions:  "It would be irresponsible for the nation and a new administration to ignore what has happened . . . . A prosecutor should be appointed to consider criminal charges against top officials at the Pentagon and others involved in planning the abuse."  Today, Politico -- of all places -- is hosting a forum which asks:  "Should the DOJ consider prosecuting Bush administration officials for detainee abuse as the NYT and others have urged?"  Even Chris Matthews and Chris Hitchens yesterday entertained (albeit incoherently and apologetically) the proposition that top Bush officials committed war crimes.

Perhaps most notably of all -- and illustrating the importance of finally having someone like Rachel Maddow occupy such a prominent place in an establishment media venue -- Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, one of the Senate's most restrained, influential and Serious members, was prodded by Maddow last night into going about as far as someone like him could be expected to go, acknowledging the necessity of appointing a Prosecutor to investigate top Bush officials for the war crimes they committed and to determine if prosecutions are warranted:

To be sure, the political class still desperately wants to avoid meaningful investigations and prosecutions, in no small part because every key component of it -- including the leaders in both parties -- are implicated by so much of it.   But as more undeniable evidence emerges of just how warped and criminal and heinous the conduct of our top political leaders has been -- and the more Dick Cheney and comrades resort to openly admitting what they did and proudly defending it, rather than obfuscating it behind euphemisms and secrecy claims  -- the more difficult it will be to justify doing nothing meaningful.  That is why, even as the desire to forget about the Bush era intensifies with the Promise of Obama ever-more-closely on the horizon, the recognition continues to grow of the need for real accountability.

The weapons used to prevent such accountability are quite familiar and will still be potent.  Those who demand accountability will be derided as past-obsessed partisans who want to impede all the Glorious, Transcendent Gifts about to be bestowed on us by our new leaders.  The manipulative claim will be endlessly advanced that our problems are too grand and pressing to permit the luxury of living under the rule of law.  When all else fails in the stonewalling arsenal, impotent "fact-finding" commissions will be proposed to placate the demand for accountability but which will, in fact, be designed and empowered to achieve only one goal:  to render actual prosecutions impossible.

But with these new, unprecedentedly stark revelations, this facade will be increasingly difficult to maintain.  It is already the case, as the Times Editorial today notes, that "all but President Bush’s most unquestioning supporters [i.e., this] recognized the chain of unprincipled decisions that led to the abuse, torture and death in prisons run by the American military and intelligence services."  That leaves only two choices:  (1) treat these crimes as the serious war crimes they are by having a Prosecutor investigate and, if warranted, prosecute them, or (2) openly acknowledge -- to ourselves and the world -- that we believe that our leaders are literally entitled to commit war crimes at will, and that we -- but not the rest of the world -- should be exempt from the consequences.  The clearer it becomes that those are the only two choices, the more difficult it will be to choose option (2), and either way, there is great benefit just from having that level of clarity and candor about what we are really doing.

The Atlantic's Ross Douthat has a post today -- "Thinking About Torture" -- which, he acknowledges quite remarkably, is the first time he has "written anything substantial, ever, about America's treatment of detainees in the War on Terror."  He's abstained until today due to what he calls "a desire to avoid taking on a fraught and desperately importantly (sic) subject without feeling extremely confident about my own views on the subject."

I don't want to purport to summarize what he's written.  It's a somewhat meandering and at times even internally inconsistent statement.  Douthat himself characterizes it as "rambling" -- befitting someone who appears to think that his own lack of moral certainty and borderline-disorientation on this subject may somehow be a more intellectually respectable posture than those who simplistically express "straightforward outrage."  In the midst of what is largely an intellectually honest attempt to describe the causes for his ambiguity, he actually does express some "straightforward outrage" of his own.  About the widespread abuse, he writes:  "it should be considered impermissible as well as immoral" and "should involve disgrace for those responsible, the Cheneys and Rumsfelds as well as the people who actually implemented the techniques that the Vice President's office promoted and the Secretary of Defense signed off on."

Nonetheless, Douthat repeatedly explains that he is burdened by "uncertainty, mixed together with guilt, about how strongly to condemn those involved," and one of the central reasons for that uncertainty -- one that is commonly expressed -- is contained in this passage:

But with great power comes a lot of pressures as well, starting with great fear: The fear that through inaction you'll be responsible for the deaths of thousands or even millions of the Americans whose lived you were personally charged to protect. This fear ran wild the post-9/11 Bush Administration, with often-appalling consequences, but it wasn't an irrational fear - not then, and now. It doesn't excuse what was done by our government, and in our name, in prisons and detention cells around the world. But anyone who felt the way I felt after 9/11 has to reckon with the fact that what was done in our name was, in some sense, done for us - not with our knowledge, exactly, but arguably with our blessing. I didn't get what I wanted from this administration, but I think you could say with some justification that I got what I asked for. And that awareness undergirds - to return to where I began this rambling post - the mix of anger, uncertainty and guilt that I bring to the current debate over what the Bush Administration has done and failed to do, and how its members should be judged.

This is the Jack Goldsmith argument:  while what Bush officials did may have been misguided and wrong, they did it out of a true fear of Islamic enemies, with the intent to protect us, perhaps even consistent with the citizenry's wishes.  And while Douthat presents this view as some sort of candid and conflicted complexity, it isn't really anything more than standard American exceptionalism -- more accurately:  blinding American narcissism -- masquerading as a difficult moral struggle.

The moral ambiguity Douthat thinks he finds is applicable to virtually every war crime. It's the extremely rare political leader who ends up engaging in tyrannical acts, or commits war crimes or other atrocities, simply for the fun of it, or for purely frivolous reasons. Every tyrant can point to real and legitimate threats that they feared.

Ask supporters of Fidel Castro why he imprisoned dissidents and created a police state and they'll tell you -- accurately -- that he was the head of a small, defenseless island situated 90 miles to the South of a huge, militaristic superpower that repeatedly tried to overthrow his government and replace it with something it preferred. Ask Hugo Chavez why he rails against the U.S. and has shut down opposition media stations and he'll point out -- truthfully -- that the U.S. participated to some extent in a coup attempt to overthrow his democratically elected government and that internal factions inside Venezuela have done the same.

Iranian mullahs really do face internal, foreign-funded revolutionary groups that are violent and which seek to overthrow them. Serbian leaders -- including those ultimately convicted of war crimes -- had legitimate grievances about the treatment of Serbs outside of Serbia proper and threats posed to Serbian sovereignty. The complaints of Islamic terrorists regarding U.S. hegemony and exploitation in the Middle East are grounded in factual truth, as are those of Gazan terrorists who point to the four-decades-old Israeli occupation. Georgia really did and does face external threats from Russia, and Russia really did have an interest in protecting Russians and South Ossetians under assault from civilian-attacking Georgian artillery.  The threat of Israeli invasion which Hezbollah cites is real. Some Muslims really have been persecuted by Hindus.

But none of those facts justify tyranny, terrorism or war crimes.  There are virtually always "good reasons" that can be and are cited to justify war crimes and acts of aggression. It's often the case that nationalistic impulses -- or genuine fears -- lead the country's citizens to support or at least acquiesce to those crimes. War crimes and other atrocities are typically undertaken in defense against some real (if exaggerated) threat, or to target actual enemies, or to redress real grievances.

But we don't accept that justifying reasoning when offered by others. In fact, those who seek merely to explain -- let alone justify -- the tyranny, extremism and/or violence of Castro, or Chavez, or Hamas, or Slobodan Milosevic or Islamic extremists are immediately condemned for seeking to defend the indefensible, or invoking "root causes" to justify the unjustifiable, or offering mitigating rationale for pure evil.

Yet here we have American leaders who now, more openly than ever, are literally admitting to what has long been known -- that they violated the laws of war and international treaties which, in the past, we've led the way in advocating and enforcing. And what do we hear even from the most well-intentioned commentators such as Douthat? Yes, it was wrong. True, they shouldn't have done it.  But they did it for good reasons:  they believed they had to do it to protect us, to guard against truly bad people, to discharge their heavy responsibility to protect the country, because we were at war.

All of the same can be said for virtually every tyrant we righteously condemn and every war criminal we've pursued and prosecuted.  The laws of war aren't applicable only in times of peace, to be waived away in times of war or crisis. To the contrary, they exist precisely because the factors Douthat cites to explain and mitigate what our leaders did always exist, especially when countries perceive themselves at war.  To cite those factors to explain away war crimes -- or to render them morally ambiguous -- is to deny the very validity of the concept itself. 

The pressures and allegedly selfless motivations being cited on behalf of Bush officials who ordered torture and other crimes -- even if accurate -- aren't unique to American leaders.  They are extremely common.  They don't mitigate war crimes.  They are what typically motivate war crimes, and they're the reason such crimes are banned by international agreement in the first place -- to deter leaders, through the force of law, from succumbing to those exact temptations.  What determines whether a political leader is good or evil isn't their nationality.  It's their conduct.  And leaders who violate the laws of war and commit war crimes, by definition, aren't good, even if they are American.