CD:
For instance, recognizing that closing Gitmo down, say, tomorrow, or any short-term time frame, is logistically impossible.
JG:
Well, I won't pretend for one second to be any kind of logistical expert about just how quickly Guantanamo can be closed down. Speaking as an admitted novice, it seems to me that if the Obama Administration actually had the political courage, it could get the deal done much more quickly... but I dunno.
But that's not my main point anyway. Rather, I'd call attention to the classic Third Way style in which these national security initiatives have been handled. 1) Ideologically, cede everything to the right-wing opposition. Don't challenge the "War on Terror" (TM) discourse, not even at the margins. Your brand identity is "competence." 2) Tiny, mostly symbolic reforms dressed up as grandiose gestures, launched theatrically on the first day of governing in order to demonstrate progressive bona fides. 3) Swiss cheese holes in those miniature, mostly symbolic reforms.
CD:
Is banning waterboarding symbolic? Whew, that's a relief. All this time I thought people being waterboarded were being actually physically tortured, not just being symbolically attacked.
JG:
Hitchens' "waterboarding" definitely falls on the symbolic side of the boundary :)
Seriously, based on critical coverage I read this morning, I was given the impression that the Army Field Manual may well be modified to integrate aggressive interrogation methods into standard procedure, and if so it will be done under the cover of administrative secrecy. Yet again Obama the bridge-builder is trying to have his cake and eat it too, to simultaneously palliate the liberals and calm the howlers at Fox News: despite the fact that he has a vast storehouse of political capital.
I'd better stop this now, because it seems that I've taken up a foreign identity as someone who actually gives a shit about the minutiae of domestic politics and spends his/her whole day watching cable news and surveying the liberal blogosphere...
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