Juan Williams

by Muzzled: The Assault on Honest Debate

  As the calls from the media and some politicians grew for getting the courts and Congress involved in the discussion about torture and how best to handle terrorists, the Bush administration responded by destroying copies of memos authorizing torture and later by destroying videotapes of interrogations. The intransigence of the administration became the issue. Administration officials’ brand of political correctness claimed that anyone who disagreed with them was speaking out of turn and endangering national security. The implication was that even opening the subject up to public debate was an act of treachery.

  But eventually even fellow Republicans began to rebel against the administration. Senator McCain got forty-six Republicans to join forty-four Democrats to overwhelmingly approve an amendment to a defense bill mandating an end to the torture of detainees. The administration treated it like a nuisance. When the entire Congress passed the Detainee Treatment Act in 2005—outlawing the use of torture on anyone, anywhere in the world—the White House treated the effort with contempt. Administration officials did not make congressional leaders aware that administration lawyers had privately authorized U.S. military and intelligence agents to use torture. When those memos came to light, Republican senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said: “If we change who America is in trying to win this war [then] we will lose.”

  By 2007 three detainees at Guantánamo Bay had committed suicide. The same year the Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. military must comply with the Geneva Conventions for humane treatment of prisoners. By 2009 a Spanish court had announced that it was considering filing an indictment against Bush administration officials for human-rights violations. The worldwide outpouring of unity with the United States in the days after 9/11 had long evaporated. Fewer countries contributed their troops to the war in Iraq. And U.S. public support for the war dwindled. Polls also showed declining support for U.S. efforts to confront the terror groups directly linked to 9/11, al Qaeda and the Taliban, in Afghanistan. Yet former vice president Cheney continues to critique President Obama as insufficiently committed to the Bush administration’s policies for fighting terror. Cheney’s criticism comes even as President Obama has sent more troops to fight terrorists in Afghanistan and committed the U.S. military to remain in Iraq well beyond the previously promised exit date of 2011. President Obama is continuing Bush administration policies on rendition, where prisoners are transferred to other countries for harsh, extrajudicial interrogations, as well as allowing wiretaps without warrants and keeping the Guantánamo Bay prison open while not holding trials for terror detainees. Attorney General Holder may have blamed Congress for not allowing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s trial to occur in civilian court in the United States, but isn’t the buck supposed to stop at the top?

  The Obama administration has found it easier to continue those policies than to start the difficult but necessary conversation about the limits of democratic freedoms. How many Americans are willing to sacrifice some liberty, some autonomy, because they believe that it is a necessary price to be paid in a time of terrorist threats? It may be that most Americans are willing to approve a suspension of some rights in the name of fighting terrorism. Most people feel they have nothing to hide. It may be that large numbers of Americans believe the government can already invade computer messages and tap phone lines. But the Obama White House is closing off those questions because it is afraid critics will charge it with being weak, lacking the Clint Eastwood and Jack Bauer gumption to shoot first and deal with the questions later. The president might also be afraid that he will open himself to vicious political attacks if another terrorist attack occurs as he leads the nation through this maze of issues. And there is some truth in that, as Republicans find political advantage in questioning the Democrats’ dedication to fighting terrorism. So as a result, the Obama White House is bullied into compliance with policies that candidate Obama campaigned against when he won the White House in 2008. And the nation continues to be denied the much-needed debate on how to reconcile the tension between battling terrorists and protecting our ideals and upholding our nation’s founding principles of individual rights.

  Starting the American conversation might trigger a parallel discussion in the Muslim community about its lack of debate about terrorism. And that extends to the Muslim community in the United States. Muslims, too, have been victims of murderous terrorism by other Muslims. They also suffer from the taint terrorism brings on their religion. Many Americans do not understand the stranglehold that extremists have on the Muslim world. The most violent minority has succeeded in coercing government leaders into acquiescence. One of the most chilling examples of this dynamic was the 2005 murder of the reformist prime minister of Lebanon, Rafik Hariri, by Muslim terrorists aligned with Hezbollah. The threat of violence is also used as leverage against business and media interests throughout the Muslim world.

  The fear of Muslim terrorism within the Islamic community is endemic and a barrier to change. But Americans must call Muslim terrorism by its name, identify it for what it is. In order for change to take place, reformers have to be empowered to take on the extremists who threaten us all.

  The lack of democratic reforms in the Muslim world, compounded by economic and educational failures, allows terrorist organizations to play a dual role in Muslim society and thus dodge efforts to call them out as murderers. In some cases, groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas provide humanitarian aid to fellow Muslims. They give jobs to unemployed young men. They are closer to the common citizens than the oil-rich sheikhs, kings, and princes. As a result, Middle Easterners often have a very different perception of Muslim terrorists. To some they are humanitarians and employers. Last year, CNN Middle East editor Octavia Nasr was fired for sending a message on her Twitter account that praised a Hezbollah leader after his death. “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah … one of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.” Fadlallah served as spiritual leader for Islamic Jihad, a forerunner to Hezbollah, the group that bombed the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon, killing 229 people. The problem is not that one journalist praised this violent Muslim cleric. The larger issue is that she was speaking for millions of people in the Muslim world who have a favorable view of Muslim terrorists and their organizations. Only by confronting the varying perceptions that really do exist can Americans and Western leaders hope to defeat terrorism.

  Despite the mistakes made by President Bush in handling Muslim terrorists during his administration, it was he, speaking in 2005 to the National Endowment for Democracy, who pulled away all the pretense, all the politically correct verbiage, in dealing with Muslim terrorism. He offered a basis for identifying the enemy and helping Americans to begin a politically incorrect but direct discussion about what the enemy is trying to accomplish.

  “Like the ideology of communism,” President Bush said, “our new enemy pursues totalitarian aims. Its leaders pretend to be an aggrieved party, representing the powerless against imperial enemies. In truth they have endless ambitions of imperial domination, and they wish to make everyone powerless except themselves. Under their rule, they have banned books, and desecrated historical monuments, and brutalized women. They seek to end dissent in every form, and to control every aspect of life, and to rule the soul, itself. While promising a future of justice and holiness, the terrorists are preparing for a future of oppression and misery.”

  John Brennan, President Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, advanced the conversation when he said in a 2010 speech that al Qaeda’s goal is to “undermine the laws and values that have been a source of our strength and our influence throughout the world.” Brennan still would not call the enemy Muslim terrorists, but he said “al Qaeda and its violent affiliates” want to get the United States to end its global leadership and become a confused, scared, suspicious nation that “retreats from the world stage and abandons allies and partners.” Their goal, he concluded, is “turning us into something that we are not.”

  Once we have called the enemy by
his name and identified his goal, we have a start on the much-needed, politically incorrect, American discussion of Muslim terrorists. Then we can have an honest debate that breaks through the fog of political correctness and admit to our fears in dealing with a vicious, remorseless, implacable foe hiding behind Islamic ideology and sometimes behind religious clothes. We can begin asking one another how far we are willing to go to defend our nation and whether those means will justify the ends or whether they will undermine the rights and privileges we enjoy and ruin the America we treasure. The doublespeak, the euphemisms, the charges of bigotry, and the delicate dances around the fact of Muslim terrorism serve only to hurt America in the end. They allow the erosion of the philosophical and moral tenets that allow America to stand tall.

  I meant what I said when I said that I get nervous boarding a plane with those whose dress identifies them first and foremost as Muslims. Does that offend you? Then let’s talk about it.

  CHAPTER 5

  TAX CUTS, ENTITLEMENTS, AND HEALTH CARE

  BY DECEMBER 2010 the Left-Right debate around extending the Bush tax cuts was frozen. On every side the argument was fixed, locked in, politically correct, and predictable. Republicans repeated their mantra that Democrats are always raising taxes when they should be cutting spending. And Democrats squealed with rage that Republicans were filling the pockets of the rich with tax cuts. President Obama even went so far as to say the GOP employed terrorist tactics, holding Americans “hostage” if they did not get that tax cut for the rich. What no one predicted was a historic presidential outburst.

  The forty-fourth president became the first chief executive to publicly say he was fed up with the political correctness, intimidation, and polarization being used against him—by his own party. In the White House pressroom he ripped left-wing Democrats for calling him a traitor and a sellout because he broke the logjam by agreeing with Republicans on a political compromise.

  “Now, if that’s the standard by which we are measuring success or core principles, then let’s face it, we will never get anything done,” said the president, who had been charged by fellow Democrats in Congress with capitulating to Republican demands. They said he was running away from his “Gettysburg” moment and “punting on third down.” The attacks from his political allies rained on Obama when he agreed to extend upper-income tax cuts in exchange for adding several months of benefits for the unemployed, as well as funding for scholarships, tax exemptions for businesses to buy equipment, and jobs programs. “People will have the satisfaction of having a purist position and no victories for the American people. And we will be able to feel good about ourselves and sanctimonious about how pure our intentions are and how tough we are, and in the meantime the American people are still … not being able to pay their bills because their unemployment insurance ran out.

  “That can’t be the measure of how we think about public service,” a fuming, frustrated president added. “That can’t be the measure of what it means to be a Democrat. This is a big, diverse country. Not everybody agrees with us. I know that shocks people.”

  The tax dispute that provoked the president to snap at his own liberal base is much bigger than just one more exchange of politically correct polemics. It is the most stubborn domestic political standoff plaguing America. And it is a threat to the nation’s future. Politically entrenched thinking protected by special-interest groups and lobbyists has made it impossible for most of the end of the last century and the first decade of this century to resolve central debates over taxes, deficit spending on entitlements such as Social Security, and the high cost of health care.

  The 2010 tax deal, in the end, was a compromise—but there was no substantive debate. Instead, both sides played political brinkmanship until it became clear to everyone that an abrupt hike in all tax rates would have devastating results for both parties. No one took advantage of the golden opportunity to get past their politically hardened positions. Instead, Republicans and Democrats turned away from discussion of how to trim defense, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other entitlements programs and expenses that threaten to explode the federal budget. And when the gauntlet was again picked up by Representative Paul Ryan’s proposed budget plan, and President Obama’s own plan in response, both sides quickly retreated into their traditional corners.

  The result of a lack of honest talk about this problem—political correctness at its most paralyzing—is a yearly deficit now projected, as I am writing in 2011, to approach $1.1 trillion. And that is down from last year, when the deficit reached a historic high of $1.6 trillion. That is a separate crisis and not to be confused with the sea of unpaid bills deposited in a back drawer over the past decade to create the national debt. That debt is now $14 trillion.

  “We’re broke,” Speaker of the House John Boehner said shortly after Republicans took control of the House in the November 2010 elections. “If we lead with our chin, nothing happens. [And] that’s what’s happened in Washington for the last 25 years.” That straight talk brought Boehner and the Republicans tremendous success in the 2010 midterms. Of course, he blamed all the big spending on Democrats, which is far from the case. That partisan bilge muddied a very important message. But voters had enough clarity about the enormity of the federal deficit, complete with the risk of budget cuts and inflation, to decide for themselves that no matter who had created the problem, it was legitimate to be worried about excessive government spending. The Tea Party movement had emerged with activists, principally seniors over sixty-five, giving Republicans the votes for a historic pickup of sixty-three congressional seats, the largest one-party gain since 1948 and enough to seize control of the House of Representatives.

  The Tea Party’s righteous 2010 march to the polls to protest ballooning deficits does not, however, indicate that Tea Party seniors opened their minds to ending their reliance on federal entitlement benefits. In fact, many would object to the term “handout” being applied to the checks they get from the federal government for Social Security and Medicare. They argue that they paid into those systems and earned a return. What they don’t realize, however, is that both Medicare and Social Security pay out far beyond what most individuals ever put into the system. As a result of that politically inconvenient reality, both programs are in fiscal jeopardy, and the situation is getting worse. Currently, a declining number of workers pay taxes into a system that is increasingly top-heavy with growing numbers of retiring baby boomers.

  The seniors’ precarious situation is just one part of our growing dependence on federal entitlements. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2010 that close to half of all Americans “live in a household in which someone receives government benefits, more than at any time in history.”

  “As recently as the early 1980s, about 30% of Americans lived in households in which an individual was receiving Social Security, subsidized housing, jobless benefits or other government-provided benefits,” the Journal found. “By the third quarter of 2008, 44% were, according to the most recent Census Bureau data.” This startling reality is never discussed in politically correct circles. Instead, two lines of petitioners dominate conversation. In the first line are people making themselves out to be victims and claiming to deserve the government’s support. And in line number two are people complaining that they pay too much in taxes and want those entitlements curtailed. Sometimes the same people are in both lines.

  The debate over the budget is likely to become one of the defining issues in the 2012 election. In the spring of 2011, the Republicans and Democrats narrowly averted a government shutdown by cutting a deal with each other in order to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year. The deal included about $38.5 billion in cuts (though the number can vary depending on how some of the timing of the cuts is measured). Naturally, the Republicans seized on what was generally perceived to be a victory for their side, given the size of the cuts. But equally crucial, President Obama claimed some measure of victory for, once again, appearing to be at th
e center of a compromise between the two poles of American politics.

  But even this game of chicken was seen as only a warm-up for the debate over the 2012 budget, which took off right after the shutdown compromise when Republican representative Paul Ryan introduced the GOP’s “Path to Prosperity”—a budget that would aim to cut not mere billions but trillions ($6.2 trillion, in fact) from President Obama’s budgets over the next ten years.

  The plan was an instant lightning rod. Supporters on the Right claimed someone had finally gotten serious about changing the fiscal path of the country. Detractors on the Left claimed that, as usual, with tax cuts for the wealthy and cuts to services, Republicans were looking to put the burden of sacrifice on the middle class and the poor. Moreover, many Democrats and commentators pointed out that Ryan’s assumptions for economic growth (and thus revenues) were far too rosy, therefore helping him to avoid the heretical (at least in Republican circles) suggestion of raising taxes to accomplish any of his goals.