Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:
Aug. 7
The Washington Post on Biden’s team and Guantanamo Bay
The United States had an opportunity to close a chapter on a sad, decades-long saga when the government reached a plea deal with three men accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Then, within days, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin squandered that chance.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi all agreed last week to admit their guilt before the military commission tasked with determining their fates, surrendering any chance to appeal, in exchange for the removal of the death penalty as a possible punishment. Getting to that point took 16 years. That’s counting from the initial hearing in the case (the men were in custody for five years before that), when the defendants also wanted to plead guilty but with execution still on the table. What happened instead, after they withdrew those pleas, looked worse for the United States: Justice remained unserved, and Guantánamo Bay remained open, letting the whole world look for a while longer at a symbol of this country’s hypocrisy on human rights.
Mr. Austin’s decision to revoke the plea deal is, on a gut level, understandable. The prisoners are accused of engineering the deaths of 2,977 people at the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pa. — some of whose families have said the terrorists deserve “no mercy.” Obviously, offenders in the United States have been and still are executed for far less. The United States killed Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri outright when the U.S. military found them. Yet, on closer examination, the choice is mystifying: How could the secretary of defense himself not have known about an agreement so painstakingly negotiated, over so long a period, by an official whom he tasked with overseeing the process? And how can President Joe Biden’s administration fulfill its stated objective of shutting down the prison if it can’t close cases?
It’s unlikely the government will manage to secure the death penalty for these accused terrorists — if it manages to secure any sentence at all without a plea deal. The delays that have characterized the case so far will continue to define it, largely because the military commissions created under President George W. Bush exist outside established military or civilian legal process. (That was, after all, the whole point of detaining and trying accused terrorists as unlawful combatants at Guantánamo Bay.) There was some legitimate rationale for trying unlawful combatants in unique forums. But there are few clear rules for their operation, and every question about how to conduct a trial has required extensive consideration — and expensive consideration, considering lawyers, judges and more have to fly to the naval base for each hearing. The cost, according to the New York Times, has totaled around $13 million per prisoner throughout the facility’s existence.
Imagine that a trial does start, against the odds. The testimony would probably feature extensive descriptions of the torture to which these men were subjected at CIA black sites, including confinement in coffin-size boxes and, for ringleader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, as many as 183 instances of waterboarding. That would both remind the world of disgraceful U.S. conduct — and, crucially, render much of the evidence tainted for the purposes of securing a harsh sentence. The only way out was a plea deal. Now, the United States is right back where it started.
Only 30 inmates remain at Guantánamo Bay — the rest of the 780 brought to the base are gone, nine of them having died at the prison. The goal should be to turn 30 into zero. But that’s complicated. Nineteen prisoners sit in “law-of-war” detention, still uncharged. Sixteen of those are recommended for transfer to the custody of countries willing to accept them, a process that the administration should prioritize. Yet three are deemed too dangerous for that move. Then there are the four inmates who’ve been convicted and the seven who have been charged with their cases pending. Gitmo can’t go until these inmates, too, are gone — and getting them gone will require a law from Congress permitting their transfer to U.S. soil.
But truly concluding this era in our national life will require more: finally bringing these men to justice, and justice to these men. Plea deals like the one that collapsed last week are an orderly pathway to a procedurally legitimate outcome. Pursuing them is the correct course from a practical standpoint — just not a political one. The administration didn’t manage to do the right thing last week. But the president still has a chance to correct course after November’s vote, unencumbered by electoral considerations. In doing so, he would leave as his legacy the end, finally, of a grim time for his country.
ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/07/911-guantanamo-plea-deal-austin/
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Aug. 9
The Wall Street Journal on the U.S. troop withdrawal from Niger
The U.S. finished its withdrawal from its last military base in Niger this week, and bad actors are already filling the vacuum. The consequences will extend far beyond Africa’s troubled Sahel region.
The Pentagon said Monday it had completed pulling out troops and equipment from Air Base 201 in the central Nigerien city of Agadez. Before last summer’s coup in Niger, the U.S. maintained about a thousand American troops in the country as a base against the growing jihadist presence in Africa. But in March the ruling junta canceled the status of forces agreement that protected U.S. soldiers from legal risks in Niger, and two months later the U.S. agreed to a full withdrawal by mid-September.
The U.S. had invested some $110 million in Air Base 201. The Sahel has become a global center of terrorism, and the U.S. drone base conducted intelligence-gathering and reconnaissance missions. Niger’s ruling junta has also expelled some 1,500 French troops.
The U.S. withdrawal is also creating opportunities for Iran. Senior Nigerien officials have led repeated delegations to Tehran in the past year. The U.S. has raised concerns about Iran gaining access to Niger’s abundant uranium reserves. Several recent reports in the French press have suggested Iran may seek 300 tons of refined uranium in exchange for missiles and drones.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense has praised “the growth of bilateral military and military-technical cooperation” with Niger. The Kremlin has been working to expand its influence across Africa and has close ties to neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali. Russian state-owned media reported that military equipment and instructors arrived in Niger in April, and in May incoming Russian personnel and departing American troops overlapped at a Niamey air base.
The U.S. can’t stay where it isn’t wanted, and perhaps the Biden Administration couldn’t do much to stop the Niger government’s anti-Western moves. But the withdrawal is one more sign of America’s weakening global influence.
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Aug. 11
The Guardian on Democrats embracing positions as ‘joyful warriors’
“Thank you for bringing back the joy,” Tim Walz told Kamala Harris in his first speech after agreeing to become her running mate. He has continued to invoke the emotion, describing himself and Ms Harris as “joyful warriors” against opponents who “try and steal the joy”. Donald Trump has attacked Ms Harris’s ready laughter, but the Democrats are embracing an upbeat coconut-and-brat-meme atmosphere while Republicans invoke American carnage.
Rarely have two presidential campaigns had such contrasting moods. Asked by a reporter what made him happy, Mr Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, retorted that “I smile at a lot of things including bogus questions from the media”, and that he was “angry about what Kamala Harris has done to this country”. Mr Trump – along with other rightwing populists globally – has channelled fear and rage to extraordinary effect.
“Visceral states and feelings appear at the forefront of the political conversation” in this era, writes Manos Tsakiris, director of the University of London’s Centre for the Politics of Feelings. Voters are less rational and more emotional than we like to believe. Feelings may also have different effects upon different parts of society. US research suggests that dissatisfaction with politicians is more likely to send white voters to the polls and minority voters to other forms of activism.
In the past, Democrats have tried to counter lies and loathing with facts. Though fear of Mr Trump motivated voters in 2020, warnings about his return have not proved as effective. People can be indifferent or passive in the face of threats such as the climate crisis. (In contrast, deliberative democracy – such as citizens’ assemblies or community activism – can generate a sense of political agency and re-engage them.) Giving people something to fight for, not just against, may be potent. But there is more research on how emotions such as anger affect politics than there is on emotions such as hope.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva beat Jair Bolsonaro’s dark vision of Brazil in 2022 with hope, and Rahul Gandhi walked the length of India with a message of love and solidarity, an appeal that cost India’s divisive prime minister, Narendra Modi, his parliamentary majority this year. In Britain, the joy of the Liberal Democrats ’ successful election campaign bubbled over. But critiques of “cruel optimism” and “hopium” note that invoking positive emotions can sometimes encourage people to feel good about bad political choices. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos won the Filipino presidency in 2022 with a feelgood social media campaign glamourising his family and his father’s dictatorship.
In the US, Ronald Reagan’s sunny “morning in America” advert won plaudits, but Hubert Humphrey’s “politics of joy” didn’t win the Democrat the presidency. For Ms Harris – like Humphrey, a vice-president aspiring to the top job – urging voters to get happy when they’re worrying about bills could be counterproductive. The wrongfooted Trump campaign appears to be pivoting towards attacking her record.
Ms Harris seems to recognise the problem, tempering the buoyant mood by acknowledging that grocery prices are too high, for instance. But if a recession hits, striking the right note will be even tougher, and policy will be still more pressing. The Democrats are hoping for the best – but even in a short campaign, vibes will only carry them so far.
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Aug. 9
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Kamala Harris hiding from real interviews
Kamala Harris is on a well-deserved roll right now. Her strong campaign appearances and energetic VP choice are firing up Democrats and building momentum for her nascent presidential campaign. Polls indicate once-skeptical independents are taking another look at a candidate who not long ago had been written off as unviable to lead a national ticket.
This momentum may explain her handlers’ reluctance, during the more than two weeks since Harris’ campaign began, to sit her down for serious media interviews or news conferences outside the controlled bubbles of partisan rallies and teleprompters. Why mess with what’s working?
Because it’s not going to keep working for long, that’s why. The narrative of Harris hiding from real media scrutiny has already taken root within right-wing media outlets and has become a top attack line from the Trump-Vance campaign.
Unlike most of their attack lines, this one isn’t nonsense. Every day that Harris continues this bunker strategy does a disservice to the country — and to her own campaign.
The urgency of dispelling the “hidin’ Harris” narrative is particularly relevant for a candidate still coming out from under the shadow of President Joe Biden. Steering clear of real interviews, as Biden himself got away with for far too long, is a particularly bad look for his vice president.
Among the questions interviewers will want to ask Harris is whether she was aware of the president’s clear cognitive decline — a fact that his inner circle effectively hid from the public until it shuffled fully into view during that disastrous June presidential debate.
There’s no good answer on this for Harris: If she knew, why didn’t she insist on public disclosure? If she didn’t know, shouldn’t she have? It will, undoubtedly, be an uncomfortable interview hurdle. But it’s a necessary one to clear if she wants to put the issue behind her.
Other interview topics, however, don’t have to be the momentum-stoppers that Harris’ campaign apparently fears they will be.
Another favorite narrative on the right — that Harris is somehow responsible for U.S. border failures because Biden assigned her a tangential diplomatic role on the issue — has always been baseless and silly. Harris should relish the chance to look an interviewer in the eye and point out that Donald Trump ordered House Republicans to scuttle a Biden administration border agreement that gave them virtually everything they’d demanded, because he wanted a continuing crisis rather than a solution.
Granted, recent examples of presidential candidates throwing themselves on the mercy of journalistic questioning haven’t gone great for them.
Biden’s post-debate interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, designed to stanch his campaign’s bleeding, instead intensified it. Trump’s recent open interview with a convention of Black journalists spotlighted his thin skin and bizarre racial views.
These weren’t failures, though, but successes — not for the candidates, of course, but for an American public that has the right to look behind the curtain of carefully controlled campaign events to watch and listen as those who would lead answer tough questions from knowledgeable questioners.
During most of Harris’ vice presidency, she had been dismissed by many as shallow and incompetent. All indications are that those judgments weren’t consistent with her actual abilities. She was a respected prosecutor and an effective senator long before she was cast as a bumbling veep.
But false narratives can be stubborn, and this one still has her running even with an opponent she should be crushing by virtue of his own manifest unfitness for office. Hiding from media questioning will only lend credence to that false narrative.
Giving (improved) speeches is one thing — but it’s time to actually talk, Madam Vice President.
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Aug. 11
The Philadelphia Inquirer on Harris and Trump’s VP selections
Vice President Kamala Harris provided voters with an early look into her deft leadership style.
Faced with the biggest decision of her brief presidential campaign, Harris ignored the favorite of many pundits and went with her gut, picking a little known governor with broad appeal to be her running mate.
Harris’ selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz reflects her campaign vision to protect freedoms, deliver justice, and expand opportunity so all Americans “cannot just get by, but get ahead.”
Harris had three strong finalists to choose from in Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Walz. Conventional wisdom said to pick Shapiro or Kelly because they were from crucial swing states.
While advisers said Harris could win with any of the three contenders, factions within the Democratic Party opposed Shapiro and Kelly. Harris listened to the arguments and made a wise decision.
That is what good leaders do.
Harris avoided creating a rift within the party and picked Walz, who added energy and unity to the campaign. Walz’s Midwestern nice and “fun dad” likability adds to the joyful vibe Harris has brought to her campaign.
Many Democrats in Pennsylvania were disappointed she didn’t pick Shapiro. But in Walz, Harris found a running mate who excited broad constituent groups — from Sen. Joe Manchin, 76, an Independent from West Virginia to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 34, a liberal from New York.
Manchin said Walz will “bring normalcy back to Washington,” while Ocasio-Cortez called him “a uniter.”
By bringing Democrats and Independents together, Harris can continue to build on the momentum her campaign has injected into the race in the few weeks since President Joe Biden put country before personal ambition and decided not to seek reelection.
Donald Trump has tried to paint Walz as a radical liberal. But like most everything Trump says, it is a lie. Walz defeated a six-term Republican from a conservative district in Minnesota and went on to serve 12 years in the House.
Walz is a gun owner, hunter, and military veteran whose first job was working on his family’s farm. He doesn’t have an Ivy League degree and worked as a schoolteacher and football coach before entering politics.
Walz, whose father died when he was 19, knows the struggles of the working poor and the middle class.
He was first elected governor in 2018 and reelected in 2022. He proposed and signed a wide range of legislation that most Americans support, including codifying abortion rights, universal gun background checks, free college tuition for families making less than $80,000 a year, child tax credits, expanded LGBTQ rights, paid family leave, expanded voting rights, legalized marijuana, and free school meals for all children — all while maintaining a state budget surplus.
Walz had a ready response for critics of his record: “What a monster! Kids are eating and having full bellies so they can go learn, and women are making their own health care decisions, and we’re a top five business state and we also rank in the top three of happiness.”
Walz’s substantive record and folksy style stands in stark contrast to Trump’s running mate, JD Vance.
Vance is a shape-shifter. He is from Ohio but focused his memoir on summers spent in Kentucky’s Appalachia coal region. He called graduating from Yale Law School “ the coolest thing ” he’d ever done but later wrote “elite universities have become expensive day care centers for coddled children.” Vance claims to represent the white working class but worked for a white shoe law firm before moving to a venture capital firm in San Francisco. He supports deporting migrants but married the daughter of Indian immigrants.
He talks up the importance of family, but boasted about telling his 7-year-old son to “ shut the hell up ” because he was on the phone with Trump.
Vance, 39, is also an empty suit with limited experience. He has been a senator for 18 months and never passed a bill. That’s a concern since Vance would be one heartbeat away from an Oval Office occupied by Trump, 78, who is the oldest presidential candidate ever and has demonstrated cognitive decline.
Even more troubling, Vance’s rise in politics has been bankrolled by a handful of billionaires. His biggest supporter and mentor is Peter Thiel, a tech billionaire with an un-American worldview.
Thiel wrote: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Thiel, who is also close to Trump, envisions establishing an undiscovered country in outer space or the ocean.
Vance is also a phony striver. Born James Donald Bowman, he has changed his name as often as he changed his views on Trump. He once called his running mate “America’s Hitler.”
Vance supported a national abortion ban, even in cases of rape and incest — a searing crime that he called “inconvenient.” Now he mimics Trump’s latest abortion stance, which is to let states decide.
He pledged allegiance to Trump, not the Constitution. He got the vice presidential nod after saying that, unlike Vice President Mike Pence, he would have illegally blocked the certification of the 2020 election.
Like Trump, Vance is willing to break the law and violate his oath of office to stay in power. They make for a dangerous team beholden to the super rich.
Harris and Walz have devoted decades to public service and helping to improve the lives of everyone. Their campaign is focused on building a better future, not past grievances and retribution.
That leaves voters with a clear choice. Harris and Walz support the Constitution and the Founders’ vision of creating a more perfect union. Trump and Vance offer a convicted felon running to stay out of prison and a lackey willing to help him.
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