Barack Obama is trying to find a new balance between national security and human rights

After the dark side of Bush regime

Illustration by KAL

DURING a public meeting in Istanbul on April 7th Barack Obama argued that the American ship of state is more like a supertanker than a speedboat. You cannot just spin it around and point it in a new direction; instead, “you’ve got to slowly move it and then eventually you end up in a very different place.”

Ever since the Obama administration released the Justice Department’s so-called “torture memos” on April 16th Americans have been debating what Mr Obama’s “very different place” might mean for counter-terrorism. The memos make disturbing and surreal reading. Disturbing because of the brutality they describe (one man was waterboarded 183 times in a month). Surreal because they combine the torturer’s language with that of the health-and-safety inspector (slamming someone into a wall, or “walling” them, is acceptable, provided that the wall is “flexible” and “the head and neck are supported with a rolled hood and towel that provides a c-collar effect to help prevent whiplash”).

The memos have also stirred a debate about the future of counter-terrorism. How far will Mr Obama go in rolling back the extraordinary powers of surveillance and secrecy, detention and interrogation that the Bush administration accumulated? And how much danger is there that he will overreact to his predecessors’ excesses, leaving his country vulnerable to another attack?

Mr Obama has repeatedly signalled that he will fulfil his campaign promise to turn the page on a dark chapter in American history. On his first day in office he said that he was suspending the military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay. Two days later he signed executive orders banning the CIA’s secret prisons and “enhanced interrogation” techniques, bringing America’s policies on detainees in line with international treaties; he also ordered Guantánamo closed within a year. Many of his supporters regarded his decision to release the torture memos as another example of his determination to break with the past.

But Mr Obama has always been careful to leave himself plenty of wriggle room. Elena Kagan, his solicitor-general, has argued that it may still be necessary to hold some former Guantánamo inmates indefinitely. Mr Obama has not ruled out extraordinary rendition, the practice of sending people suspected of terrorism to other countries for “interrogation”. He has also appointed John Brennan, a veteran CIA figure, as his counter-terrorism adviser, despite the fact that Mr Brennan was passed over for the job of director of the CIA because many Democrats thought that he was too hardline.

Mr Obama has also continued the Bush administration’s practice of urging civilian courts to throw out cases that involve allegations of rendition and torture. In February Mr Obama’s Justice Department persuaded the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that a lawsuit on behalf of a Guantánamo detainee, Binyam Mohamed, who also suffered extraordinary rendition, should be dismissed on the ground that it would disclose state secrets.

Mr Obama’s taste for trying to balance both sides of an argument is evident in his handling of the torture memos. He has repeatedly said that he will not prosecute people who were simply obeying orders (“this is a time for reflection, not retribution”). He visited CIA headquarters this week to tell the spooks how much he values their work, and to reassure them that he understands the importance of protecting their identities. But he has also hinted that his administration may establish a “truth commission” to figure out just what happened, and that those responsible for designing the policy of harsh interrogation might face prosecution.

This is partly an attempt to have it both ways, of course. But there is more to it than that. Mr Obama inherited some very difficult problems from the previous regime, not least what to do with people, some of them highly dangerous, who have been in a legal limbo in Guantánamo for years. Conservatives are right to be irritated by foolish liberal claims that America does not face any hard choices in fighting terrorism. But it is equally idiotic to argue, as a fair few conservatives seem to, that tough-minded policies are meritorious simply because they are tough-minded.

Own goal

A pointed objection to George Bush’s policies is not just that they crossed a moral line but that they crossed it to no purpose. Mr Bush’s critics were not confined to bleeding-heart liberals who are even now making a fuss about the rights of a captured Somali pirate. They included a legion, from high-ranking commanders to military lawyers to intelligence operatives, who argued that the techniques were counterproductive.

“Enhanced interrogation” acted as a potent recruitment tool for terrorist organisations. It made it more difficult for America to co-operate with allies, particularly in Europe. It imposed personal burdens on front-line workers who found their values compromised. Dick Cheney points out that the techniques yielded some useful information. But the same information might have been obtained by less controversial means. Torin Nelson, a veteran interrogator, says the administration made a fundamental mistake in focusing on how far it could push detainees, not least because people who are tortured will often confess to anything. It would have been better off recruiting and training more skilled interrogators who knew how to win the trust of their subjects.

There is always a chance that Mr Obama will go too far, replacing Mr Bush’s excessive zeal with excessive timidity. But so far the signs are that he is producing a reasonable balance. He recognises that September 11th 2001 changed the rules of national security. But he also recognises that many of the Bush-era policies were clumsy as well as questionable. The most important comment on Mr Obama’s approach to counter-terrorism so far came on April 20th, from the CIA agents who cheered him to the rafters. THE ECONOMIST