President Obama's speech on national security this week drew more criticism from the left than it did from the right, despite the fact that he eviscerated the previous administration on its handling of national security affairs. After decisively declaring an end to the Bush era of national security ineptitude and moral depravity, the president did not then throw red meat to his liberal base.President Obama could have promised to reverse every constitutionally suspect Bush policy or tactic with civil libertarian bravado. He could have said that freedom must always trump fear and that security purchased at the price of justice is no security at all. Make no mistake, the president was eloquent and his rhetoric was soaring, but his substantive policy approach appears to be something much different.
President Obama seems to understand the danger of the wholesale rejection of a predecessors national security regime. Just such a rejection by George W. Bush of the Clinton taskforce on Al Queda, among other things, likely contributed to our failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks. President Obama also seems intent on making good on his promises to put partisan ideology aside when he believes that mission accomplishment requires it. The liberal constituencies at the base of the Democratic Party view national security and civil liberties, not unlike their Republican counterparts, in absolute terms. Effective presidents must resist the politically and morally self satisfying approach of pandering to the base. President Bush chose to pursue a national security strategy that replaced ethical and constitutional imperatives with an aggressively utilitarian approach cloaked in nationalistic and moralistic rhetoric. Reversing course 180 degrees would only amount to choosing a different poison and it would have the same limited shelf life as did the Bush Doctrine.
So what should the President do? He seems to have chosen on a sort of Nixon/China strategy. Just as a stalwart cold warrior was required for détente with communist china, a liberal internationalist may be the best man to protect Americans from "Islamo-fascists" without abandoning our principles or jeopardizing our security. Liberal pundits have already begun to mock President Obama for suggesting that we really do need a new legal framework to deal with terrorism. They see this as a tacit endorsement of Bush's abuses and an effort to claim that as long as he - President Obama- was in charge of such efforts, they would not be allowed to get out of hand. The thing is; that claim may well be the most legitimate one in the mix right now. The President seems to be acknowledging a hard reality, namely that 21st Century national security cannot be maintained with 18th Century legal frameworks, but that at the same time, any new framework must be constructed transparently and with very significant attention to our values and to the principle of checks and balances.
When I teach public sector ethics, I assign an article called "Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands" by Michael Walzer. He writes that "The notion of dirty hands derives from an effort to refuse "absolut- ism" without denying the reality of the moral dilemma." Walker's exploration of moral hazards of political leadership is now a classic that I am certain has been read by Barack Obama. Ultimately, Walzer praises an approach to dealing with the security/freedom dilemma that seeks to marry effective security policy with clear accountability AND even public atonement on the part of leaders who, after clear and transparent deliberation, choose an action that would otherwise be unacceptable. In the article, Walzer illustrates this approach with the help of Camus' "The Just Assassins," in which the protagonists do their duty reluctantly and then accept the consequences necessary to protect the integrity of moral and ethical reflection and deliberation - their own execution.
The biggest problem with the Bush approach was its failure to engage in honest moral and ethical deliberation. By framing their efforts as a sort of moral utilitarianism, the Bush Administration made morally treacherous decisions a simple matter of mathematical calculation. Many have charged the Bush Administration with adhering to an "ends justify the means" approach, but this may be too kind. This Machiavellian construction clearly implies the need to "get your hands dirty" for a greater good. The Bush Administration's defenders of late have cast their morally and constitutionally questionable actions as moral goods in and of themselves. They were moral actions because of their motivations. While the utilitarian lifts the psychic and intellectual burden from the moral dilemma, these folks have gone even farther, replacing these morally useful burdens with moral and political praise of the Administration's decisive actions.
For Walzer, this is calamitous because it not only removes incentives for and encouragement of ethical and moral reflection and deliberation, it actually discourages such prudence and encourages immoral and unethical conduct cloaked in the robes of moral and political courage.
Before liberals condemn Obama's betrayal and conservatives spin his decisions into an endorsement and vindication of the Bush/Cheney approach, I hope our leaders, pundits, and public intellectuals will demand the inclusion of the insights of moral philosophy in our national debate, and not allow us to retreat into the familiar, but very counter-productive world of black and white rights and wrongs, political wins and losses.
If Barack Obama can effectively articulate his consciously and transparently philosophical approach, I believe average Americans will respond positively. The likelihood that left and right will be unable to resist the urge to compare (unfavorably) the president's efforts to their dogmatic "principles" may even prove useful to the President in the long run.