While the Lebanese deserve 95 percent of the credit for this election, 5 percent goes to two U.S. presidents. As more than one Lebanese whispered to me: Without George Bush standing up to the Syrians in 2005 — and forcing them to get out of Lebanon after the Hariri killing — this free election would not have happened. Mr. Bush helped create the space. Power matters. Mr. Obama helped stir the hope. Words also matter.

I think this is a pretty good lesson in foreign policy.  Seemingly contradictory presidencies can actually complement eachother well.  For all of his flaws, it seems fair to say that George Bush’s use of muscle led to some positive changes in the world.  However, the unpopularity of his policies created a vaccum for a president like Barack Obama to fill.  The way I see it, Bush sacrificed America’s popularity to rid the world of certain rogue regimes.  Obama was elected to assuage the negative side-effects of the Bush years and restore America as an example.  This just might be the best of both worlds.

There was a lot of talk during the campaign and in the first few months of Obama’s presidency about how his speeches were nice but lacked any real substance or utility.  While some were skeptical, others were turned off by Obama’s reliance on words that seemed to border on the theatrical.  But if his speech in Cairo last week actually influenced the Lebanese election in the way that it is currently being reported, the skeptics were flat out wrong.  If they make people believe, speeches can truly change the world.

I thought the President and former Vice President were both very convincing in their speeches yesterday.  Notwithstanding Dick Cheney’s somewhat classless mocking of the President to start his speech, the substance of his position certainly has merit.  We can’t delude ourselves into thinking an argument is categorically incorrect just because Dick Cheney is its champion.  The fact that some approach the issue in this way is plain.

Others, of course, are sincere and nonpartisan in their position on national security.  They are truly against waterboarding, military commissions, and the housing of detainees anywhere other than federal prisons.  In the face of this, the President has outlined a very moderate and pragmatic approach to dealing with detainees.  But for all of the President’s criticisms of the Bush administration’s detainee policy, the new policy doesn’t seem to differ all that much from the old.  For instance, President Obama effectively articulated a silo system that provides each detainee with unique legal treatment depending on that detainee’s classification.  Yet, both military commissions and prolonged detention without access to any court whatsoever are still explicitly on the table.  Of course, the military commissions will have to be consistent with Supreme Court opinions in recent years after the Bush military commissions were rejected as unconstitutional.  But the point is that the President recognizes that no access to the federal courts in some cases, or no access to any court in others, are appropriate options when dealing with terrorists.

The starkest difference between the two is obviously waterboarding – a technique that is “torture” to Obama and “enhanced interrogation” to Cheney.  Whatever you call it, the big issue for me is how limited its use was even under the Bush administration.  My understanding is that it wasn’t used at all after 2003, was limited to high-level al-Quaeda operatives at a time the administration knew little about al-Quaeda, and could only be used upon order from the top.  The fact that the administration didn’t use it at any other time nor on any other person demonstrates how targeted this technique was.   Nobody is saying that the military or the CIA should be given carte blanche to use waterboarding at will.  The debate is whether the President should reserve to himself the power to permit waterboarding in extraordinary circumstances.

Putting aside the question of its frequency, reasonable minds can differ on whether waterboarding should be considered torture.  I, for one, would much rather be waterboarded than have my toenails removed, my genitals electrocuted, or beaten repeatedly.  The latter three are clearly torture.  Waterboarding is a much closer call.  And the fact that reporters have been willing to sit through a waterboarding session speaks volumes – I don’t think any reporter would be up for sitting through any other torture technique mentioned above.

So, at the very least, we shouldn’t put waterboarding on par with much clearer examples of torture.  Taking the context in whole, I would feel much more secure knowing that President Obama had this option in his pocket for use in extraordinary circumstances.  The fact that he has categorically refused to allow it leaves me a little more skeptical of the government’s ability to stop attacks before they happen.  And if it’s truly and strictly limited in this way, I don’t see it as compromising our values because I cannot confidently place it under the umbrella of “torture.”

One final note.  Geno, another author on this blog, said an interesting thing to me the other day.  If these detainees were sent to a federal prison, they would be exposed to what we all know goes on inside America’s jails.  I won’t elaborate further, but that, my friends, is torture.

Maybe Guantanamo isn’t all that bad after all…

Many of us may take the freedom of speech as such a necessity in any civilized society that we may forget to fully appreciate why.  In so doing, we may be turning a blind eye to some inherent downsides to free speech as we understand it.  Democracy, it is said, depends upon the free flow of information and opinion in the “marketplace of ideas.”  As John Stewart Mill explained, the search for truth requires the equal acceptance of all opinions, whether true, partially true, or false.  But what about when government has already made and implemented a policy decision of far reaching national consequence and now must ensure that it gets properly managed and handled?  Does the suppression of opposing opinion then become more justifiable and less problematic?

War provides an appropriate frame of reference.  Once the decision to go to war is made, the government, and perhaps the country in general, might have some interest in the suppression of anti-war publications.  At such point, further public discourse will not lead to a different result since the decision has already been made.  The fighting of the war itself may be hindered by incessant debate on the merits of fighting it.  Making fragmented public opinion prominent in the national headlines projects an image of internal weakness and illegitimacy.  Such speech might even embolden and encourage the country’s enemies.  In short, there seems to be a national security interest in suppressing ex post facto criticisms of an initial decision to go to war.

Of course, the people have an interest in such debate in order to ensure the propriety of future, similar choices.  But does this alone outweigh the national security interests described above?  I don’t think it necessarily does.  What does tip the scale against such suppression laws is that the government itself is the suppressor.  It is this fear of big and powerful government that is embedded in the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech.  No matter how legitimate the government’s interests may be, it cannot suppress ex post facto criticisms of its own policies because that is precisely what the First Amendment is designed to guard against.  The framers didn’t think that government was incapable of properly restricting speech in appropriate contexts. But the fear of abuse resulting from empowering government to regulate speech was enough to give free speech in America the ultimate safeguard.

I bet President Bush would have loved a little Alien and Sedition Act of his own.  The merits of the initial invasion of Iraq are criticized to this very day, perhaps with good reason.  President Obama and future presidents will also have to deal with that thorn that is free speech.  In the face of the First Amendment then, the only antedote to the potential downsides of free speech is a population that excercises that right responsibly.