For the most part

For the most part, the New York Times gets it right in its editorial today on Bush’s (and Cheney’s) obsession with expanding executive power:

To a disturbing degree, the horror of 9/11 became an excuse to take up this cause [of expanding executive power] behind the shield of Americans’ deep insecurity. The results have been devastating. Americans’ civil liberties have been trampled. The nation’s image as a champion of human rights has been gravely harmed. Prisoners have been abused, tortured and even killed at the prisons we know about, while other prisons operate in secret. American agents “disappear” people, some entirely innocent, and send them off to torture chambers in distant lands. Hundreds of innocent men have been jailed at Guantánamo Bay without charges or rudimentary rights. And Congress has shirked its duty to correct this out of fear of being painted as pro-terrorist at election time.

Exactly so.

But I do want to flag one concession the NYT makes, incorrectly in my view, in the midst of its otherwise solid indictment of the Administration (emphasis added):

While no one questions the determination of the White House to fight terrorism, the methods this administration has used to do it have been shaped by another, perverse determination: never to consult, never to ask and always to fight against any constraint on the executive branch.

Well, actually, quite a number of people question the White House’s determination to fight terrorism. An Administration determined to fight terrorism after 9/11 would not have invaded Iraq, would have devoted considerable effort and resources to securing the nation’s ports, and would have worked to minimize the effects of a terrorist attack by improving disaster preparedness, which Katrina starkly showed was not done. That’s just the short list.

I don’t want to make too big a deal of this because, taking the editorial as a whole, I’m not sure the NYT actually believes that Bush’s determination is unquestioned. Much of the editorial’s argument underlines precisely why the White House’s determination to fight terrorism is questionable at best.

On the other hand, to frame the issue without challenging the White House’s anti-terror credentials concedes far too much and ignores the many reasons, too numerous to document here but with which everyone is now familiar, to doubt this Administration’s credibility.