【英语社会】奥巴马应向布什道歉

Critics in his own party and Republican opponents are attacking Barack Obama's emerging stance on national security with equal ferocity. Many Democrats are furious that the president has broken his promise to abandon the Bush administration's war-powers approach to fighting terrorism. Dick Cheney, the former vice-president, and other conservatives attack him for doing the opposite – for keeping his promise and emasculating the US anti-terror effort.

The left's complaints make far more sense than Mr Cheney's. Mr Obama is adjusting the Bush administration's policies here and there and seeks to put them on a sounder legal footing. This recalibration is significant and wise, but it is by no means the entirely new approach that he led everybody to expect.

Mr Obama is in the right, in my view, but he owes his supporters an apology for misleading them. He also owes George W. Bush an apology for saying that the last administration's thinking was an affront to US values, whereas his own policies would be entirely consonant with them. In office he has found that the issue is more complicated. If he was surprised, he should not have been.

The signature intellectual defect of the non-compromisers on each side of this debate is an inability to recognise conflicting ends. The Democratic party's civil libertarians seem to believe that several medium-sized US cities would be a reasonable price to pay for insisting on ordinary criminal trials for terrorist suspects. There can be no trade-off between freedom and security, because the freedoms they prioritise trump everything. To many on the other side, no trampling on the liberty of ordinary citizens, no degree of cruelty to detainees, no outright illegality is too much to contemplate in the effort to stop terrorists. On this view, security trumps everything.

In their threadbare logic and refusal to acknowledge moral complexity, these views are almost interchangeable. At any rate, they are equally useless.

Mr Obama, I think, brings to this grim task good faith and a sincere desire to make his policies legitimate – as a matter of US law and in the court of global opinion – and to render his administration properly accountable to courts and Congress. The Bush administration was offensively and dangerously careless on all those points. Its instinct to claim and exercise unlimited powers was not, in my view, as frightening as the continuing terrorist threat, but it was scary nonetheless and in the end unnecessary and counterproductive. Yet the fact remains, on issue after issue, Mr Obama has had to come to terms with policies that look very similar to those of his predecessor.

During the election campaign, Mr Obama promised to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay. He announced plans to do it soon after taking office. But his administration had not decided what to do with the prisoners. Mr Obama has since been persuaded that some detainees are too dangerous to be released but cannot be prosecuted, for lack of evidence admissible in an ordinary civilian or military court. The White House is apparently willing to see many of them detained indefinitely without trial – in the US rather in Cuba, if Mr Obama can overcome the objections of many in Congress. This is not materially different from the Bush administration's approach.

Mr Obama also opposed the Bush administration's use of special military commissions to try suspects. Ordinary criminal courts can handle it, he said. He has changed his mind. Having first suspended the commissions Mr Obama now plans to revive them, with no more than minor changes in the rules.

The president's most important departure from his predecessor's approach was to renounce waterboarding and other brutal techniques used after 9/11, which most reasonable people regard as torture. For the moment Central Intelligence Agency interrogators are confined to the gentle methods laid out in the army field manual. But the order issuing this instruction also called for a review. Leon Panetta, Mr Obama's choice to head the CIA, is open to the need for more aggressive methods in some circumstances.

All these are instances of a broader issue. For many liberals, to speak of a “war on terror” has always been to frame the challenge incorrectly. The US is not at war, they argue, and the president should neither seize nor be granted war powers. Anti-terrorism is essentially a matter of ordinary law enforcement. Mr Obama implied that he was sympathetic to this view.

The president has now decided that although the fight against terrorists might not be war as usual, it nonetheless calls for special powers and the infringement of certain liberties. In this he is surely correct. The attacks of September 11 2001 and subsequent terror plots show that the US is dealing with a tenacious and resourceful enemy, willing to kill as many innocents as its weapons
allow, loosely organised around the world but organised nonetheless. This enemy is no ordinary criminal enterprise and suppressing it calls for extraordinary measures.

Mr Obama has conceded, in effect, that the Bush administration was right about this. Where the previous administration went wrong was in resisting all constitutional constraints on its response. Its attitude was: “We will do whatever it takes – and that is as much as you need to know.” In making itself accountable and seeking proper legal authority for its policies, the Obama administration is saying that democracies as well as dictatorships can successfully confront this new enemy. Let us hope that, on this point at least, Mr Obama is never forced to change his mind.

民主党内的批评人士和共和党对手们正同样猛烈地攻击巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)在国家安全问题上日益清晰的立场。让许多民主党人感到愤怒的是，奥巴马总统违背了自己的承诺，没有摒弃小布什(George W. Bush)政府借《战争权力决议案》(War Powers Resolution)来打击恐怖主义的做法。前副总统迪克•切尼(Dick Cheney)和其他保守派则以相反的罪名来攻击他——说他恪守了承诺并因此削弱了美国的反恐力度。

左派阵营的控诉比切尼的攻击要有道理得多。奥巴马正全方位的调整小布什政府的政策，试图巩固这些政策的法律基础。这种调整虽然重要而明智，但决非他诱使大家去企盼的那种全新方针。

在我看来，奥巴马这么做是正确的，但他应该向支持者们道歉，因为他误导了他们。他还应该向小布什道歉，因为他曾说过，上届政府的想法是对美国价值观的公开辱蔑，而他自己的政策却完全符合美国价值观。奥巴马在上任后已发现，问题要更为复杂。如果说他感到惊讶的话，那他原本不该有这种感受。

对争论双方那些固执己见者来说，他们的标志性思维缺陷在于，未能意识到双方的目标存在冲突。民主党的公民自由意志论者(Civil Libertarian)似乎认为，为了坚持对恐怖主义嫌疑分子进行普通刑事审判，让几座美国中型城市面临被攻击的风险是应该付出的合理代价。自由和安全是无法取得平衡的，因为他们优先考虑的是自由——自由是第一位的。而对于另一方的许多人来说，在制止恐怖主义的努力中，对普通公民自由权利的践踏再严重、对嫌犯的刑罚再残忍、对法律的违背再明目张胆，都是可以考虑的。根据这种观点，安全是第一位的。

这两种观点在缺乏逻辑和拒绝承认道德的复杂性方面，可谓半斤八两。无论怎么看，它们都同样毫无价值。

我认为，奥巴马对这项严峻的任务显示出了诚意，他真诚希望自己的政策“合法化”——成为美国法律和国际舆论法庭的准则——真诚希望能使自己的政府彻底地对法院和国会负起责任。小布什政府在这些方面的粗枝大叶既显唐突又十分危险。它本能的要求获得并使用无限权力，在我看来，这虽不如持续的恐怖威胁那么吓人，但仍令人提心吊胆，而且最终既无必要又适得其反。不过，这不能改变这样的事实：在一个又一个问题上，奥巴马都不得不退回到看似与他前任几无差别的政策上。

竞选期间，奥巴马曾承诺关闭关塔纳摩湾(Guantánamo Bay)的监狱。上任后不久，他就宣布了关闭监狱的计划。但其政府尚未决定该如何处置那些囚犯。此后奥巴马被说服，相信有些嫌犯因过于危险而不能开释，但又因缺乏普通民事或军事法庭所接受的证据而无法被起诉。显然，白宫乐见其中许多嫌犯在未经审判的情况下被无限期地关押下去——最好在美国关押而不是在古巴，如果奥巴马能够击败众多国会议员的反对的话。这种做法与小布什政府的做法并无实质区别。

奥巴马还反对小布什政府利用特别军事委员会来审判嫌犯的做法。他表示，普通刑事法庭就足以应对。如今他改变了主意。起初暂停军事委员会的奥巴马，现在又打算重启它们的工作，而且只对规则作了轻微改动。

相对于前任的做法，奥巴马总统做出的最重大改变是，废除了911事件后启用的水刑等酷刑。大多数温和的人都将之视为虐俘行为。目前，中央情报局(CIA)的审讯人员只限使用《美国陆军战地手册》(Army Field Manual)中列出的温和手段。但下达这一指示的命令还需再做评估。奥巴马任命的CIA局长利昂•帕内塔(Leon Panetta)愿意考虑在某些情况下使用更加激进的手段。

所有这些都说明了一个更广泛问题。对许多自由派人士来说，“反恐战争”的说法一直是对挑战的一种错误表述。他们认为，美国并没有身陷战争，因此总统既不应去争夺、也不应被授予战争权力。反恐从本质上讲是一个普通的执法问题。奥巴马曾暗示他支持这种观点。

现在总统断定，即便反恐斗争不是通常意义上的战争，也仍需要使用特别权力，并会对某些自由权利造成侵犯。在这一点上，奥巴马无疑是正确的。2001年9月11日的袭击以及随后的恐怖袭击计划表明，美国要对付的是一个顽固不化、资源丰富的敌人，他们的武器能让他们杀害多少无辜民众，他们就会杀害多少人。他们在世界各地的组织虽然松散，但仍然是有组织的。这个敌人不是一般的犯罪集团，镇压他们需要使用非常手段。

事实上，奥巴马已经承认，小布什政府在这一点上是正确的。上届政府的错误之处在于，抗拒宪法对其应对举措的一切约束，其态度是：“我们将采取一切必要措施——你只需要知道这么多。”通过扮演负责任的角色、并为自身政策寻求适当的法定权力，奥巴马政府正在表明：民主制度可和专政制度一样成功的抗击这个新敌人。让我们企盼，至少在这一点上，奥巴马永远不会再被迫改变主意。

译者/管婧