IP: The Center Can Hold

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

The Center Can Hold




By WILLIAM SAFIRE

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ASHINGTON -- "Things fall apart," bemoaned the poet Yeats, "the center 
cannot hold. . . ."

Not so today. In three critical areas, the center is holding up fine.

1. Missile Offense and Defense: The Shanghai "no-deal deal" between 
President Bush and Vladimir Putin, which seemed to go off the tracks at 
their summit in Crawford, Tex., is now back on.

The U.S. will "unilaterally" reduce its offensive nuclear missile stockpile 
to 2,000 or less, a level that the Russians can afford to maintain. That's 
a relief to Colin Powell coalitionaries. Meanwhile, as urged by the 
Rice-Rumsfeld right, the U.S. will exercise its option to withdraw from the 
cold-war ABM treaty, enabling us to build a limited missile defense against 
rogue states and terrorist groups.

In the U.S., this reassures hard-line strategists who are troubled by our 
huge stockpile reduction and who have insisted Bush live up to his 
missile-defense campaign pledge. Soft-liners like Senator Joe Biden and 
consterned scientists will grump, but their ranks are thinned by the 
growing prospect of a Saddam or independent terrorist buying or building a 
nuke that could take out a U.S. city.

Putin will sulk about ABM withdrawal but has to accept the double 
unilateral. Result: weaker missile offense, stronger missile defense — a 
good deal for all medium-liners.

2. The Anti-Recession Deficit: The president and the Republican House 
steered right, offering speeded-up tax cuts for all taxpayers and a tax-cut 
bonanza for big business. The Democratic Senate steered left, preferring 
direct assistance to the growing number of unemployed. Result: impasse.

But lo! Bush has just signaled his willingness to aid the jobless with 
longer benefits and assistance with health insurance, while denying major 
corporations much of the succor they seek. And the Democrat Tom Daschle, 
while still dragging a foot on speeding up cuts to individuals, responded 
with acceptance of tax breaks to business for job-creating investment. Both 
sides are flirting with the Republican Pete Domenici's idea of a short 
holiday from the payroll tax.

In a recession, temporary red ink is desirable. It now looks as if the 
lefty spenders and the righty tax-cutters will eschew their old lock-boxing 
and meet in the popular middle.

3. Prosecution of Suspected Terrorists: Only last week, Attorney General 
John Ashcroft was smearing all who opposed his proposed secret military 
trials in the U.S. as unpatriotic aiders of terrorists. He adjudged 
American judges unable to protect secrets and American juries too craven to 
convict terrorists.

Evidently cooler heads are prevailing. The first indictment related to the 
Sept. 11 attack was filed this week in a civilian criminal court, not a 
military tribunal. The venue chosen by Michael Chertoff, head of Justice's 
Criminal Division, was the Eastern District of Virginia, where jurors are 
not easily intimidated and are not averse to the death penalty.

Meanwhile, at the Defense Department, Secretary Donald Rumsfeld treated the 
concerns expressed about civil liberty as "useful." He turned for guidance 
on military tribunals for Al Qaeda leaders to such tough-minded and 
respected legal minds as Judge William Webster, former F.B.I. and C.I.A. 
chief, and Lloyd Cutler, adviser to presidents, it seems, since Lincoln.

The Pentagon refinement of the president's military order may well 
incorporate rights to the accused that are in today's Uniform Code of 
Military Justice but were expressly denied in his original, hastily drawn 
order.

Such a defender of personal freedom as the conservative representative Bob 
Barr of Georgia does not challenge the president's authority to convene a 
military tribunal overseas to do speedy justice to non-U.S. citizens. But 
if such trials are held inside the U.S., he says, the president is required 
to ask for a declaration of war (which Barr introduced) or to seek specific 
authorization by Congress.

What we are likely to get, if Bush is wise enough to ask for it, is 
Congressional approval of overseas trials of terrorist leaders by military 
courts adhering to basic standards of U.S. military justice. Most civil 
libertarians as well as Ashcroftite zealots would express a degree of 
satisfaction with this, just as they have with the trial of the accused 
conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui in a regular criminal court in Alexandria, Va.

Thus is the center holding. Nothing is falling apart. The falcon hears the 
falconer loud and clear.

<http://www.nytimes.com/subscribe/help/copyright.html>Copyright 2001 The 
New York Times Company | 
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