Those wondering how long it would take for the first act of terrorism to be perpetrated on American soil under President Barack Obama did not have to wait long. The murder of a U.S. military recruiter by a Muslim convert in Arkansas yesterday marks the return of the war on terror to America after just four months of the new Administration's systematic dismantling of the policies and programs that kept the nation safe for over seven years under the Bush Administration.
Some may take issue with that characterization, noting the slaying of abortionist George Tiller by an apparently militant domestic terrorist on Sunday. President Obama certainly was quick to condemn that killing; and his Administration quick to take action to protect other abortion providers. Tiller's murderer, though a cold-blooded killer, is not a terrorist of the kind that the United States has been fighting since the September 11th attacks. If every murderer were a terrorist, the United States would have to invade most liberal-run cities to put down the violence.
Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, formerly Carlos Bledsoe, is, however, exactly the kind of terrorist that has been prevented from carrying out acts of violence against Americans, until now. Still, the president has not made a statement about the killing. He has not expressed "shock and outrage" as he did at Tiller's murder; has not offered condolences to Pvt. William A. Long's family or Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula, the other soldier injured in the attack; and has not expressed the nation's resolve - to say nothing of his Administration's - to continue to fight radical Islamic terrorists wherever they may be found.
To Obama, the Arkansas shootings were an isolated incident carried out by a deranged individual, not part of a worldwide effort to kill Americans with the aim of bringing the country to it's knees. Indeed, it cannot allow the attack to be viewed as such – even though we know Muhammad was radicalized in prison, trained in Yemen, and was upset about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – lest Obama bear some responsibility for watering down the programs that could have prevented it.
Showing posts with label war on terror. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war on terror. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Saturday, May 23, 2009
New York Terror Cell Radicalized in Prison
Where demanded by justice and national security, we will seek to transfer some detainees to the same type of facilities in which we hold all manner of dangerous and violent criminals within our borders -- namely, highly secure prisons that ensure the public safety.
President Barack Obama, May 21, 2009
Authorities in New York have discovered that the four alleged terrorists arrested last week while planning to blow up a synagogue and shoot down a U.S. military plane were all converted to Islam while in prison. The four were attendees at a Newburgh, NY, mosque, where Imam Salahuddin Muhammad is the spiritual leader. Muhammad also serves as a Muslim prison chaplain.
The revelation comes just two days after President Obama uttered the words above, announcing his plan to bring some of the terrorist detainees currently held at Guantanamo Bay into the United States to be held in the U.S. prison system. The president assures that no one has ever escaped from one of the federal Supermax prisons. But as the case of the New York terror cell demonstrates, escape is not the only issue.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Big Speech, Small Man
It is fitting that President Barack Obama’s much-hyped and anticipated speech on his plan for the detainees currently held at Gunatanamo Bay was delivered in the rotunda of the National Archives building. Throughout his speech, the arguments of a petulant child stubbornly refusing to accept any responsibility for his actions could be heard echoing around the marble hall. The president’s speech was not courageous, uplifting, or forward looking. It was a small speech, especially in comparison to former vice president Dick Cheney’s address immediately after, and revealed the true stature of the man giving it.
President Obama is the master of the political trick of decrying a given act while engaging in it. Throughout this speech, Obama made overtures to looking ahead all the while dwelling on the past. He said he did not want to engage in re-fighting the battles of the last eight years over enhanced interrogations and Guantanamo Bay, then proceeded to do just that, explicitly and implicitly criticizing decisions of the Bush Administration as misguided, illegitimate, and “hasty.”
Of his own decisions to close the terrorist detention center at Guantanamo, the president offered no substantive defense, choosing instead to speak in platitudes and point fingers. His refusal to accept responsibility for his decision, and thus the consequences that may flow from it, was complete, and is best summarized by this passage.
“Indeed, the legal challenges that have sparked so much debate here in Washington in recent weeks would be taking place whether or not I decided to close Guantanamo. For example, the court order to release 17 Uighars – 17 Uighar detainees, took place last fall when George Bush was president. The Supreme Court that invalidated the system of prosecution at Guantanamo in 2006 was overwhelmingly appointed by Republican presidents – not wild-eyed liberals. In other words, the problem of what to do with Guantanamo detainees was not caused by my decision to close the facility; the problem exists because of the decision to open Guantanamo in the first place.“
President Obama offered no rationale for his decision other than the unprovable assertions that Guantanamo has served as a recruiting tool for terrorist groups, likely “creating more terrorists than it ever detained,” and that the facility’s existence has made the United States less, not more, safe. This is the presidential equivalent of pointing at another kid and yelling, “He made me do it!” when the teacher comes. It is not the act of a statesman, nor the argument of a man of stature. It is a dodge, a misdirection, a plea for avoiding the consequences of one’s actions.
At other points in the speech, President Obama presented half-truths and self-serving descriptions designed not to justify the closing of Guantanamo, but to cloud the issue enough in an effort to avoid responsibility for his decision. He took pains to detail the number of detainees released from Guantanamo versus the number convicted, but he did not allude to the reason for the relatively low conviction rate. Part of it certainly has to do with the efforts of “civil liberties” and “human rights” groups to tie the detentions of terrorists at the facility up in court. These are efforts that the president presumably would have supported, given his belief that the detentions were against American law. The effect is to paint a picture of a dysfunctional process for trying detainees, “a mess,” as he so eloquently called it, that only closing the facility can clean up. In truth, however, the mess is as much if not more a creation of the hysterical and unfounded claims and charges leveled against the Bush Administration’s plan for trying the detainees by some of President Obama’s biggest supporters.
In another willful distortion, President Obama insisted that the federal Supermax prisons can handle the detention of hardened terrorists, pointing out that no one has ever escaped from one of the maximum security facilities. But escape is not the issue. Security is. Bringing terrorists who were not already in America to America necessarily makes the country less safe. Housing terrorist detainees in the US makes the locality in which they are housed a terrorist target. This argument of Obama’s, which seeks to deny the reality of his decision, is like a child insisting he did not take the cookies, even as his face and hands are covered in chocolate. It is not accountable and it is not transparent.
President Obama’s address, like most of the rest of his speeches, was long on rhetorical flourish and short on actual details. It was internally contradictory – as when he said that the Bush Administration’s decision on indefinite detentions was wrong, only to announce that his own Administration would be adopting the same practice – self-serving, and petty. And that tells the listener something about the man who delivered it. President Obama showed in this address, more than he ever has, that he is a man of beautiful prose and little substance. Perhaps with more time in office, President Obama will acquire the knowledge and self-confidence that allowed Dick Cheney to deliver the statesman-like address that followed. Our president still has a lot of growing up to do.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Farewell to Bush: A Decent Man
It is perhaps ironic that the left wing has settled on the characterization of President George W. Bush as a megalomaniac, obsessed with power and willing to trample on anyone or anything to achieve his evil aims. Ironic because it is President Bush's refusal to even forcefully counter his critics, let alone trample on their right to criticize him, that has allowed the left to build its portrayal. George W. Bush is a man obsessed not with power, but with duty – the old fashioned notion that leaders have a responsibility to lead, whatever the consequences to them personally. It is a testament to the deep seated nature of this belief in him that in eight years as president he has garnered so many enemies on the left, and disappointed so many allies on the right.
George Bush came to Washington pledging to change the tone, to unite not divide. He arrived, however, after a bitter and bruising election contest in which liberals and Democrats concocted myriad ways to try and steal the election from under him, in broad daylight and with the consent of the courts. Foiled in their efforts by the Supreme Court, the left vowed that Bush was not their president, and set out from day one to illegitimize him. But if he could not change the tone in Washington, President Bush did not let the tone change him. Displaying more class and grace than his adversaries combined, Bush never engaged in the hyper-partisan bickering, much to his supporters chagrin. That is not to say that he did not engage in the political process. He did, and many times outmaneuvered and defeated Democratic opposition both when it was in the minority and the majority. He did it with a smile, not a snarl. And they hated him all the more for it.
Of all the decisions that President Bush made, the most consequential will forever be those made in the prosecution of the War on Terror – chief among them the decision to invade Iraq. Forged by the September 11th attacks, Bush acted in what he believed to be the best interest of the nation. He relied upon intelligence that previous presidents had relied upon in determining that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and he concluded that his duty as president required him to act to prevent those weapons from being handed over to the people who had murdered 3,000 Americans on home soil. The failure to find significant stockpiles of weapons was a surprise to everyone but those critics on the left, who despite citing the existence of those weapons in their speeches before voting to support the war, were sure that Bush had known all along that they weren't there. "Bush lied, people died!" was their war cry, even as Bush's was "Bring em on!" "Dead or alive." and "Let's roll!"
There can be no doubt that there were mistakes in the planning and execution of the Iraq War strategy. There are in every war. For a time there seemed to be a real chance that the United States might be driven from Iraq in defeat and disgrace. But rather than yield to political expediency, Bush doubled down on Iraq, and unleashed a new strategy, commanded by a brilliant new general, that has won the victory in Iraq that validates the original decision. President Bush would be due a little bragging. But that is not his way. He has celebrated his vindication quietly, meeting in secret with the families of hundreds of the fallen, and personally contacting the family of every single one of the more than 4,000 brave men and women who served him, and the mission he gave them, to the last.
He was reelected by a majority in 2004, but still the left would not accept him. Democrats complained of a stolen election in Ohio, and lamented a swing of 50,000 votes that would have made John Kerry president. President Bush took his election victory and immediately set out on an effort to fix an increasingly strained and slowly going bankrupt Social Security system. Democrats refused to acknowledge the problem and obstructed the proposed solution, demagoguing all the way that Bush wanted to privatize the program. Abandoned even by members of his own party, which still controlled the Congress, President Bush had to accept the only major defeat of his presidency at the hands of the Democrats.
Like the first year of his first term, the first year of President Bush's second term was marked by a national tragedy, only this one was a natural disaster. The winds of Hurricane Katrina had scarcely stopped blowing when radical environmentalists began to blame the wind and rain on Bush, citing his refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocols. When the tragic pictures of New Orleans flooded and news of the pitiful conditions trapped residents were enduring got out, the media in its haste to blame someone, anyone, turned to its favorite target, President Bush. The federal response to Katrina could have been more robust; but the failure of the city and state governments to make adequate preparations for the storm, or even to evacuate the citizenry, was never fully explored. Likewise, one of the greatest rescue efforts in history, the rescue of some 30,000 New Orleanians from rooftops and attics, conducted largely by federal assets, was never applauded.
More than any other president in American history, President Bush was the subject of media scorn and derision for most of his term. The mainstream press exposed his secret programs, gave voice to his most shrill critics, amplified questions about his motives, and even publicized forged documents to try and prevent his reelection. Here, Bush was willing to push back from time to time. But he never sustained any of those efforts long enough or loudly enough to overcome the sheer volume of false, misleading, and uncharitable material published against him. But he attended all their dinners, and made the appropriately self-deprecating jokes. Because, ultimately, it did not matter to him what they wrote about him. What mattered was his duty.
No one who was alive on September 11th, 2001, would have thought that the United States would not be attacked again in the next seven and a half years. That it has come to be is all to President Bush's credit, and it will be his enduring legacy. The terrorist surveillance program, aggressive interrogations, Guantanamo Bay, enemy combatants, the PATRIOT Act. All are decisions that Bush made in order to protect the country from further attacks, and all have been derided by civil liberties activists and Democrats as illegal invasions of privacy, shredding the Constitution, and the establishment of a police state. They have all have been unqualified successes. President Bush vowed that another September 11th would never happen on his watch, and he made sure of it.
A true dispassionate history of the Bush Administration will not be written for a generation. Time must pass to let emotion settle out of the mixture. When it is written, it will almost certainly judge George W. Bush to have been a fundamentally decent man who strived to do his duty and did not shirk the responsibilities of leadership, often at great political cost. He will be remembered as a president who prevented another terrorist attack against great odds, while freeing 50 million Muslims from oppression. And he will be remembered for having received no credit for any of it while he was in office. There will come a moment, much sooner than anyone now believes, when the country will collectively miss George W. Bush – when an old fashioned leader is required. On that day, Mr. President, you will finally have earned a measure of the respect that you were denied in your years in the White House. Thank you, sir, for a job well and faithfully done.
Originally posted at The Political Machine.
George Bush came to Washington pledging to change the tone, to unite not divide. He arrived, however, after a bitter and bruising election contest in which liberals and Democrats concocted myriad ways to try and steal the election from under him, in broad daylight and with the consent of the courts. Foiled in their efforts by the Supreme Court, the left vowed that Bush was not their president, and set out from day one to illegitimize him. But if he could not change the tone in Washington, President Bush did not let the tone change him. Displaying more class and grace than his adversaries combined, Bush never engaged in the hyper-partisan bickering, much to his supporters chagrin. That is not to say that he did not engage in the political process. He did, and many times outmaneuvered and defeated Democratic opposition both when it was in the minority and the majority. He did it with a smile, not a snarl. And they hated him all the more for it.
Of all the decisions that President Bush made, the most consequential will forever be those made in the prosecution of the War on Terror – chief among them the decision to invade Iraq. Forged by the September 11th attacks, Bush acted in what he believed to be the best interest of the nation. He relied upon intelligence that previous presidents had relied upon in determining that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and he concluded that his duty as president required him to act to prevent those weapons from being handed over to the people who had murdered 3,000 Americans on home soil. The failure to find significant stockpiles of weapons was a surprise to everyone but those critics on the left, who despite citing the existence of those weapons in their speeches before voting to support the war, were sure that Bush had known all along that they weren't there. "Bush lied, people died!" was their war cry, even as Bush's was "Bring em on!" "Dead or alive." and "Let's roll!"
There can be no doubt that there were mistakes in the planning and execution of the Iraq War strategy. There are in every war. For a time there seemed to be a real chance that the United States might be driven from Iraq in defeat and disgrace. But rather than yield to political expediency, Bush doubled down on Iraq, and unleashed a new strategy, commanded by a brilliant new general, that has won the victory in Iraq that validates the original decision. President Bush would be due a little bragging. But that is not his way. He has celebrated his vindication quietly, meeting in secret with the families of hundreds of the fallen, and personally contacting the family of every single one of the more than 4,000 brave men and women who served him, and the mission he gave them, to the last.
He was reelected by a majority in 2004, but still the left would not accept him. Democrats complained of a stolen election in Ohio, and lamented a swing of 50,000 votes that would have made John Kerry president. President Bush took his election victory and immediately set out on an effort to fix an increasingly strained and slowly going bankrupt Social Security system. Democrats refused to acknowledge the problem and obstructed the proposed solution, demagoguing all the way that Bush wanted to privatize the program. Abandoned even by members of his own party, which still controlled the Congress, President Bush had to accept the only major defeat of his presidency at the hands of the Democrats.
Like the first year of his first term, the first year of President Bush's second term was marked by a national tragedy, only this one was a natural disaster. The winds of Hurricane Katrina had scarcely stopped blowing when radical environmentalists began to blame the wind and rain on Bush, citing his refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocols. When the tragic pictures of New Orleans flooded and news of the pitiful conditions trapped residents were enduring got out, the media in its haste to blame someone, anyone, turned to its favorite target, President Bush. The federal response to Katrina could have been more robust; but the failure of the city and state governments to make adequate preparations for the storm, or even to evacuate the citizenry, was never fully explored. Likewise, one of the greatest rescue efforts in history, the rescue of some 30,000 New Orleanians from rooftops and attics, conducted largely by federal assets, was never applauded.
More than any other president in American history, President Bush was the subject of media scorn and derision for most of his term. The mainstream press exposed his secret programs, gave voice to his most shrill critics, amplified questions about his motives, and even publicized forged documents to try and prevent his reelection. Here, Bush was willing to push back from time to time. But he never sustained any of those efforts long enough or loudly enough to overcome the sheer volume of false, misleading, and uncharitable material published against him. But he attended all their dinners, and made the appropriately self-deprecating jokes. Because, ultimately, it did not matter to him what they wrote about him. What mattered was his duty.
No one who was alive on September 11th, 2001, would have thought that the United States would not be attacked again in the next seven and a half years. That it has come to be is all to President Bush's credit, and it will be his enduring legacy. The terrorist surveillance program, aggressive interrogations, Guantanamo Bay, enemy combatants, the PATRIOT Act. All are decisions that Bush made in order to protect the country from further attacks, and all have been derided by civil liberties activists and Democrats as illegal invasions of privacy, shredding the Constitution, and the establishment of a police state. They have all have been unqualified successes. President Bush vowed that another September 11th would never happen on his watch, and he made sure of it.
A true dispassionate history of the Bush Administration will not be written for a generation. Time must pass to let emotion settle out of the mixture. When it is written, it will almost certainly judge George W. Bush to have been a fundamentally decent man who strived to do his duty and did not shirk the responsibilities of leadership, often at great political cost. He will be remembered as a president who prevented another terrorist attack against great odds, while freeing 50 million Muslims from oppression. And he will be remembered for having received no credit for any of it while he was in office. There will come a moment, much sooner than anyone now believes, when the country will collectively miss George W. Bush – when an old fashioned leader is required. On that day, Mr. President, you will finally have earned a measure of the respect that you were denied in your years in the White House. Thank you, sir, for a job well and faithfully done.
Originally posted at The Political Machine.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Obama Finds No Facts on Foreign Trip
Sen. Barack Obama must be very glad to have returned to the United States. After a hero's welcome in Afghanistan and Iraq, at least from the mainstream press, the last few days of his journey have not exactly earned the Senator much praise and may in fact have done damage to his campaign. First, there was the speech in Berlin, in which Obama didn't really say anything of consequence; a fact that did not go unnoticed in the German press even if the American media was too starry-eyed to notice. Then there was Obama's now infamous decision to skip out on a meeting with wounded troops from Iraq and Afghanistan at the U.S. bases at Landstuhl and Ramstein, Germany. That was followed by the shifting explanations for the cancellation, which the campaign ultimately tried to blame on the Pentagon. And just for good measure, Obama hinted on his last day abroad that he may be about to make the mother of all flip-flops and change his position du jour on troop withdrawals from Iraq.
Foreign travel can be so...troublesome.
Better for Obama to come home. It's not like he was learning anything, anyhow. That's according to the Senator himself. It seems that Sen. Obama told Fox News that he mostly had his views on foreign policy "confirmed" by what he saw overseas.
Sen. Obama went all the way to Afghanistan and Iraq to accomplish nothing more than he could have by looking in his bathroom mirror. That helps explain the stumbles of the second leg of his tour. Obama was bored. It's becoming clear that the Senator from H.O.P.E.™ has an inflated opinion of himself and his abilities. But to come right out and admit in broad daylight that his much hyped foreign mission was a gigantic waste of time for him speaks of a conceit that borders on pathological.
Foreign travel can be so...troublesome.
Better for Obama to come home. It's not like he was learning anything, anyhow. That's according to the Senator himself. It seems that Sen. Obama told Fox News that he mostly had his views on foreign policy "confirmed" by what he saw overseas.
"There was a lot of confirmation of my strategies -- that we need to get more troops into Afghanistan, and that the Iraqis are willing to take more responsibility ... that Iran is a grave threat."Now we know why Sen. Obama never held a hearing on the situation in Afghanistan. He had all the answers all along.
Sen. Obama went all the way to Afghanistan and Iraq to accomplish nothing more than he could have by looking in his bathroom mirror. That helps explain the stumbles of the second leg of his tour. Obama was bored. It's becoming clear that the Senator from H.O.P.E.™ has an inflated opinion of himself and his abilities. But to come right out and admit in broad daylight that his much hyped foreign mission was a gigantic waste of time for him speaks of a conceit that borders on pathological.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Obama Might Just Blow It
The biggest danger to Sen. Barack Obama's campaign comes not from his Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, nor from his former rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, but from Barack Obama himself. Obama has sold himself as a new kind of politician, even an anti-politician, a practitioner of a new kind of politics. The Achilles heel of this strategy is that Obama is not really that different from other politicians; and if he can be shown to be just like every other candidate, save for his eloquence, voters who invested in him on a personal level may begin to feel like they have been had.
The past week provided Obama with a few opportunities to show that he really is a different kind of candidate, indeed a different kind of Democrat, than the standard variety. But in each instance, he espoused the typical liberal position. The Supreme Court's wrongheaded decision in Boumediene, for the first time granting habeas corpus rights to terrorist detainees, was embraced by the "different" Obama as an important step in preserving civil liberties for American citizens. But the decision has nothing to do with Americans. It grants the rights of Americans to non-Americans who want to harm American citizens, but it does not one thing to advance any American's civil liberties. Obama's embrace of the decision may just as well have come from the American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, or any other far left liberal watchdog group. Obama missed an opportunity to take a "new politics" position on terrorists, in favor of a garden variety liberal one.
Obama then compounded his error by holding out the example of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing as a model for how an Obama Administration would deal with terrorists and terrorist acts. He assessed the trial and conviction of the terrorists in that first Islamic terrorist attack on American shores as having been a success. "They are in U.S. prisons, incapacitated," he boasted of the terrorists responsible. He did not address how, if the trial and conviction of those terrorists was so successful, the September 11th attacks took place. Clearly, the trial did nothing to prevent further acts of terrorism on America at home or abroad. Obama missed a chance to take a post-September 11th position on terrorists, a more robust one than federal prosecutors can implement, in favor of a tired old liberal worldview.
But Obama was not finished. He capped off the week by suggesting that if Osama bin Laden himself were captured alive during an Obama Administration, the mastermind of the murder of more Americans than any other person in history would not be subjected to the death penalty. Obama said that the U.S. should deal with a captured bin Laden in a way that does, "not make him a martyr." That may be a popular position in the liberal salons of Cambridge and New Haven, but it is not one that will resonate with an overwhelming majority of Americans. Even those personally opposed to capital punishment will have a hard time finding any sympathy for bin Laden's soul. Obama could have easily said that bin Laden deserved "ultimate justice" for his crimes, or some other suitable euphemism for execution, and he would have been praised as a "new" kind of Democrat, tough on terrorism. But instead he went out of his way to take the liberal position, even for the worst of America's enemies.
Since securing the nomination, Obama has been trying to tack back to the center, walking back pledges to meet personally and unconditionally with the leaders of Iran, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela. But there's nothing new about that strategy either. Presidential candidates since time immemorial have campaigned to the fringes in the primary and to the center in the general election. What is new about Obama, however, is the length to which he has gone to convince voters that his greasy fast food served on fine china is really nouveau cuisine. It's not. If Obama doesn't start to come up with some genuinely new positions and fresh ideas, he will lose in November, and become just another bitter liberal former nominee.
The past week provided Obama with a few opportunities to show that he really is a different kind of candidate, indeed a different kind of Democrat, than the standard variety. But in each instance, he espoused the typical liberal position. The Supreme Court's wrongheaded decision in Boumediene, for the first time granting habeas corpus rights to terrorist detainees, was embraced by the "different" Obama as an important step in preserving civil liberties for American citizens. But the decision has nothing to do with Americans. It grants the rights of Americans to non-Americans who want to harm American citizens, but it does not one thing to advance any American's civil liberties. Obama's embrace of the decision may just as well have come from the American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, or any other far left liberal watchdog group. Obama missed an opportunity to take a "new politics" position on terrorists, in favor of a garden variety liberal one.
Obama then compounded his error by holding out the example of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing as a model for how an Obama Administration would deal with terrorists and terrorist acts. He assessed the trial and conviction of the terrorists in that first Islamic terrorist attack on American shores as having been a success. "They are in U.S. prisons, incapacitated," he boasted of the terrorists responsible. He did not address how, if the trial and conviction of those terrorists was so successful, the September 11th attacks took place. Clearly, the trial did nothing to prevent further acts of terrorism on America at home or abroad. Obama missed a chance to take a post-September 11th position on terrorists, a more robust one than federal prosecutors can implement, in favor of a tired old liberal worldview.
But Obama was not finished. He capped off the week by suggesting that if Osama bin Laden himself were captured alive during an Obama Administration, the mastermind of the murder of more Americans than any other person in history would not be subjected to the death penalty. Obama said that the U.S. should deal with a captured bin Laden in a way that does, "not make him a martyr." That may be a popular position in the liberal salons of Cambridge and New Haven, but it is not one that will resonate with an overwhelming majority of Americans. Even those personally opposed to capital punishment will have a hard time finding any sympathy for bin Laden's soul. Obama could have easily said that bin Laden deserved "ultimate justice" for his crimes, or some other suitable euphemism for execution, and he would have been praised as a "new" kind of Democrat, tough on terrorism. But instead he went out of his way to take the liberal position, even for the worst of America's enemies.
Since securing the nomination, Obama has been trying to tack back to the center, walking back pledges to meet personally and unconditionally with the leaders of Iran, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela. But there's nothing new about that strategy either. Presidential candidates since time immemorial have campaigned to the fringes in the primary and to the center in the general election. What is new about Obama, however, is the length to which he has gone to convince voters that his greasy fast food served on fine china is really nouveau cuisine. It's not. If Obama doesn't start to come up with some genuinely new positions and fresh ideas, he will lose in November, and become just another bitter liberal former nominee.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Ignore the Court
Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling in the consolidated cases of Boumediene v. Bush and Al-Odah v. United States for the first time grants foreign-born enemy combatants of the United States, captured on the battlefield in the process of planning or participating in attacks against U.S. targets, the right to challenge the circumstances of their detention in federal court. It is difficult to overestimate the impact that this ruling will have on the prosecution of the war on terror and, indeed, all future armed conflicts. The specter of American troops Mirandizing enemy combatants on the battlefield, or being called back from the front to testify in civilian court about the manner that a prisoner was captured, and the practical impossibility each of those outcomes would present to the U.S. military, should trouble every American who is concerned about the nation’s safety.
President Bush, reacting almost immediately to the Court’s decision, said that his Administration, “would abide,” with the ruling, adding, “That doesn’t mean I have to agree with it.” He spoke too soon, and did not go far enough. For the reasons cited above, and others, he should ignore this decision of the Court, and continue to apply the Military Commissions Act of 2006 as duly passed into law by Congress.
The unpleasant fact overlooked by Justice Anthony Kennedy and the four justices who signed on to his majority opinion, is that in ruling the military tribunals set up by the Military Commissions Act to be unconstitutional, the Court itself committed an unconstitutional act. Congress, acting under its Article III power to regulate the judicial branch, stripped the Supreme Court of the jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions from detainees in the custody of the United States when it passed and the president signed the Military Commissions Act. The act specifically states:
The Detainee Treatment Act vests the authority to hear habeas petitions in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, not the Supreme Court. The very act of taking the cases constitutes a usurpation of Congress’s Constitutional powers, as well as a violation of U.S. law, by the Supreme Court. The ruling itself, of course, is a gross attempt to regulate the conduct of the Executive Branch in wartime by the Judiciary and has no basis in the Constitution.
Not since the Civil War has a president defied a ruling of the Supreme Court, when President Abraham Lincoln ignored a ruling that his suspension of the writ of habeas corpus was unconstitutional. Lincoln continued to hold persons deemed to be enemies of the Union. Like the Supreme Court, the Executive and Legislative Branches of government have a responsibility to interpret the Constitution. Lincoln, exercising his interpretation both of the needs of the war effort and the law, concluded that preserving the Union necessitated the temporary suspension of the writ. President Bush can and should make the same determination.
Should the president make such a decision, he would not be going nearly as far as Lincoln did. The president would be refusing to apply habeas rights to foreign-born enemy combatants, whereas Lincoln jailed American citizens. The president would be on firm legal ground in making this determination. He has inherent Article II powers to direct the military as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and he would be upholding a duly passed law against a rogue Court overstepping its authority. Furthermore, since Congress expressly authorized the D.C. Circuit to rule on the status of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and that court ruled that the tribunals were indeed legal, President Bush can argue that he is upholding the decision of the highest court authorized to rule on the matter.
Americans understand that the proper role of the judiciary is to interpret the laws, not make them. They also understand that in this war on terrorism, every effort must be taken to prevent those who would do America harm from realizing their plans. The president has been handed an opportunity with this wrongheaded and unconstitutional decision of the Supreme Court to act on both principles. The Administration can strike a blow against terrorists and a rogue federal judiciary by simply refusing to submit to the will of nine justices in black robes.
President Bush, reacting almost immediately to the Court’s decision, said that his Administration, “would abide,” with the ruling, adding, “That doesn’t mean I have to agree with it.” He spoke too soon, and did not go far enough. For the reasons cited above, and others, he should ignore this decision of the Court, and continue to apply the Military Commissions Act of 2006 as duly passed into law by Congress.
The unpleasant fact overlooked by Justice Anthony Kennedy and the four justices who signed on to his majority opinion, is that in ruling the military tribunals set up by the Military Commissions Act to be unconstitutional, the Court itself committed an unconstitutional act. Congress, acting under its Article III power to regulate the judicial branch, stripped the Supreme Court of the jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions from detainees in the custody of the United States when it passed and the president signed the Military Commissions Act. The act specifically states:
No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination. (2) Except as provided in paragraphs (2) and (3) of section 1005(e) of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005.
The Detainee Treatment Act vests the authority to hear habeas petitions in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, not the Supreme Court. The very act of taking the cases constitutes a usurpation of Congress’s Constitutional powers, as well as a violation of U.S. law, by the Supreme Court. The ruling itself, of course, is a gross attempt to regulate the conduct of the Executive Branch in wartime by the Judiciary and has no basis in the Constitution.
Not since the Civil War has a president defied a ruling of the Supreme Court, when President Abraham Lincoln ignored a ruling that his suspension of the writ of habeas corpus was unconstitutional. Lincoln continued to hold persons deemed to be enemies of the Union. Like the Supreme Court, the Executive and Legislative Branches of government have a responsibility to interpret the Constitution. Lincoln, exercising his interpretation both of the needs of the war effort and the law, concluded that preserving the Union necessitated the temporary suspension of the writ. President Bush can and should make the same determination.
Should the president make such a decision, he would not be going nearly as far as Lincoln did. The president would be refusing to apply habeas rights to foreign-born enemy combatants, whereas Lincoln jailed American citizens. The president would be on firm legal ground in making this determination. He has inherent Article II powers to direct the military as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and he would be upholding a duly passed law against a rogue Court overstepping its authority. Furthermore, since Congress expressly authorized the D.C. Circuit to rule on the status of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and that court ruled that the tribunals were indeed legal, President Bush can argue that he is upholding the decision of the highest court authorized to rule on the matter.
Americans understand that the proper role of the judiciary is to interpret the laws, not make them. They also understand that in this war on terrorism, every effort must be taken to prevent those who would do America harm from realizing their plans. The president has been handed an opportunity with this wrongheaded and unconstitutional decision of the Supreme Court to act on both principles. The Administration can strike a blow against terrorists and a rogue federal judiciary by simply refusing to submit to the will of nine justices in black robes.
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