Archive

Posts Tagged ‘Guantanamo’
November 19th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Obama Suddenly Discovers Being President Is “Hard”
Posted by Print

Gee, if only poor Barack Obama could have known that actually being President would prove this difficult when he rattled off easy promise after promise as a candidate.  Back then, it was quite fun to throw rhetorical rocks and thunder commitments from behind his teleprompter with his trademark raised chin.  But he wants us to know that the reality of living in the White House is just so…  hard.

The particular occasion for Obama’s lamentation was his admission that he won’t be able to fulfill his promise of closing Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention center by January 2010 after all.  In an interview with Fox News’s Major Garrett (which is iteself another monumental capitulation to hard reality), Obama said that he is “not disappointed” that he can’t make good on his written closure order, because doing so is “just technically hard.”

Well, gosh, President Obama.  Who knew that closing Guantanamo, balancing the budget, winning the war in Afghanistan, persuading Iran and North Korea to forego their nuclear ambitions and achieving Middle East peace would be so tough?  It all looked so easy when someone else was in charge.

Tags: ,
November 14th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Moral Confusion on the Potomac
Posted by Print

In the aftermath of the Obama Justice Department’s (and, let’s be clear, the President’s) decision to bring a group of terrorist figures — including professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — to trial in American courtrooms, liberals in Congress are bending over backwards to tout the administration’s moral superiority.

What’s notable about their talking points is how thin the gruel they’re serving up is.  Consider this gem from Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Michigan):

The argument by some that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed should be treated as a warrior and not as a common criminal misses the point. He wants us to treat him as a warrior. But he should, and will, be treated as the common terrorist criminal that he is.

As Charles Krauthammer noted on last night’s “Special Report,” the phrase “terrorist criminal” is, in and of itself, an oxymoron. But there’s also a bit of a stolen base in Levin’s argument.  Because KSM wants to be treated as a warrior, he shouldn’t be? How about a justice system that operates according to the facts rather than the feelings of those involved? Sure, KSM might want the glories of martyrdom — give it to him.  For every died in the wool jihadi who bids him well as he’s ferried across the River Styx to the land of subjugated virgins, they’ll be another potential Al-Qaeda recruit who learns that terrorism is a short road that ends in the embrace of an American noose.

Also weighing in was Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont):

By trying them in our federal courts, we demonstrate to the world that the most powerful nation on earth also trusts its judicial system — a system respected around the world.

That Leahy seems to think that whether or not America has any faith in the judicial process hinges on whether or not we empty out the population of Guantanamo Bay into New York City courtrooms doesn’t speak well of his standing as judiciary chairman.  But are the military tribunals that these men would have otherwise faced not part of our judicial system? Or does he not remember being on the losing end of the vote on the Military Commissions Act of 2006?

Politics is supposed to stop at the water’s edge. Unfortunately, these days that water is in the Potomac River.