Freedom Line Blog

Eric Holder may be unwilling to identify radical Islam as a driving force behind the recent surge in terror threats to the United States, but American special forces aren’t so hesitant.  The Economist reports that the American military is engaging in joint operations in the west African countries of Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, and Senegal to combat the growing presence of “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb” (AQIM).

Tuned-in Americans understand that in places like Somalia, radical Islam has found a fertile breeding ground for creating converts out of oppressed, deprived young men and women disgruntled with their lot in life.  It is logical that a place so close to the Middle East, only a short boat ride from Yemen, and so lacking in governance is a training ground for terrorists.

But American intelligence has been keeping an eye on the Sahel for some time.  The Sahel is a stretch of grassland that runs just south of the Saharan Desert, through the aforementioned west African countries.  It is an area subject to extreme drought and is only sparsely populated by tribal people.  Away from the attention of governing authorities, terrorist organizations from countries like Algeria have been able to set up training camps and are attempting to unite a coalition of jihadist organizations that have become increasingly problematic in the region.

Our support goes out to the American servicemen charged with the difficult task of training local forces to combat this growing threat to the security of free people.

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey pens a chilling recall of some terrorist history in today’s Wall Street Journal.

An excerpt:

In November 1990, Meir Kahane, a right-wing Israeli politician, was assassinated after delivering a speech at a Manhattan hotel by El-Sayid Nosair, quickly pigeonholed as a lone misfit whose failures at work had driven him over the edge.  The material seized from his home lay largely unexamined in boxes until a truck bomb was detonated under the World Trade Center in 1993, when the perpetrators of that act announced that freeing Nosair from prison was one of their demands.

“Authorities then examined the neglected boxes and found jihadist literature urging the attacks on Western civilization through a terror campaign that would include toppling large buildings that were centers of finance and tourism.  An amateur video of Kahane’s speech the night he was assassinated revealed that one of the 1993 bombers, Mohammed Salameh, was present in the hall when Nosair committed his act, and the ensuing investigation disclosed that Nosair was supposed to have made his escape with the help of another, Mahmoud Abouhalima, who was waiting outside at the wheel of a cab….”

The entire piece is yet another reminder, as if another were needed, that the organized, concentrated Islamic jihadist threat against this country cannot be wished away or denied, nor will it fade away.  The political lives of our leaders are measured in years.  Jihadists measure their cause in centuries.

In an interview with CFIF, Brigitte Gabriel shares her remarkable story told in her book, Because They Hate:  A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America.  Ms. Gabriel also discusses ACT! for America, a non-profit issues advocacy organization she founded to educate millions of uninformed citizens about the threat of radical Islam to world peace and U.S. national security. 

Listen to the interview here.

Here’s a little secret about those of us who tend to the Freedom Line garden (though it applies equally to all our brethren in the conservative blogosphere): we’re hopeless nerds. Our reader’s digests of political and policy developments come from hours of reading, writing, and thinking about the great issues of the day. Government is for us what fantasy football is to a much broader swath of America.

When you spend that much time consuming news, however, the callouses develop quickly. It’s hard to be impressed. To break through to the sense of genuine wonder that brought us into this field usually requires either singularly great writing or a singularly great man.

I mention all this to give a full-throated endorsement to Mark Bowden’s article “The Professor of War,” a profile of General David Petraeus in the May issue of Vanity Fair (a publication whose political coverage — with some exceptions for Christopher Hitchens — is usually uneven at best). This is a piece so exceptional — and an individual so compelling — that one can only hope Bowden someday gets drafted to be Petraeus’s official biographer.

This piece is far too rich to justify through excerpt, so here’s one brief paragraph that ably represents the writing in microcosm:

Congress underestimated David Petraeus. He is a man of such distinction that in the army legends have formed about his rise. Beyond his four-star rank, he possesses a stature so matchless it deserves its own adjective—call it “Petraean,” perhaps. It is an adjective that would be mostly complimentary, but not entirely so—there can be a hard edge to the man, a certain lack of empathy, and there is something vaguely unseemly in his obvious ambition. But when Petraeus tests himself, he usually wins. When he assumed command in Iraq, he had accepted a challenge few thought even he could meet, turning around the longest and most mismanaged war in American history. But Iraq is only part of the story. Through his writing and teaching, Petraeus was at the same time redefining how the nation will fight in the 21st century. And he was doing something more difficult still: leading a cultural and doctrinal revolution inside one of the most hidebound institutions in the world, the United States Army. Whatever the fate of Iraq and Afghanistan, this transformation is a Petraean legacy that will be felt for years to come.

My favorite piece of journalism so far in 2010. Read the whole thing here.

Another week, and now there are two articles dissecting Eric Holder’s tumultuous ride as United States Attorney General.  In one, Michael Gerson lists five consequential mistakes, any one of which would be enough to spur the Democratic blogosphere into a feeding frenzy had Alberto Gonzalez been the culprit.  Among his transgressions are incoherently keeping some Bush era terrorism policies while changing others.  The effect is creating a man without a constituency.  Then, there are the quickly reversed decisions to try certain terrorists in civilian court, close down the prison facility at Guantanamo Bay, and give Miranda warnings to the undie-bomber.

Almost forgot; Holder’s planned indictments of John Yoo and Jay Bybee fizzled after being dismissed by the Justice Department’s top career attorney.

Not to be outdone, Massimo Calabresi attempts to explain away any threat to Holder’s job security as the product of partisan Republicans.  However, he doesn’t give one example of a major Holder decision carrying the day.

The overriding prominence of Obamacare is certainly benefiting Holder because it is shielding him from a much-deserved performance review.   Sacking him now would only add to the perception that the Obama Cabinet is staffed by people who couldn’t manage themselves out of a paper bag.

Unlike the specter of Kathleen Sebelius, Eric Holder has made his presence felt in this administration.  If President Obama ever gets a string of wins, don’t be surprised to see Holder announcing his intention to return to the private sector.

John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, publicly stepped in the proverbial “it” once again this weekend. 

Fresh off a round of blockbuster appearances in which he explained the remarkable intelligence benefits of the 50-Minute Undie Bomber interrogation, he made a speech at NYU.  In answer to a question, he sought to dismiss concerns about the 20 percent recidivism rate for released terrorists, saying, “You know, the American penal system, the recidivism rate is up to something about 50 percent or so, as far as return to crime.  Twenty percent isn’t that bad.”

We understand from The New York Times that Attorney General Eric Holder is getting some White House help with “messaging,” because of Holder’s inability to differentiate terrorists from common  domestic criminals.  Regarding Mr. Brennan, it’s just too bad this is an administration that doesn’t support “no child left behind.”

Jon Stewart has been getting laughs at the expense of conservatives (many justifiably), then booking conservative straw men that he could easily knock down for years. Yet Stewart met his match on Monday’s edition of The Daily Show, when he interviewed former Bush Administration DOJ official John Yoo (author of the infamous “torture memos”).

If Stewart hadn’t been the one ginned up for a fight, it would’ve been appropriate to invoke the mercy rule. But it was hard to feel sorry for the smug, self-righteous (Stewart’s least appealing style) host when Yoo gently and subtly exposed his complete lack of even a basic understanding of the issues at play.

On the following night’s show, Stewart even had to cop to how badly he got owned.  See the full interview here, here and here.

In light of our recent video on air travel, reason.tv opines as well.

In response to the attempted terrorist attack aboard a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas Day, President Obama is set to release a new wave of airport security measures.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has responded somewhat by giving pat-downs to travelers from Yemen, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and 11 other countries that are havens for terrorist activity.

Of course, the Christmas bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmatallab, was already in a U.S. database of 550,000 suspected terrorists, but that did not subject him to additional scrutiny under current law.  No word yet on whether the President’s new proposals will change this practice.

Read more of CFIF on Homeland Security and Terrorism.

Remember a year ago, when the biggest rationale for Republican supporters of Barack Obama was his “first-class temperament?” Well, as the Obama Administration prepares to enter its second year in the wake of a near-miss terrorist attack, there’s signs that “No Drama Obama” can’t even muster a pulse for his job’s highest responsibility: protecting the American people.

From a story in today’s Politico:

“In general, I think that the president’s inclinations as a leader work fairly well for this issue — no-drama Obama,” [Cato Institute defense and homeland security fellow Benjamin] Friedman said. “In some ways Al Qaeda is trying to be relevant and trying to be politically relevant, and in some sense they achieved that. He’s denying them that relevance by acting like it’s not the No. 1 thing on his agenda. We credit them with more power and credibility than they have.”

Obama heading to the golf course, Friedman said, “signals that it’s not a crisis, and he’s the president and he has a lot of things to do and this is just one of them.”

Friedman and his fellow-travelers on the left and the libertarian right are engaging in a quixotic bit of terrorism-as-child-rearing fantasy.  Are we really to believe that the highest maxim of combatting terrorism is “see no evil?” If the targeted Northwest Airlines flight had gone down as planned, would this low-key approach from the President be equally effective in discouraging Al Qaeda? And how has this administration’s orgy of euphemisms (you may remember such hits as “man-caused disasters”) done so far in deterring potential terrorists?

It’s naive to believe there’s no such thing as evil in the world. The only thing more naive may be believing that you can make it go away by ignoring it.

Sometimes I think the best way for conservatives to dominate public opinion would be to just get out of the way and let liberals do all the talking.

A good example of this principle can be found in the new column by the Miami Herald’s Leonard Pitts. In a defense of Attorney General Holder’s decision to bring Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other Al Qaeda terrorists to trial in civilian courts, Pitts claims that the primary motivation of those opposed to the move is a visceral need for vengeance:

Pitts’ response:

But you have to wonder: Are our emotional needs the most important consideration here?

It’s worth remembering that even the architects of the greatest barbarism in history had their day in court. After burning away 11 million lives, the leaders of the Nazi regime found themselves facing not summary execution, but a trial before a military tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany.

As prosecutor Robert Jackson put it: “That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that power has ever paid to reason.”

One little problem. The enlightened example cited by Mr. Pitts was a military tribunal — exactly what KSM and company would have had if the Attorney General hadn’t booked their Manhattan vacation.  Never mind that Nuremberg only took place after World War II had ended …