Obama getting a bad rap on Gitmo comments? Update: McCain rips Obama’s “September 10th” mindset

posted at 1:34 pm on June 17, 2008 by Allahpundit
Share on Facebook | printer-friendly

Kind of, yeah. Team McCain’s outraged over what Obama said yesterday about fighting terrorism within constitutional bounds. Quote:

“Barack Obama’s belief that we should treat terrorists as nothing more than common criminals demonstrates a stunning and alarming misunderstanding of the threat we face from radical Islamic extremism. Obama holds up the prosecution of the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 as a model for his administration, when in fact this failed approach of treating terrorism simply as a matter of law enforcement rather than a clear and present danger to the United States contributed to the tragedy of September 11th. This is change that will take us back to the failed policies of the past and every American should find this mindset troubling.”

Andy McCarthy piles on:

When an elitist lawyer like Obama claims the criminal-justice system works against terrorists, he means it satisfies his top concern: due process. And on that score, he’s quite right: We’ve shown we can conduct trials that are fair to the terrorists. After all, we give them lawyers paid for by the taxpayers whom they are trying to kill, mounds of our intelligence in discovery, and years upon years of pretrial proceedings, trials, appeals, and habeas corpus…

A successful counterterrorism strategy makes criminal prosecution a subordinate part of a much broader governmental response. Most of what is needed never happens in a courtroom. It happens in military operations against terrorist strongholds; intelligence operations in which jihadists get assassinated — without trial; intelligence collections in which we cozy up to despicable informants since only they can tell us what we need to know; and aggressive treasury actions to trace terror funds.

Good points all, especially the part about prosecution being one weapon in a larger arsenal. Only problem: I’m not sure Obama disagrees. This is the guy, remember, who wants a troop build-up in Afghanistan, and who (in)famously said, “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.” Wolf Blitzer actually put the question to him point-blank at one of the debates last summer about what he’d do if Osama suddenly appeared in a Predator’s crosshairs. Compare and contrast his answer with Kucinich’s.

As I read his comments to ABC, what he’s saying is if we capture guys instead of kill them then they’re owed basically the same constitutional protections as criminals — a novel and worrisome legal position, as Mark Levin tries to explain to George Will, but not proof that due process is Obama’s tippy top concern. If it was, he’d have agreed with Kucinich in the clip, not advocated taking anyone out.

What does this mean, though? “[W]e have destroyed our credibility when it comes to rule of law all around the world [by not putting the detainees on trial], and given a huge boost to terrorist recruitment in countries that say, ‘Look, this is how the United States treats Muslims.’” Is he so naive as to seriously believe wacko jihadis draw some huge distinction between the legitimacy of Gitmo and the legitimacy of district court trials? Exit quotation from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed:

“I cannot accept any attorney who is not governed by sharia [Islamic] law. I will represent myself. I will not be represented by anybody even if he is a Muslim, because he will be sworn to your American Constitution. I consider all the U.S. Constitution and laws evil. They are allowing for same-sexual marriages and many things that are very bad … Do you understand what I said?”

Update: Maverick knows red meat when he tastes it.

Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s foreign policy adviser, said Obama represents “the perfect manifestation of a Sept. 10 mindset.”

“If a law enforcement approach were accurate, then you wouldn’t have had Sept. 11,” Kori Schake, a McCain policy adviser, said…

Those on the McCain call said that the approach taken in 1993 is “precisely what failed,” and if the evidence used in targeting those responsible had not been under grand jury seal then “that would have given a good chance to have prevented 9-11.”…

In a reference sure to further rankle the Obama campaign, Scheunemann pointed to the famous “3 a.m. phone call” ad used by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) during the Democratic nomination battle as a way of painting Obama as naïve on national security.

“I guess his response would be to call the lawyers and the Justice Department,” Scheunemann said.

Blowback

You must be logged in to post a comment.