Monday, May 04, 2009

Thoughts from Oceania   [Victor Davis Hanson]

With the new administration's reconsideration of military tribunals in Guantánamo, the coverage of Obama's security measures is right out of Orwell's Ministry of Information. 

Beneath the hero worship, we can detect, however, that the shelf life of the campaign-mode rhetoric of "Bush did it" is nearing an end — and the Obama administration is starting to bump up against the same old bad/worse choice scenarios on some matters of security that Bush encountered, as the new administration quietly learns there were never easy decisions.

Take Guantánamo itself. It’s still open right now — because no country, for all the moral rhetoric, wants back their own terrorists; because releasing them on welfare in the U.S. is political suicide; because no one really wants to try them in federal courts; because for all the talk of flushed Korans, the inmates are treated well and the detention is transparent; and because Team Obama is not quite sure what to do with future high-value terrorists they may catch abroad. (e.g., Never take prisoners on the field of battle? Use rendition to ship them somewhere? Turn them over to the Afghans? Military tribunals? Jail them — where and for how long?)

I opposed waterboarding, but the Obama administration, in its showboating denunciations of past practices, will soon encounter further dilemmas as it broadcasts that the largely unchanged war on terror is now a more enlightened criminal-justice matter. Euphemism and creating new names for existing policies alone won’t cut it.

At some point, Obama must answer why waterboarding mass-murderers and beheaders like Khalid Sheik Mohammed is wrong, while executing by missile attack (no writs, habeas corpus, Miranda rights, etc.) suspected terrorists and anyone caught in their general vicinity in Waziristan — or pirates negotiating extortion — is legitimate. (Remember, there is no longer a "war on terrorism," so in these "overseas contingency operations" we are now judge, jury, and executioner — or are we resurrecting the Phoenix program for the Hindu Kush?)

For now, Obama keeps wiretaps, email intercepts (at an increased rate), renditions, military tribunals, combat troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and missile strikes in Pakistan through three premises:

1. post-campaign, he suddenly as Commander-in-Chief believes that these measures are apparently vital in preventing another 9/11;
2. new terminology (no more "enemy combatants," "terrorists," or "war on terror"), and Obama's hope and change, "I'm not Bush" rhetoric allow him to copy Bush doctrine with impunity;
3. the hard-Left base and once foaming media/now Obama's Ministry of Information have made a calculated decision that it’s better to enjoy power and the advancement of Obama's liberal agenda than to turn hysterical and demonize Obama — Bush-like — as an agent of violence abroad, and a Constitution-shredder at home.

So for now we have mostly Bush’s policies, but without Fahrenheit 9/11, Checkpoint, Code Pink, Moveon.org hysterics, Soros-funded vitriol, and the Harry Reid/Nancy Pelosi daily theatrics, since it was always about power in the first place, never principle.

Still, beware: Hypocrisy invites nemesis — every time.

05/04 12:01 PMShare