Wretchard, I guess what you’re saying here is that Obama has no right to risk the lives of citizens unless he gets their permission. But isn’t that part of what Americans elected Obama to do? To make these kinds of hard decisions on their behalf? Well, he HAS made his decision. And it was the WRONG one! I’m amazed that you don’t see it that way.

They didn’t give him a blank check. The voters elected Obama because they believed he could deliver on a set of promises. One of them was to make them safer. And his line — until now — has been that safety could be achieved by reaching out, engaging, being the nice guy. That way people wouldn’t hate them any more. But as even he now admits, things aren’t that simple. Like his checks from the government, it turns out that there’s a price. And so now’s the time to say what exactly is the price? How much safety are we trading off for how much coercion? Is it a lot of safety? A lot of coercion?

I think these are good questions to ask because a society always draws the line based on a balance of interests and values. Maybe Bush drew the line in the wrong place; may he drew it in the right place. But that’s a conversation the public ought to have. If you think back to the Geneva Conventions, its framers wrestled with the same questions and drew the line where they thought it should be. They were no wiser than we, but had the confidence to do it.