Michael Mukasey, the last Attorney General to serve under George W. Bush, has an essential essay in The Wall Street Journal today. It’s called “Civilian Courts Are No Place to Try Terrorists,” and its caption explains something very important that I hope Eric Holder, the current Attorney General, will take on board as he contemplates cleansing Guantanamo Bay of its prisoners and turning its inmates over to the more tender mercies of the U.S. Justice system. “We tried the first World Trade Center bombers in civilian courts,” the caption begins. “In return we got 9/11 and the murder of nearly 3,000 innocents.”
That is a fact that the transnational, multicultural progressives who are now running America really need to understand. I know that the default mode in Washington now is to apologize for America, to believe that accommodation and capitulation are the new, improved fashion in patriotism. But please tell me that they also understand that the world is a dangerous place, that there are many people — and many regimes — that wish us ill, that the threat of Islamism has not dissipated in the wake of 9/11 but has merely gone underground where it is plotting, planning, bidding its time. In New York, the FBI foiled a major plot just a few weeks ago. In London, hundreds of Muslims have taken to the streets, braying for the head of visiting Dutch politician and Geert Wilders — the “dog” Geert Wilders as one protester denominated him in this video, which should have been aired on every major outlet, but has not been.
My greatest fear about the Obama administration at the moment is that its principals do not understand evil. They are, at bottom, followers of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, even if they’ve never read a word of that misguided sage. They believe that man everywhere was born good and does bad things because of a faulty upbringing, poverty, or a lack of the right sort of community organization in his life.
It’s a child’s, or, rather, a spoiled adolescent’s view of the world. Mr. Mukasey is an adult:
critics of Guantanamo seem to believe that if we put our vaunted civilian justice system on display in these cases, then we will reap benefits in the coin of world opinion, and perhaps even in that part of the world that wishes us ill. Of course, we did just that after the first World Trade Center bombing, after the plot to blow up airliners over the Pacific, and after the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
In return, we got the 9/11 attacks and the murder of nearly 3,000 innocents. True, this won us a great deal of goodwill abroad-people around the globe lined up for blocks outside our embassies to sign the condolence books. That is the kind of goodwill we can do without.
Amen to that.
“We tried the first World Trade Center bombers in civilian courts. In return we got 9/11 and the murder of nearly 3,000 innocents.”
This nicely excuses W from responsibility. What was in that Aug. ’01 memo the CIA sent to Bush? Oh, yes: “Have a nice day clearing brush.”
“My greatest fear about the Obama administration at the moment is that its principals do not understand evil.”
Don’t worry, Roger, they understand evil – not only the murderous evil of al qaeda, but the hate spewed by the rigt:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/10/18/secret_service_under_strain_as_leaders_face_more_threats/
Oops! Forgot the “h” in right, right?
This article says, “My greatest fear about the Obama administration at the moment is that its principals do not understand evil.”
My greatest fear is that its principals are evil. Whether this condition came about through ignorance of evil or not is relatively unimportant.
The Nobel Committee has tied Obama’s hands with the medal ribbon.
Three quick comments:
(1) The argument for trying suspected terrorists in civilian courts is that doing so is the only course of action consistent with law and justice, not that doing so would somehow prevent future attacks. That Mukasey doesn’t understand this is quite revealing.
(2) Kimball’s sneering claim that liberals “believe that man everywhere was born good and does bad things because of a faulty upbringing, poverty, or a lack of the right sort of community organization in his life” is false. President Obama, to mention only one especially prominent liberal, believes no such thing.
(3) I find Kimball’s talk of “adults” in politics hard to take. This coming from a man who, while claiming to cherish the humanistic ideals of truth and reason, regularly praises the likes of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck.
They are, at bottom, followers of a decayed and mediated version of Rousseau. Rousseau, the same man who taught that freedom under law is something one must earn and for which one must strive, that without moral liberty, a man is something even less than a beast. Freedom, what? If *only* the latter day followers would read even a word of Rousseau!
After we survive the Obama Disaster we may want to declare captured jihadis to be prisoners of war, who have no rights in court and can be held until the war is over. As long as islam exists there will be jihad, so it’s life without parole.