The Wall Street Journal is mighty pleased with Obama:
Obama's Military Tribunals
Another Friday, another bow to Bush's antiterror legacy.
President Obama's endorsements of Bush-Cheney antiterror policies are by now routine: for example, opposing the release of prisoner abuse photographs and support for indefinite detention for some detainees, and that's just this week. More remarkable is White House creativity in portraying these U-turns as epic change. Witness yesterday's announcement endorsing military commissions.
White House officials insist that their tribunals will be kinder and gentler, stressing additional due-process safeguards for terrorists on trial for war crimes. But the debate that has convulsed the political system since 9/11 isn't about procedural nuances. It has been over core principles, with Democrats decrying a "shadow justice system" and claiming that "Our Constitution and our Uniform Code of Military Justice provide a framework for dealing with the terrorists."
The latter quote is from a speech by Senator Obama in 2007 denouncing "a legal framework that does not work." He also referred to the civilian criminal justice system and courts martial that Democrats then claimed, and many still claim, are the right venues for antiterror prosecutions. After the Supreme Court's Boumediene decision gave terrorists habeas rights, Mr. Obama again laid into the Bush Administration's "legal black hole" and "dangerously flawed legal approach," which "undermines the very values we are fighting to defend."
....Mr. Obama deserves credit for accepting that the civilian courts are largely unsuited for the realities of the war on terror. He has now decided to preserve a tribunal process that will be identical in every material way to the one favored by Dick Cheney -- and which, contrary to the narrative that Democrats promulgated for years, will be the fairest and most open war-crimes trials in U.S. history. Meanwhile, friends should keep certain newspaper editors away from sharp objects. Their champion has repudiated them once again.
And why shouldn't the WSJ be pleased? Glenn Greenwald, who's been all over this for months now, offered this short list of what Obama has done just this week:
This is what happened this week alone in the realm of Obama's approach to "national security" and civil liberties:
Monday - Obama administration's letter to Britian threatening to cut off intelligence-sharing if British courts reveal the details of how we tortured British resident Binyam Mohamed;
Tuesday - Promoted to military commander in Afghanistan Gen. Stanley McChyrstal, who was deeply involved in some of the worst abuses of the Bush era;
Wednesday - Announced he was reversing himself and would try to conceal photographic evidence showing widespread detainee abuse -- despite the rulings from two separate courts (four federal judges unanimously) that the law compels their disclosure;
Friday - Unveiled his plan to preserve a modified system of military commissions for trying Guantanamo detainees, rather than using our extant-judicial processes for doing so.
By Tom Parker, Policy Director, (Counter) Terrorism and Human Rights
And the hits just keep coming. Despite its pledge to reintroduce greater transparency to government the Obama administration reversed itself again this week, announcing that it would now seek to block the release of detainee abuse photographs sought by the ACLU.
Then yesterday the CIA announced, in a fine example of Orwellian double-speak, that it would not release memos cited by former Vice-President Dick Cheney because they are subject to a Freedom of Information Act suit being pursued by Amnesty International USA, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU.
I'm not sure how many people have really grasped the full absurdity of that particular turn of events. The Obama Administration has come up with a piece of double-think that could only have been inspired by Mr. Cheney himself, then turned around and used it against him, with only a wee bit of collateral damage on the entire fabric of 2500+ years of law and logic.
AI continues:
Amnesty does not often find itself on the same side of an argument as the former Vice President but on this occasion we welcome his late conversion to the merits of transparency in government.
And finally, the President confirmed today that his administration will reintroduce Military Commissions to try terrorism cases that cannot be successfully pursued in a federal court. Of course, he put it slightly differently but that is what the decision amounts to. Reverse engineering courts to work around mistakes and abuses that have been committed in the past is not a sound basis for any system of justice.
"I am agnostic in terms of the models that solve these problems," he said. "If the only way to solve a problem is structural, institutional change, then I will be for structural, institutional change. If I think we can achieve those same goals within the existing institutions, then I am going to try to do that, because I think it's going to be easier to do and less disruptive and less costly and less painful."
Who knew that Obama's aversion to structural change meant a strong preference for locking in pernicious Bush/Cheney policies which have radically altered American law and governance, rather than restoring America's values, ideals and best behavior?
Well, we know now.
And just to spell things out a bit more, take another look at what the WSJ said in its concluding remarks:
Mr. Obama deserves credit for accepting that the civilian courts are largely unsuited for the realities of the war on terror. He has now decided to preserve a tribunal process that will be identical in every material way to the one favored by Dick Cheney -- and which, contrary to the narrative that Democrats promulgated for years, will be the fairest and most open war-crimes trials in U.S. history.
Except, of course, we're not at war. And no one who really knows their stuff thinks we should be. Terrorists are criminals, not warriors, and military means are totally inappropriate for dealing with them. For all the outward stylistic embellishments, including the dropping of BushCo's "War on Terror" brand, the core logic Obama's policy is no different from Bush/Cheney's, and it's that logic and that logic alone that gives the Wall Street Journal the foundation for its argument that finally Obama has come to his senses.
Osama bin Laden could not possibly be more pleased. America's self-destruction continues apace. He can continue to sit back and gloat, just as he has for the past 7 1/2 years.
