Nice little report here from Fox about the growing discontent on the left about the Obama Administration's failure to provide the prisoners at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan with the kind of fundamental constitutional protections they (the left) fought so hard for at Guantanamo (to the detriment of both our ability to wage the war on Islamic extremism AND our system of criminal justice--a left-wing twofer of breathtaking scope).
The New York Times has its thong in a wad about Bagram as "the next Guantanamo" and the President's exaggerated claims of executive authority. Sound familiar? Yep. Same stuff they said about GWB---and by the way, Obama was one of the leading critics of GWB's claims of executive and Commander in Chief authority. Nice to see the NYT being consistent on the issue, just as it is nice to see the Obama Administration assert the claim. Candidate Obama was scoring cheap, political points. President Obama is realizing the realities and pressures of governing and leading.
Yes, these commentaries are becoming more common. It is not unusual to hear the new President referred to as "Barrack W Obama" by DOD pundits. Its as if he was shown the playbook and realized that there are bad guys out there. Bottom line is that on the "terrorism" front, only semantics have changed, not the execution of the war or even the time line. Today's release of interrogation memos proves again that we are willing to score quick points in the name of promises to the base at the cost of the playbook that we will continue to refer to for the foreseeable future.
ReplyDelete