Bush Term 3 (Continued)

Here's a responsibly written WaPost editorial praising the Obama Administration for "gingerly" exploring ways of granting law enforcement authorities additional flexibility when dealing with suspected terrorism cases. By "tweaking" Miranda rights and the right to expeditious arraignment, the Post believes that basic Constitutional protections can be observed while also creating the time and space necessary to extract time sensitive intelligence.

Great. I'm happy that the Obama Administration is considering this, and I think there is a useful debate to be had.

But does ANYONE think that if this idea had arisen in the Bush Administration it would not have been EXCORIATED by the press as yet another incursion on civil liberties by an executive branch run wild? Where is the outrage? Won't this just be another one of those things that "angers" the Islamic world and contributes to terrorist "recruitment"? "See, those Americans will hold you now for 72 HOURS without going before a judge--is this not valid recourse to Jihad?"

Of course not. We won't see these things, as the Obama folks are talking sensibly about national security, unlike when they were running. GWB must be sitting in Dallas smiling when he reads stuff like this.

Terror Plot In NYC

News this weekend of yet another terror plot foiled due to operator error (see "Skivvy Bomber", "Shoe Bomber").

At some point, they'll find someone smart enough to be successful. That will be a sad and terrifying day.

Obama Administration's New Air Travel Screening--Feel Safer Yet?

Just after the Skivvy-Bomber attempted to deliver Detroit an unexpected Christmas present, the Obama Administration finally manned up and decided that national origin should be a factor in creating the conditions for additional screening of air passengers (and no, I did not say "the only factor"). If you hail from a country that seems prone to producing terrorists, well then by golly, you're gonna get a pat-down. Some called this profiling, I called it prudence.

Well, now the Obama Administration is turning away from this common sense measure, replacing it instead with a system that will "select passengers based on possible matches to intelligence information, including physical descriptions or a particular travel pattern".

Ah yes. Let's go back to just relying on our vaunted "intelligence" information. Ridiculous.

I've got an idea for the President--why not do BOTH?

The CIA and Al-Qaeda

Clearly the CIA has been all up in Al-Aaeda's grill for some time now, and the armed Predator UAV strikes are proving to be a grand success. But for some odd reason--call me superstitious--I'd prefer not to hear the Director of Central Intelligence crowing about it. Oh, and for those of you wondering, I'd feel the same way in a Republican Administration.

The Gitmo Bar (Cont.)

It's worthwhile to go back and read the comments in The Gitmo Bar post from yesterday. Anonymous (WM) makes some good points and makes them well.

The Gitmo Bar

All of you who were so quick to defend the honor of lawyers who might voluntarily take up the cause of unlawful combatants housed at Gitmo and elsewhere should read this. Perhaps their nobility and honor aren't quite so high as is thought.

Anti-Profiling Nonsense

Eugene Robinson is one of the most predictable summoners of my dyspepsia. In this article, he informs us that the case of "Jihad Jane" (white, little, female) proves the folly of profiling and raises the necessity of all of us having to take off our shoes.

Nonsense.

The overwhelming majority of terrorists we are targeting are male, young, and hail from predominately Islamic nations. Any effort designed to weight evaluation of such people higher than others is rational and efficient. Any system in which such people are not weighted more heavily is irrational and inefficient. The presence of a Jihad Jane does not change the numbers, the proportions or the efficiencies.

Robinson is inveighing against profiling because it makes certain people feel bad. This is insufficient grounds for discontinuing it.

Al Qaida Lawyers Now at Justice

Marc Thiessen has a devastating column in this morning's WaPost excoriating critics of the recent effort by Fox News and Liz Cheney to "out" the Justice Department Lawyers--political appointees of this President--who represented detainees at Gitmo and other vermin of Al-Qaida pedigree.

He's right--Americans do have a right to know who at Justice--seemingly in charge of helping to protect the country from terrorism--spent their carefree, pre-government lives providing for the defense of terrorists. His comparison of the legal community's silence (and complicity) during the witch hunts of former Bush lawyers is notable.

I don't begrudge the legal community the desire to provide defense to terrorists--it's sorta ingrained in the DNA of some lawyers to defend the lost causes (Ramsey Clark?). I do however, question the judgment of an administration that hires such people and then puts them in policy positions in a department central to the war on terror.

GWB Term III Continues....

Patriot Act re-authorized.

More Execrable Bunk From Justice

Firstly, good news here of the upcoming guilty plea of Najibullah Zazi on all counts of terrorism with which he was charged.

Yet the ongoing attempt by the Holder Justice Department to point to cases in which terrorists are successfully prosecuted/handled by the civilian court system simply defies logic. The underwear bomber was not a citizen or resident of the US. He had not passed through customs. Mirandizing him and offering the protections of our system was a dumb move and continuing to shroud it in legitimacy through the rear-view mirror of cases like the Zazi case is ridiculous.

Zazi was a legal resident of the US and had been since 1999. He was living and working in the US when his trail was picked up. That he was treated with in the civilian justice system makes a heck of a lot more sense than doing so with the Underwear Bomber, and continuing to compare these situations simply amplifies the charge of the Obama Administration's softness on terrorism and their inability to treat it as a national security threat.

Gotta Love The Jarheads

Great little look here at the front-line conditions in our ongoing offensive spearheaded by Uncle Sam's Misguided Children (USMC). I love the Marines. Great to read about folks who joined up to fight, not for healthcare for their babies.

Obama Names Envoy to Islamic Conference

The President has named a new US envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference as part of his ongoing "outreach" effort to the Islamic world. Ridiculous? Yes. Part of a flawed strategy? Yes. Most enraging of all? This appointment is the replacement for the first such envoy--appointed by George Bush.

The Underwear Bomber and the Shoe Bomber

I'm getting tired of reading Obama Administration officials state that Mirandizing the Underwear Bomber (I won't type his name because it is too long, but you know who I mean) was no problem, 'cause it's what the Bush Administration did with Richard Reid (The Shoe Bomber). This is ridiculous, and Dana Perino and Bill Burck have a nice rejoinder for it here.

Reid's attempted attack occurred a little more than 90 days after the terrible events of 9-11--the country, the Administration, the courts, the military--everyone was still largely groping their way forward in determining how to prosecute this war against Islamic extremism. In fact, there were NO military commissions empaneled to deal with such a situation--though there soon would be.

Any suggestion that 8 years later--after all we've learned and all we've done--a "Bush" team would have Mirandized the underwear bomber--enabling him to "lawyer up"--is just loony. The team in there now just reflexively looks at these events as law enforcement issues, not acts of war worthy of intelligence exploitation.


More on the arrest of the Shoe Bomber.

Anne Applebaum on the The Jihadi Elite

Anne Applebaum picks up on a theme we talked about on The Conservative Wahoo Live last week (archived here in the "On Demand" section)--the appeal of Jihadism to the elite of Islamic society. Notable in this column is the inclusion of Major Hasan Nidal in the pantheon of Islamofascist terrorists. Additionally, this paragraph got my attention:

"The case of Bayrak and her ilk also suggests the need for another kind of anti-terrorism strategy. Too often, we still consider public diplomacy to be a sort of public relations activity, the "promotion" of American values. Instead, we should think about it as an argument. The Bayraks and Balawis of this world are engaged in constant debates -- in Internet chat rooms, in the halls of publishing houses, in mosques. Are they hearing enough counterarguments? Are we helping the people who make the counterarguments? I suspect that they don't and I'm certain that we aren't -- nearly a decade after Sept. 11 -- and that has to change. Intellectuals may wear glasses and read books, but neither prevents them from throwing bombs -- or from strapping them inside their underwear. "

Bravo, Ms. Applebaum. Bravo. I'd like to see more commentators advocate taking Islamic Jihadism on--not attempting to accommodate it or apologize for Western Civilization. There is an argument to be won here, we just have to make it.

Details Emerge in Suicide Bombing Against CIA in Afghanistan

Details are beginning to emerge about the bomber and the bombing in Afghanistan last week. The shadowy world of CIA Clandestine Ops is revealed just a bit here, as the victims are identified to whatever extent the Agency will allow.

I have endless respect for the work of the CIA. When you wear a uniform, you are (mostly) protected by the Law of Armed Conflict (not that it helps that much against AQ). CIA officers in the field are NEVER covered by LOAC--they do their jobs well and under tremendous pressure.

There is a clear message in the story linked here, and that is the CIA's serious determination to take out UBL and his lieutenants. It may have made them a little sloppy in their security procedures, and the result was devastating.

Yet again though, the vermin responsible for this attack was not from among the downtrodden of the Islamic world. Quite the contrary. He was a doctor. Just like Zawahiri.

If you listen in to the first internet radio show (archived here) there is a great discussion with "Tim" about how the abiding narrative of conflict with Islam is bunk--that we're dealing with "poverty and oppression and lack of opportunity" is continually belied by the reality of educated, middle and upper middle class terrorists. He's a great source of information on the topic, and the discussion is insightful.

I Give You....

....the incomparable Mark Steyn.

A tour de force in the inanity of our approach to terrorism.

New Obama Airline Safety Measures Revealed

Groovy baby! Where are the sexy Stews?

H/T---Bill

Bush Approach a Terror Recruiting Tool?

Frequent Anonymous poster and all-around reliable Bush Basher JPH commented yesterday on a post that had been buried by subsequent stories. The post, Europe Sees Obama Vulnerable On Terrorism is here. Here's what JPH had to say--I repeat it because it is worth raising for group comment and because it reflects current Administration thinking on its approach to the War On Terr0r--whoops--War on Man Made Disasters:

"I will clearly be out of step with the contributors here, but let's go for it. I think GW Bush's policies were the best recruiting tool AQ EVER had.... playing down this rogue element is more likely to bleed them dry then all the guns and bullets in our kit. Moreover, we are more likely to successfully finance this approach than the previous method. JPH.

JPH has raised the recruiting tool issue before, and it is a reliable canard of the left. It sorta goes like this...Bush declared war on terror, this radicalized law-abiding citizens who under other circumstances would simply have gone about their business, and so it can be shown that Bush created terrorists. Quad erat demonstratum.

This view is of course, correct. There were X number of terrorists before 9-11, Bush's response created X + Y. I have no problem conceding this.

However, we must remember that 9-11 and USS COLE happened when there were "X" terrorists. Of course our response created more. That's what war does.

Rich Lowry of National Review has a nice take-down on this theory here. I've dealt with this (raised by JPH) before--the "declaring war on Japan created millions of enemies overnight" argument, one that JPH dismisses (ineffectually, I may add) but which seems to be widely supported here (natch).

But let's suspend disbelief for a second and assume that there was a set of policies that Bush could have followed that would NOT create more terrorists. But which would have made us safer than pre-9-11. What would those policies have looked like? What government approach would have been taken?

I imagine it would look much like....oh....maybe the Obama approach. Change the rhetoric. Go to Cairo and have a dialogue with the Islamic world. Close Gitmo. Try KSM et al in civilian court. Repudiate water-boarding and terror. Etc, etc, etc.

Problem is, the approach ISN'T WORKING if terror monthly recruiting stats are your Measure of Effectiveness. The Skivvy Bomber joined up in the Age of Obama. The five Northern Virginia men who went to Pakistan recently to pursue Jihad were radicalized in the age of Obama. The young man who blew himself up recently with an IED suppository was unleashed in the Age of Obama. Wasn't the world supposed to sit up and take notice when we elected The One? If Bush's approach was a fine recruiting tool for terror (and yes, again, I think it did indeed radicalize thrill seeking Jihadists), what exactly are we to make of the Obama approach?

What we are to make of it is that ANY approach that takes on terror will cause an increase in terrorists--until we start to win. The ONLY effective way in to discourage the recruitment of terrorists in the short and medium term would be to roll over and give up; at which point, the Caliphate wouldn't need terrorists, it would need civil servants. But I digress.

It's time to retire the old saw that looks at terror recruiting as some kind of a badge of dishonor. Bush and Obama both are doing what they can to keep the country safe, and in the process, some will be radicalized. The key now is to "de-radicalize" them. Either with a heartbeat, or without one.

Obama the Profiler

Ah yes, the pleasures of governing as opposed to campaigning. I relish the sweet justice of the Obama Administration engaging in what can only be termed "profiling" in its new policy of beefed-up screening procedures against those who would enter our country from nations prone to terror movements. The camel's nose is in the tent, the slippery slope is now in play--pick whatever metaphor you'd like---but it is an African American Democratic President who will finally put into play a system of "profiling" to make this country safer. Bully for you, Barry. I look forward to the media asking questions about profiling of senior government officials. No, really I do.

This of course, does nothing to increase preparedness against the legions of would-be suicide bombers raised in the slums of Paris or the public housing tenements of England, and who possess EU Passports. No, the Jihad Diaspora will continue to hide in plain sight, spreading its venom against the West even as it procreates on the dole of Western socialism.

But this is a good first step.

Europe Sees Obama Vulnerable on Terrorism

We are reaping what the President has sown, and the Europeans see it more clearly than we do. There's no war on terror, there are just appropriate law-enforcement activities. There are no unlawful enemy combatants, there are only "alleged" terrorists. There's no terrorism, there are only "man made disasters". There are no military commissions, there are only alleged terrorists in the criminal justice system.

The plain truth of the matter is that there has been a seismic shift in the approach that the government is taking to the world-wide Islamic terror movement. While there remains a reliance on the trappings of the Bush approach (because it worked), the attitude at the top has changed, and the country can feel it. America will become less safe unless its guardians in power become more vigilant. They are simply not as serious about this as the average American is. That's not a good thing.

H/T--Instapundit