Soft on Terror
Islamist terrorism is
not a law-enforcement issue.
By Charles Krauthammer
NationalReview.com
The
real scandal surrounding the failed Christmas Day airline bombing was not the
fact that a terrorist got on a plane — that can happen to any administration,
as it surely did to the Bush administration — but what happened afterward
when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was captured and came under the full control of
the U.S. government.
After 50 minutes of questioning him, the Obama administration chose,
reflexively and mindlessly, to give the chatty terrorist the right to remain
silent. Which he immediately did, undoubtedly denying us crucial information
about al-Qaeda in Yemen, which had trained, armed, and dispatched him.
We have since learned that the decision to Mirandize Abdulmutallab had been
made without the knowledge of or consultation with (1) the secretary of
defense, (2) the secretary of homeland security, (3) the director of the FBI,
(4) the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, or (5) the director
of national intelligence (DNI).
The Justice Department acted not just unilaterally, but unaccountably. Obama’s
own DNI said that Abdulmutallab should have been interrogated by the HIG, the
administration’s new High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group.
Perhaps you hadn’t heard the term. Well, in the very first week of his
presidency, Obama abolished by executive order the Bush-Cheney interrogation
procedures and pledged to study a substitute mechanism. In August, the
administration announced the establishment of the HIG, housed in the FBI but
overseen by the National Security Council.
Where was it during the Abdulmutallab case? Not available, admitted National
Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, because it had only been conceived for use
abroad. Had not one person in this vast administration of highly nuanced
sophisticates considered the possibility of a terror attack on American soil?
It gets worse. Blair later had to explain that the HIG was not deployed
because it does not yet exist. After a year! I suppose this
administration was so busy deploying scores of the country’s best lawyerly
minds on finding the most rapid way to release Gitmo miscreants that it could
not be bothered to establish a single operational HIG team to interrogate
at-large miscreants with actionable intelligence that might save American
lives.
Travesties of this magnitude are not lost on the American people. One of the
reasons Scott Brown won in Massachusetts was his focus on the Mirandizing of
Abdulmutallab.
Of course, this case is just a reflection of a larger problem: an
administration that insists on treating Islamist terrorism as a
law-enforcement issue. Which is why the Justice Department’s other egregious
terror decision, granting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a civilian trial in New York,
is now the subject of a letter from six senators — three Republicans, two
Democrats, and Joe Lieberman — asking Attorney General Eric Holder to reverse
the decision.
Lieberman and Sen. Susan Collins had written an earlier letter asking for
Abdulmutallab to be turned over to the military for renewed interrogation. The
problem is, it’s hard to see how that decision gets reversed. Once you’ve read
a man Miranda rights, what do you say? We are idiots? On second thought . . .
Hence the agitation over the KSM trial. This one can be reversed and
it’s a good surrogate for this administration’s insistence upon criminalizing
— and therefore trivializing — a war on terror that has now struck three times
in one year within the United States, twice with effect (the Arkansas killer
and the Fort Hood shooter) and once with a shockingly near miss (Abdulmutallab).
On the KSM civilian trial, sentiment is widespread that it is quite insane to
spend $200 million a year to give the killer of 3,000 innocents the largest
propaganda platform on earth, while at the same time granting civilian rights
of cross-examination and discovery that risk betraying U.S. intelligence
sources and methods.
Accordingly, Sen. Lindsey Graham and Rep. Frank Wolf have gone beyond appeals
to the administration and are planning to introduce a bill to block funding
for the trial. It’s an important measure. It makes flesh an otherwise abstract
issue — should terrorists be treated as enemy combatants or criminal
defendants? The vote will force members of Congress to declare themselves.
There will be no hiding from the question.
Congress may not be able to roll back the Abdulmutallab travesty. But there
will be future Abdulmutallabs. By cutting off funding for the KSM trial,
Congress can send Obama a clear message: The Constitution is neither a safety
net for illegal enemy combatants nor a suicide pact for us.
—
Charles Krauthammer is a
nationally syndicated columnist.
© 2010, The Washington Post Writers Group
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