graphic: Lance Page-Truthout.org; adapted: Joe Gratz, Paul Keller, Hkuchera
At some point, if it wants to win this argument, doesn’t Obama have to make an argument about why the military commissions are inappropriate for the 9/11 conspirators? I wonder:
The trouble is that the administration has also embraced military commissions. So conservatives can just as easily say: Why should the most important al-Qaeda detainees get civilian trials but some kid who threw a grenade at a U.S. soldier at the Taliban’s behest get a military tribunal? And that’s not a question the administration wants to answer, given the emphasis it placed last year on revamping the commissions. If the administration replies, Well, it’s important to display the strength of American justice internationally, then it can’t very well continue to defend the military commissions. The easiest thing to do here, if the administration really believes in the commissions, is to give the GOP what it wants.
Adam Serwer worries that it’s going to go the other way, and Obama’s just going to acquiesce to the commissions in the face of pressure from the right. Maybe. If Obama won’t make an argument against the commissions that he’s embraced, then… yeah, probably. But the fact that this is a problem from the administration just points to the crucial need, still unaddressed by Obama’s counterterrorism policies, to finally break with the ad-hoc, process-challenged, internationally-dubious and vastly less successful military commissions. The politics of fear can’t be harnessed; they have to be confronted.
