{"id":397275,"date":"2010-03-06T14:30:26","date_gmt":"2010-03-06T19:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/?p=71101"},"modified":"2010-03-06T14:30:26","modified_gmt":"2010-03-06T19:30:26","slug":"when-sensible-and-judicious-impulses-for-creating-consensus-about-terrorism-go-awry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/397275","title":{"rendered":"When Sensible and Judicious Impulses for Creating Consensus About Terrorism Go Awry"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Guantanamo detainees (photo: El Enigma via Flickr)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I don’t want to step on the toes of a forthcoming piece, so I hope you’ll forgive me being a bit cryptic. But one of the basic principles animating the Obama administration, as I understand it, is a very civic-minded impulse to resolve<\/em> the complex interplay of terrorism and justice. In other words, when he ultimately goes home to Chicago, Obama wants to leave behind a system for trying terrorist suspects that can be embraced by the courts and by Congress. To create a new, stable consensus that everyone can embrace. That involves compromise.<\/p>\n

I want to say that I fully understand and sympathize with that impulse. It’s not a good thing for the sake of American justice if the law gets rewritten on terrorism and the courts every four or eight years. But there are two problems with the impulse at play here.<\/p>\n

First, it misunderstands the scope of the GOP opposition. The Republicans also<\/em> want to leave behind a stable system for the complex interplay of terrorism and justice. And when they win an election, they’ll contend that the public wants them to rewrite those rules. And, really, they should claim that<\/em>, because that’s what it means to win an election. While Obama moves further to the right, to demonstrate his reasonableness, no one on the right gives him any thumbs up. They continue to shift the goalposts, because they’re good at politics. See Adam Serwer<\/a> and especially David Kurtz<\/a> for more on this.<\/p>\n

Second, and relatedly, Obama won’t be revising the rules here. He’ll be ratifying what the previous administration established. <\/span>Remember the big picture: the argument for flipping on the KSM criminal trial is, says Rahm Emanuel, to get Lindsey Graham to vote for the closure of Guantanamo Bay. Why Graham’s support is so crucial never quite gets explained<\/a>. But put that aside for a moment. What’s the problem with Guantanamo? Three things: torture; indefinite detention; and military commissions. Obama’s solution — creating a new detention facility at Thomson, Illinois — gets rid of the torture and keeps the indefinite detention and the military commissions. (Though indefinite detention is a form of torture<\/a>.) The McCain\/Lieberman bill introduced yesterday<\/a> really restricts any Justice Department from bringing criminal charges against terrorists. So the state of play with Graham and KSM is that Obama is now fighting to retain any<\/em> role for the criminal justice system when it comes to terrorism — something not even Bush<\/em> had to do — in exchange for a very<\/em> compromised GTMO closure. See how the Overton Window<\/a> has shifted?<\/p>\n

Add to that one more factor. When the Next GOP President inevitably endeavors to rewrite the rules, not only will s\/he be operating on very favorable political terrain, but his\/her opponents will have difficulty claiming a principled objection. How to oppose widespread indefinite detention if you already accept it in some cases? How to argue against widespread military commissions if you concede that civilian courts aren’t even good enough (despite the record) to handle open-n-shut cases like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who wanted to plead guilty before the commissions in 2008<\/a>?<\/p>\n

It’s a very worthy impulse to want to build a lasting legal architecture to confront terrorism. The greater likelihood, though, is that the country is not done with arguing the questions politically. If Obama backs down now, before even playing a winning hand<\/em><\/a>, he’ll be setting up the left to keep losing the next rounds.<\/p>\n

Marvel Comics owns Iron Man, Siege, Dark Reign, Norman Osborn, etc., and I don’t. Please don’t sue me. I just like this conceit.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tags: al-Qaeda<\/a>, Lindsey Graham<\/a>, McCain-Lieberman Bill<\/a>, military commissions<\/a><\/p>\n

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Guantanamo detainees (photo: El Enigma via Flickr) I don’t want to step on the toes of a forthcoming piece, so I hope you’ll forgive me being a bit cryptic. But one of the basic principles animating the Obama administration, as I understand it, is a very civic-minded impulse to resolve the complex interplay of terrorism […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4314,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-397275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4314"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}