Obama - "They" Are Politicizing the Torture and Guantanamo Issues

Obama’s Speech on Detainees and National Security - Washington Wire - WSJ: "For the first time since 2002, we are providing the necessary resources and strategic direction to take the fight to the extremists who attacked us on 9/11 in Afghanistan and Pakistan."

Pres. Obama has the luxury of diverting troops from Iraq to Afghanistan because George Bush's surge in Iraq has succeeded. The surge that candidate Obama declared a failure before it was even attempted. This Afghanistan offensive is based largely on tactics proven effective during the surge he opposed. This American troop surge in Afghanistan is made necessary in large part because the European allies that Obama holds in such high esteem have for seven years refused to do their part (even though they supported the war when Pres Bush launched it). They haven't stepped up any more now that this administration is sweet-talking them, in fact, many are in the process of withdrawing from the conflict.

And we have renewed American diplomacy so that we once again have the strength and standing to truly lead the world.

He's joking, right? We just saw Iran's response to Obama's diplomatic overtures - the launching of a dangerous new long-range missile.

Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions. And I believe that those decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people. But I also believe that – too often – our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight, and all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions. Instead of strategically applying our power and our principles, we too often set those principles aside as luxuries that we could no longer afford. And in this season of fear, too many of us – Democrats and Republicans; politicians, journalists and citizens – fell silent.

Where does one begin to unravel the nest of libels and misinformation that are this paragraph? And speak of hasty decisions? How about announcing on the second day of your presidency that you are closing down Gitmo, only to be rebuked months later by your own party for having no coherent plan for doing so?

The very existence of the so-called "torture memos" is evidence of the fact that no "hasty decisions" were made.

I'll let Cheney answer the charge on prinicples:

no moral value held dear by the American people obliges public servants ever to sacrifice innocent lives to spare a captured terrorist from unpleasant things. And when an entire population is targeted by a terror network, nothing is more consistent with American values than to stop them.

Back to the President:

the decisions that were made over the last eight years established an ad hoc legal approach for fighting terrorism that was neither effective nor sustainable – a framework that failed to rely on our legal traditions and time-tested institutions; that failed to use our values as a compass.

Once again, I would site the "torture memos" and the extensive cooperation with Congress as a clear refutation of the charge of ad hoc. What legal traditions is the President speaking of? I know of no relevant traditions, i.e. pertaining to unlawful enemy combatants (not soldiers and certainly not citizens) during a time of war that have been trampled upon.

I took several steps upon taking office to better protect the American people.

First, I banned the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques by the United States of America.

I know some have argued that brutal methods like water-boarding were necessary to keep us safe. I could not disagree more. As Commander-in-Chief, I see the intelligence, I bear responsibility for keeping this country safe, and I reject the assertion that these are the most effective means of interrogation.

Why don't you let the American people judge whether they were effective. Why do you hide from us the most relevnat informatoin in the "torture memos," what informatoni was obtained as a result of waterboarding?

What’s more, they undermine the rule of law. They alienate us in the world. They serve as a recruitment tool for terrorists, and increase the will of our enemies to fight us, while decreasing the will of others to work with America.

Again, what rule of law? He never says. The recruitment tool argument is a sham. What really brings in recruits to an outfit like Al Qaeda is a successful terrorist attack. By denying them such a success, the Bush administration severly broke the momentum of the islamofasciscts.

They [enhanced interrogration techniques] risk the lives of our troops by making it less likely that others will surrender to them in battle, and more likely that Americans will be mistreated if they are captured.

Everyone in the world know that the US slavishly follows the rules of the Geneva convention with respect to enemy soldiers on the battlefield. The islamofascists are not signatories of the Geneva Convention They have a nasty habit of torturing and beheading prisoners. They were doing so long before these three terrorists were waterboarded and they are still doing so today.

In short, they [enhanced interrogation technicques] did not advance our war and counter-terrorism efforts – they undermined them, and that is why I ended them once and for all.

Again, let everyone see the evidence and decide for themselves. Stop hiding the evidence.

The second decision that I made was to order the closing of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.

For over seven years, we have detained hundreds of people at Guantanamo. During that time, the system of Military Commissions at Guantanamo succeeded in convicting a grand total of three suspected terrorists. Let me repeat that: three convictions in over seven years.

That is because the commissions process has been fought and delayed every step of the way by a bunch of left wing lawyers, most of whom are now in the Obama Justice Department!

Meanwhile, over five hundred and twenty-five detainees were released from Guantanamo under the Bush Administration. Let me repeat that: two-thirds of the detainees were released before I took office and ordered the closure of Guantanamo.

What's his point?

There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America’s strongest currency in the world. Instead of building a durable framework for the struggle against al Qaeda that drew upon our deeply held values and traditions, our government was defending positions that undermined the rule of law.

Perhaps no question in the President's mind. To my knowledge, every outside inspection of Guantanamo gave it sterling reviews. None of those countries that are supposedly so offended by Guantanamo have offered a helping hand in taking any of these detainees. Talk is cheap.

So the record is clear: rather than keep us safer, the prison at Guantanamo has weakened American national security.

Clear to whom? We have already observed the high recidivism rate of the former Guantanamo detainees that were set free. How can you say that we would have been better off if these 250, most corrigible detainees had been set free long ago?

It is a rallying cry for our enemies.

Again with the specious recruiting argument.

It sets back the willingness of our allies to work with us in fighting an enemy that operates in scores of countries.

Oh yes, we may have fewer German non-combatant ally troops along side us in Afghanistan! What's more likely to lose us the cooperation of allies is the suspicion that this administration will throw anyone under the bus, and reveal any secrets if it serves its political purposes to do so.

The third decision that I made was to order a review of all the pending cases at Guantanamo.

the problem of what to do with Guantanamo detainees was not caused by my decision to close the facility; the problem exists because of the decision to open Guantanamo in the first place.

Poor President Obama. He inherited hard decisions. Where would these hardened criminal terrorists be if Gitmo had not been opened? How many innocent people would have been killed or maimed by them had they been let free? Don't pretend we could have used the criminal justice system to handle them. It was not designed to do so, and the rights and protections of our legal system are not granted to foreign terrorists as a reward for making war against us.

Some have derided our federal courts as incapable of handling the trials of terrorists. They are wrong. Our courts and juries of our citizens are tough enough to convict terrorists, and the record makes that clear. Ramzi Yousef tried to blow up the World Trade Center – he was convicted in our courts, and is serving a life sentence in U.S. prison. Zaccarias Moussaoui has been identified as the 20th 9/11 hijacker – he was convicted in our courts, and he too is serving a life sentence in prison. If we can try those terrorists in our courts and hold them in our prisons, then we can do the same with detainees from Guantanamo.

He glossed over the fact that these convictions were for acts committed in the US and investigated by US law enforcement. It is a far different situation when the detained was scooped up by US soldiers on a foreign field of battle. Kind of hard to follow criminal procedure on a battlefield.

...over the last several weeks, we have seen a return of the politicization of these issues that have characterized the last several years. I understand that these problems arouse passions and concerns. They should. We are confronting some of the most complicated questions that a democracy can face. But I have no interest in spending our time re-litigating the policies of the last eight years. I want to solve these problems, and I want to solve them together as Americans.

Then perhaps you should have had the moral courage to steadfastly refuse to support "truth commissions" and prosecutions of Bush administration personnel over policy disagreements. Instead, you did what you so often do, tried to play both sides of the controversy.

I grow tired of this speech. It goes on and on and on with the same dishonest self-justifications and distortions of the truth. This President let the MoveOn.org drive HIM to hasty, politicized decisions with respect to our national security. And now he is wasting our time trying to make the case for HIS ill-considered ad hoc approach to dealing with enemy combatants in the ongoing war against islamofascism.

The good news is I think this whole process has taught President Obama a great deal and I genuinely look forward to fewer unwise ideological foreign policy decisions in the future. He just needs to get over his bruised ego.