Recently in Terrorism Category

This op-ed in today's WSJ, with the above title, is one of those articles that is more important for who says it than for any originality in what is said.

Floyd Abrams is widely regarded as a First Amendment hero among folks who favor a broad interpretation of that enactment.  So does he think Julian Assange is a hero?  Not at all.  He finds "much to deplore."

None of this means that if WikiLeaks or Mr. Assange were brought to trial in this country that they would have no basis for claiming First Amendment protection. They would and should. Whatever the legal result, it would not absolve Mr. Assange of conduct that has put many people at great risk, or indeed, may already have cost some of them their lives.

"When delicate information is at stake, great prudence is demanded so that the information doesn't fall into the wrong hands and so that people are not hurt," the German newspaper Die Welt commented upon WikiLeaks' bulk release of unredacted State Department cables. That such self-evident language seems alien to Julian Assange and to WikiLeaks says it all.

The Constitution vests in Congress alone the power to declare war, and makes the President alone the commander-in-chief.  If it accords any war-making decisions  to the judicial branch, this fact has been well hidden for two hundred years or so.

Thus I congratulate the administration's attorneys for correctly concluding that (1) American citizens who have taken up arms against the country may be targeted in a time of war, and (2) the targeting decision belongs to the President, not the judiciary.  The Associated Press has the story.

Candidate Obama, speaking with equal measures of gusto and gleeful irresponsibility, demagogued this and similar points to a fare-thee-well.  I am grateful, and relieved, that President Obama has come to his senses.

This does not mean that Obama or any other President unfailingly is going to get these decisions right  --  but neither are the courts, and the President has both superior capabilities, and the Constitutional portfolio, to make the call.

If you are in the Boston area, check out this event sponsored by the Boston Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society.

Participants include former AG Michael Mukasey, Carol Rose of the Mass. ACLU, Arthur Herman of AEI, and Dean Reuter of the FedSoc, co-editor of the book Confronting Terror.  Former US Attorney Michael Sullivan will moderate.

Karla Adam reports in the WaPo:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange lost his battle against extradition Wednesday when Britain's High Court ruled that he should be sent to Sweden to face questioning over allegations of sexual misconduct.

The judgment was handed down by High Court judges John Thomas and Duncan Ouseley with Assange in attendance, wearing a dark suit and a Remembrance Day poppy.

*                                        *                                      *

Lawyers for the 40-year-old Australian are expected to seek permission to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land. The legal team must lodge an application within the next two weeks, and make a case that a "point of law of general importance" is at stake.

How nice.  The man who facilitated the murder of people cooperating with us in the war against Islamofascism wears a Rememberance Day poppy.  He appears to be rather selective in which antifascist fighters he chooses to remember.

There is also this hopeful note:  "Last month, Assange said WikiLeaks faced an 'existential' crisis and could close as early as January if it was unable to boost its financial reserves."

On September 1, Bill and I had a little discussion in the comments to this post about extradition of Moammar Gadhafi.  I thought the issue would be moot "if he is already room temperature when the Libyans finish with him...."  Well, I was way off on the temperature.

We all know the two certainties:  1. Death   2. Taxes.

But the list needs expanding:  1. Death  2. Taxes   3. Iran will get away with it.

The Administration is mumbling that "all options are on the table," but I doubt there's  a single person out there dull enough to believe it.

Even Code Pink isn't denying that a foreign government's plotting murder on American soil is an act of war.  At the minimum it's a crime.  Generally it's regarded as good practice to put people who plan violent crimes in the slammer.  Anyone think that's going to happen here?  Anyone think that the Administration will even ask the Iranians to hand over the plotters?  Much less force them to?

Righto.  We all know what the "consequences" of this episode are going to be.  Harken unto the words of Secretary Clinton:

We are actively engaged in a very concerted diplomatic outreach to many capitals, to the U.N. in New York, to not only to explain what happened so we can try to pre-empt any efforts by Iran to be successful in what would be their denial and their efforts to try to deflect responsibility but so that we also enlist more countries in working together against what is becoming a clearer and clearer threat."

Now that will really shake up the mullahs.

Astute reader federalist has noted that it's hard to figure out good options  for dealing with Iran.  Just so.  Maybe this is why we pay our Commander-in-Chief $400,000 a year. 

C&C has featured numerous entries about whether terrorist attacks on the United States are more aptly answered by our legal system or by, to simplify it quite a bit, drones.

Yesterday, a very important player in the legal system, Eric Holder, announced the discovery of a plot by operatives of the government of Iran to commit a murder (the assassination of the Saudi Arabian ambassador) on American soil.  He said that "Iran will be held accountable."

That is almost certainly false, since, after all, it's never once been true. Time will tell, and I hope I'm wrong.  There are many things to be said about the Iranian plot, but for now I want only to repeat what my friend John Hinderaker has observed:

The plot evidently was discovered at a very early stage. One wonders: How? Through intercepts of phone conversations or emails? Eric Holder, widely believed to be a dead man walking in Washington as a result of Fast and Furious, was front and center at today's news conference. Holder was a prominent critic of essentially everything the Bush administration did to discover and combat terrorist plots. It would be interesting to know whether the intelligence triumph that Holder celebrated today was yet another example of the wisdom of the Bush administration policies that Obama, Holder and their ilk endlessly demagogued before they found [them] expedient to adopt.

Not that I'm complaining.  Demagoguery or not, I'm happy that there is at least a modicum of seriousness in the Administration's approach to keepiing the country safe, however late and reluctant in coming, and whatever its source.

 

Kent was crass enough to point out that those all ready to condemn George Bush (and Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Jay Bybee, John Yoo, etc., et al) as war criminals seem to have lost their voices now that President Obama not only captures and intrerrogates al Qaeda operatives, but kills them on the spot.  And no due process!  Even though they're American citizens!!!

Now comes Steve Hayward from Powerline to be even more crass.  Steve starts off with, "Gosh, who knew that John Yoo had gone back to work for the Obama Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, writing memos under the nom de plumes "David Barron" and "Martin Lederman." 

It gets nastier from there.

Barack Obama demagogued this issue to a fare-thee-well in his campaign.  But if you're waiting for an apology, you'll be waiting a long time. 

"Where you stand depends on where you sit," the old political saying goes.  Carrie Severino has this post at Bench Memos, with the above title, on lawyers who were once harshly critical of the Bush Administration's assertions of legality on the treatment of our enemies but are now writing internal Administration memos supporting the legality of even more drastic action.  She notes that Glenn Greenwald at Slate is notably less enthusiastic about David Barron and Marty Lederman than he used to be, to put it mildly.

The New York Times carries this story about the apparently months-long wrangling inside the Administration about whether the United States could legally kill top al Qaeda  operative Anwar al-Awlaki.  Mr. al-Awlaki was up to his eyeballs in various grisly terror plots against this country, from the underpants bomber to the Ft. Hood massacre.

My thinking is, as usual, more simplistic than the Administration's:  We're at war; he's the enemy.  The idea that the Bill of Rights requires us to seek an arraignment date for a Jihadist mastermind planning more mass murder from his hideout in Yemen is passing strange.

Well, whatever.  This is what OLC does now, it seems.  As I  say, at least they got the right result. 

We were greeted this morning by the welcome news that a CIA-led drone strike in Yemen killed a top al Qaeda operative, the American-born Anwar al-Awlaki.

Never wanting to take "yes" for an answer, the predictable sanctimonious scolds  --  the ACLU, CAIR and the Center for Constitutional Rights  --  are up in arms.  (Are they ever anything but up in arms?).  It was really a matter for  --  guess what  --  due process.   

"The targeted killing program violated both U.S. and international law," ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer said in a written statement. "As we've seen today, this is a program under which American citizens far from any battlefield can be executed by their own government without judicial process, and on the basis of standards and evidence that are kept secret not just from the public but from the courts."

When asked about this, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney refused to answer questions about the legality of the government targeting and killing an American citizen without a trial.

"I'm not going to address the circumstances of Awlaki's death," he said.

Let me respectfully suggest a different answer:  "We are in a war and the President is the Commander-in-Chief.  His foremost responsibility is to see to the physical safety of the American people.  Courts have neither the portfolio, under the Constitution, nor the competence, under any reasonable understanding of their mission, to direct the battle that has been thrust upon us.  This is not the next matter on the police blotter, and we are not looking for an arraignment date.  We will not be sending al Qaeda subpeonas.  With any luck, we'll be sending them more drones." 

The Washington Post has this editorial, with the above headline:

ON THE 10TH anniversary of al-Qaeda's attack on New York and Washington, the conventional wisdom seems to be evolving from "We will be hit again" to "Osama bin Laden won by provoking us into a decade of overreaction."

The feeling is understandable but incorrect, and it would be dangerous if it took hold. Yes, the nation made big mistakes over the past decade. When has America ever geared up without excess and error? But the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon alerted Americans to genuine dangers that only a relative few had noticed. We have lived safely for the decade since not because we misread those dangers but because we responded to them in a manner in which, on balance, Americans can take pride.

I don't agree with everything in the editorial, but on the whole the WaPo gets it right.

Things to remember, a non-exhaustive list:

"Let's roll;" Todd Beamer, Tom Burnett, Mark Bingham and Jeremy Glick; "Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.," (George W. Bush, September 20, 2001); Navy SEALS, (May 1, 2011); unknown CIA interrogators who obtained essential intelligence at great cost, risk and calumny; and lots and lots of drones.

 

Things to forget, a non-exhaustive list:

"Why do they hate us;" anything that is or resembles a "peace quilt;" multicultural sensitivity and other forms of warmed over contempt for the West; "reconciliation," roughly meaning "surrender;" all "cycle of violence" blather; aging peaceniks; and "Give Peace a Chance."

On Thursday morning, liberal Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne published a column titled, "Time to Leave 9/11 Behind."  In it he said, among other things:

After we honor the 10th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, we need to leave the day behind. As a nation we have looked back for too long****If we continue to place 9/11 at the center of our national consciousness, we will keep making the same mistakes. Our nation's future depended on far more than the outcome of a vaguely defined "war on terrorism," and still does. Al-Qaeda is a dangerous enemy. But our country and the world were never threatened by the caliphate of its mad fantasies...

On Thursday evening, about 12 hours later, that same Washington Post carried a story titled, "Possible al-Qaeda Plot Against D.C., N.Y."   The story starts:

U.S. officials are investigating a possible al-Qaeda plot to detonate a vehicle-borne bomb in Washington or New York City around Sunday's 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

A handful of individuals may have entered the United States in recent days as part of the plot, which officials said originated from the tribal areas of Pakistan along the Afghan border. One of them may be a U.S. citizen.

Numerous officials familiar with the information cautioned Thursday night that while the threat is specific and worrisome, it is based on raw intelligence that is unconfirmed....Yet the mere prospect of an attack to coincide with such a sacred anniversary sparked jitters in New York and Washington, where President Obama was briefed Thursday morning and updated throughout the day, even as he prepared to address a joint session of Congress.

Mr. Dionne never had much good to say about the war on terror to start with. Still, his attempt to brush it off scant hours before his own newspaper published an account of a possible new attack so ominous that the President of the United States was updated about it throughout the day marks as, ummm, noteworthy Dionne's argument that we should henceforth yawn our way through it all.  Under the circumstances as they developed on Thursday night, his Thursday morning invitation to complacency has to be viewed as giving new definition to the phrase, "masterpiece of bad timing."   

 

We are approaching the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 atrocity.  There's going to be a deluge of commentary on it, almost all of which I plan to avoid, on the theory that just about everything that's sensible to say has already been said, and that the torrent of non-sensble things, including a great deal of pure mush  --  and not a little national self-flagellation  -- is best left ignored.

It's not that I want to be unfeeling about it.  I lost a friend, Barbara Olson (wife of former Solicitor General Ted Olson) on the plane that slammed into the Pentagon.  I had known Barbara for years.  She was an AUSA in DC when I was an AUSA across the Potomac River in Alexandria, Virginia, and we spoke often.  She was a total live wire, dedicated, determined and beautiful.  Not for nothing did she later become a frequent guest on TV shows all over the place, including, more than once, Larry King.  There was no better spokesman for the values that guide C&C.

It would be one thing if the coming remembrances would honor fighters like Barbara and the things she believed in.  It would be one thing if they honored the soldiers who have spent a decade in a just and necessary war to destroy our enemies.

But you know full well that's not what's coming up.