“If Obama is smart, he’ll kick the whole issue right back to Congress, as GW should have done.”
Doesn’t the Constitution hold the president responsible for national defense? Obama has been presented with a great opportunity to demonstrate his willingness to take the terrorist threat seriously.
If Obama is smart he’ll take this one on himself. Come on, Barry, show the citizenry that your not an empty suit.
Nope. The Pres is Commander in Chief of the armed forces. But Congress is tasked with making the laws under which those forces operate. It seems to me that how terrorists will be treated falls more under the congressional power than the presidential power, certainly once the situation is no longer an emergency that must be dealt with immediately, in which case a presidential response is entirely appropriate.
Under our Constitution I don't think the President should be making decisions about long-term imprisonment or even capital punishment, even of non-citizen enemy combatants.
We have laws to punish criminals and to imprison legal POWs till peace is made. Much of the acrimony over our treatment of captive terrorists has arisen because we insist on forcing them into one of these two categories, into neither of which they fit.
So develop a new category for terrorist illegal combatants. I think this should be done by Congress, not the President.