How can you not love this woman.
Posted on 01/05/2010 1:04:31 PM PST by Sub-Driver
Palin: It’s War, not a Crime Spree
A strong statement from the People's Governor:
President Obama’s meeting with his top national security advisers does nothing to change the fact that his fundamental approach to terrorism is fatally flawed. We are at war with radical Islamic extremists and treating this threat as a law enforcement issue is dangerous for our nation’s security. That’s what happened in the 1990s and we saw the result on September 11, 2001. This is a war on terror not an “overseas contingency operation.” Acts of terrorism are just that, not “man caused disasters.” The system did not work. Abdulmutallab was a child of privilege radicalized and trained by organized jihadists, not an “isolated extremist” who traveled to a land of “crushing poverty.” He is an enemy of the United States, not just another criminal defendant.
It simply makes no sense to treat an al Qaeda-trained operative willing to die in the course of massacring hundreds of people as a common criminal. Reports indicate that Abdulmutallab stated there were many more like him in Yemen but that he stopped talking once he was read his Miranda rights. President Obama’s advisers lamely claim Abdulmutallab might be willing to agree to a plea bargain – pretty doubtful you can cut a deal with a suicide bomber. John Brennan, the President’s top counterterrorism adviser, bizarrely claimed “there are no downsides or upsides” to treating terrorists as enemy combatants. That is absurd. There is a very serious downside to treating them as criminals: terrorists invoke their “right” to remain silent and stop talking. Terrorists don’t tell us where they were trained, what they were trained in, who they were trained by, and who they were trained with. Giving foreign-born, foreign-trained terrorists the right to remain silent does nothing to keep Americans safe from terrorist threats. It only gives our enemies access to courtrooms where they can publicly grandstand, and to defense attorneys who can manipulate the legal process to gain access to classified information.
President Obama was right to change his policy and decide to send no more detainees to Yemen where they can be free to rejoin their war on America. Now he must back off his reckless plan to close Guantanamo, begin treating terrorists as wartime enemies not suspects alleged to have committed crimes, and recognize that the real nature of the terrorist threat requires a commander-in-chief, not a constitutional law professor.
Posted by Michael Goldfarb on January 5, 2010 03:49 PM
How can you not love this woman.
For a "dumb, ignorant hick" she sure has a way of cutting right to the heart of the matter within the first two sentences.
What this administration is doing is criminal. A lot of people are going to be hurt because of it.
I love that graphic!
Bush’s Fault?
......and recognize that the real nature of the terrorist threat requires a commander-in-chief, not a constitutional law professor. ......
When the only tool in your box is a hammer, everything becomes a nail
( I thought about having screw driver and screwing everything in sight but it doesn’t really apply )
FrankR, that exchange between Al Gore and Oliver North didn’t happen. It is an email hoax...
But even still, your point is valid...:)
No, both Bush and Obama should know better.
And, national security is always more important than party loyalty.
Spot on! It was funny, last night I was yelling at my TV as I watched O’Reilly, Hannity et al, all miss this point. Sarah hit it on the head in that, this is EXACTLY how we delt with them pre 9/11 ... Obama needs to send a message, and toot suite, or he, like so many dims before him, will be a 1 term prez!!
There’s one thing American’s have consistently put above partisan politics, and that’s the safety of our families.. He would do well to recognize this, and fast.
Tim-
Palin/DeMint 2012 (Bolton SoS)
As much as some people would like to saddle President Bush with that mistake, they should keep in mind that the two situations are NOT identical, as I have heard some people say lately (including many on Free Republic)
The shoe bomber incident occurred 3 months after 9/11.
At the time of that attempted bombing, we had only just begun rounding up Al Queda personnel on the battlefields of Afghanistan (the first operations with US troops in force began in the last week or so of October 2001) and I doubt that we had many detainees rounded up at that point. If we did, we weren’t putting them right on C-130’s and flying them to anywhere, and the likely reason is what I outline below.
At that time the FBI still had the responsibility to investigate terrorist acts and having the DOJ prosecute terrorist acts as mere crimes ( as they did in the 1993 WTC bombing, the embassy bombings and the USS Cole bombing)
As a result of 9/11 the Bush administration was in the process of formulating new policies - to treat terrorism as an act of war (to the extraordinarily loud screams of protest from many liberals, both American and foreign, who wanted to paint the Bush administration and the USA as a repressive fascist regime) but as of 12/22/2001 the Administration had barely scratched the surface on the analysis of legal precedents and the entangling of responsibilities.
People can criticize the Bush administration on a lot of things, but one thing they cannot be criticized for is taking the time and making a comprehensive effort to base their future actions regarding the detainees on solid legal ground and therefore repulsing the efforts of Democrats, liberals, dhimmis, fellow travelers and other enemies of America the world over to get battlefield detainees into courtrooms.
At that time, and before appropriate legal policy had been formulated, the shoe bomber (Richard Reid) was a British citizen there was no question at the time but that he had to be treated as a criminal defendant.
What became clear to the Bush administration was that the failures of the intelligence community to share information and, most importantly, the concern with standard limitations on investigation tools in order to avoid application of the exclusionary rule at trial led a de-emphasis on obtaining intelligence in the case of Richard Reid.
Once the Bush administration had their legal ducks in a row, they were very consistent in this matter once they had a legal foundation in place and an appropriate place to detain them (Guantanamo Bay)
To liberals (and some who present themselves as conservatives) the greatest crime of all is hypocrisy. Bash the Bush administration for hypocrisy on any number of other issues, and I won’t disagree on a number of them.
But this simply isn’t one of them.
BTTT!
See my post at #35. These situations are not the same.
As Ann Coulter says with regard to liberal appeasers, at least Neville Chamberlain didn’t have himself to hold up as an example to avoid. Likewise, if you fault Bush even though he was taking the careful and sober legal approach to make sure his administration didn’t do something that was going to upset the apple cart for future detainees, Obama has no such excuse.
Worse, he is fully aware of the drawbacks of prosecuting in a US criminal court, but that is not a consideration of his.
LOL. That’s going to sting.
Of course BHO was not a real law professor, but an affirmative action grad student lecturer. Unpublished at that.
So, you are in agreement with the Clinton and Bush administrations prosecuting terrorists in civilian courts?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.