| | Mr. Abbott,
I do not have any disagreement with that bare recitation of facts - the problem is that the term "War on Terror" is wholly meaningless. At its conceptual root, it is a tactic. A rather vile one, granted, but still.
If one wanted to say "well, we are at 'war' with fundamental Islamists who want hate Western civilization", that is at least a little closer to accurate. However, that lengthy designation leads to a whole host of other problems, the chief one being that those Islamists can say anything they want, unless we think of 'freedom of speech' as applicable only to the West (which, I think, we should not).
Even if one wants to take that further and say "well, exhortations to wreak havoc and violence are not protected speech in the United States, so why should they be abroad?" that presents even more problems, such as "why is the United States using the military to punish criminal infractions?" and "should such crimes, when they are outside the United States, be within that nation's jurisdiction regardless?"
And, no, I did not find very much 'truth' Dick Cheney's quote there, for myriad reasons:
1. The current President has stated that should civilian trials fail for someone like Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, he is going to assert the same Patriot Act-bestowed powers that the former President claimed: the power to detain those deemed as national security threats, even after trials. Does that sound very American to you, or does it sound like Soviet-style show trials, where the Government always wins and the defendant always loses? I think you might be able to tell what I think.
2. I am not sure why Cheney, or many here, have so little faith in the United States' values, especially justice. The fact is, is that trials were the right way to do this thing from the start. Because the statements from KSM were coerced at Guantanamo Bay, the correct decision (trials) that we originally should have arrived at is FUBAR'd (for those with military knowledge) --- if nothing else, there should have been a War Court established and we could at least put a veneer of traditional Anglo-American legality on this.
The bottom line is that what separates us from these animals are our values, and no pantswetter like Dick Cheney should be permitted to try to scare our values out of us at the first sign of trouble. There may be a "last inch", but within that last inch we are free.
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As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. He seems to think if he has a low-key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of Sept. 11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won’t be at war. “He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core Al Qaeda-trained terrorists still there, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gets rid of the words, ‘war on terror,’ we won’t be at war. But we are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe. Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency — social transformation — the restructuring of American society. President Obama’s first object and his highest responsibility must be to defend us against an enemy that knows we are at war.
