Obama: Gitmo won’t close on time

I guess this means I officially lose my bet with Ben Boychuk:

BEIJING — President Obama directly acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that the prison facility at Guantanamo Bay will not close by the January deadline he set, but he said he hoped to still achieve that goal sometime next year.

Obama refused, however, to set a new deadline.

When Obama took office and immediately pledged to close Gitmo within a year, I was — to put it mildly — thrilled. I thought it was a bold declaration of values and intent. But boldly declaring your intent makes it pretty easy to fail.

For what it’s worth: I still think closing Gitmo is a net plus to America. In a war against lawless, stateless terrorists, it seemed to me we ceded some necessary moral high ground by trying to create a lawless, stateless base to contain them. It told the world that we didn’t really believe in our own civilization. In a battle that is just as much about ideas as it is about bullets and bombs, it was a crucial concession by the Bush Administration. Reversing that concession, it turns out, is more difficult than I thought it would be.

John Yoo doesn’t want a New York trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

And he might have good reasons. It’s hard for me to know, because as always, the Bush Administration’s torture advocate and enabler simply doesn’t have any credibility. Here’s an early line in his Wall Street Journal op-ed opposing the Obama Administration’s decision to give KSM a civilian criminal trial in New York:

It is a presidential decision—one about the hard, ever-present trade-off between civil liberties and national security.

And here’s why Yoo has no credibility: Go back and read the memos he wrote, the ones saying a president had the right to torture, to turn the United States into a lawless battleground against terrorists, to even suspend the First Amendment if he so chooses. And ask yourself: Has there been a post-9/11 issue in which John Yoo seemed to truly and earnestly balance civil liberties against national security? Or has he thrown civil liberties overboard every time? There’s an easy answer to that question.

Here’s the thing: Over time, I’ve come to suspect that rigorously governed military tribunals — ones that adhere rigorously to federal and international laws of war — might be the best way to try suspected terrorists. A good process can give terror suspects their day in court while holding legitimate national security concerns in balance — and there is the precedent, set by FDR during World War II. Foreigners accused of making war on the United States typically haven’t been granted the same rights as Americans under our system of justice.* And I’m troubled that the Obama Administration has set up a multi-tiered system of justice that gives terror suspects more rights … so long as they’re less likely to succeed at trial. I’m not a fan of kangaroo courts. Better to have one set of transparent rules for everybody.

* This is separate in my mind from the issue of whether New York should host the trial. Sure it should. That’s where the attack happened; it’s where justice should be delivered. KSM is not a supervillain. He’s not going to use his magneto powers to break out of prison and again make war on the U.S.

But I’d have an easier time taking seriously the argument of so many folks arguing for a military tribunal because we’re at war! if so many of the same people — like torture advocate John Yoo — weren’t also advocates for disregarding U.S. law and international war crimes law regarding torture because this is a different kind of war! The laws of war apply only when they’re to our advantage, it seems.

As it is, the decision to hold the trial in civilian courts in New York seems, as they say, to have made “all the right enemies.” Which makes me inclined to support the decision. Which is, frankly, a lousy reason to support it.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed gets a New York trial

And Jonah Goldberg laments:

KSM thought he’d get a lawyer and a civilian trial, and at the end of the day he was right.

Putting aside, for the moment, the fact that the system is still plenty rigged — well, what’s so wrong with that? Assuming the government can make its case, this is a process that will almost certainly end with KSM’s execution. (And though I’m generally against the death penalty, it’s going to be a touch more difficult for me to object this time around.) How does the United States suffer from offering a fair and open trial — one that reveals a man’s craven willingness to inflict ghastly death upon innocents while hiding across an ocean — discredit us? Why is this not an opportunity to further discredit KSM’s radical ideology before the world? Why is this not an opportunity to both deliver justice and compete in the realm of ideas?

KSM looked at the American system of justice and thought he saw weakness. The shame of it is that Jonah Goldberg apparently agrees with him.

Fort Hood: Why Christians can’t be trusted

This is certainly shocking:

“Of course, most U.S. Christians don’t shoot up abortion doctors. Fine. As soon as Christians give us a foolproof way to identify their doctor-killers from their moderates, we’ll go back to allowing them to carry guns. You tell us who the ones are that we have to worry about, prove you’re right, and Christians can once again carry guns. Until that day comes, we simply cannot afford the risk. You invent a doctor-killing-detector that works every time it’s used, and we’ll welcome you back with open arms. This is not Christian-phobia, it is Christian-realism,” – Director of Issues Analysis, Bryan Fischer, at the American Family Association.

Oh wait. Sorry. The quote got a little screwed up. Here’s the real one:

“Of course, most U.S. Muslims don’t shoot up their fellow soldiers. Fine. As soon as Muslims give us a foolproof way to identify their jihadis from their moderates, we’ll go back to allowing them to serve. You tell us who the ones are that we have to worry about, prove you’re right, and Muslims can once again serve. Until that day comes, we simply cannot afford the risk. You invent a jihadi-detector that works every time it’s used, and we’ll welcome you back with open arms. This is not Islamophobia, it is Islamo-realism,” – Director of Issues Analysis, Bryan Fischer, at the American Family Association.

You know what? We absolutely need to be careful when Army officers go around rooting for suicide bombers. It seems increasingly clear the armed forces dropped the ball when it came to the proclivities of Maj. Nidal Hasan. There are fundamentalist extremists Muslims out there — we all lived through September 11 — and we clearly need to be on guard. But there are extremists and fundamentalists in many religions. I doubt Bryan Fischer would appreciate being lumped in with doctor killers. And it wouldn’t be fair to do so. Too bad he doesn’t understand that.

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

Nearing the point where we can call the Afghanistan war “folly”

Oh yeah, this is going to work out great:

If the foreign forces are not seen so by Afghans already, they are on the cusp of being regarded as occupiers, with little to show people for their extended presence, fueling wild conspiracies about why they remain here.

The feeling is particularly acute in the Pashtun south, but it is spreading to other parts of the country. More American troops could tip the balance of opinion, particularly if they increase civilian casualties and prompt even more Taliban attacks.

The grass-roots view among Afghans is at odds with those of top Afghan officials, as well as many American military commanders, who strongly endorse a full-blown counterinsurgency strategy, including a large troop increase.

Let’s see: We’re losing what support we had from the Afghan public. The training of the Afghan Army — a lynchpin of the counterinsurgency strategy — is going lousy. And it’s likely that our presence in the country is intensifying the insurgency. How in the world does this not end in disaster?

Are there 400,000 terrorists plotting the destruction of America?

Call me skeptical, but the Washington Post reports that’s how many people are on the FBI’s terrorist watch list.

During a 12-month period ended in March this year, for example, the U.S. intelligence community suggested on a daily basis that 1,600 people qualified for the list because they presented a “reasonable suspicion,” according to data provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee by the FBI in September and made public last week.

The ever-churning list is said to contain more than 400,000 unique names and over 1 million entries. The committee was told that over that same period, officials asked each day that 600 names be removed and 4,800 records be modified. Fewer than 5 percent of the people on the list are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents. Nine percent of those on the terrorism list, the FBI said, are also on the government’s “no fly” list.

One wants the government to be vigilant about protecting the country from terrorists, of course, but there’s a danger opposite to that of not investigating enough people and that’s investigating too many people. Leave aside, for the moment, the dangers to civil liberties; I’m willing to be a substantial portion — maybe even most — of the names on that list have nothing at all to do with terrorism. But they’re still consuming some of the FBI’s investigative resources. And time spent investigating the innocents might well cause the FBI to overlook the next Mohammed Atta.

In any case, it’s possible that the FBI will do everything as well as can be done — and that a terrorist will still slip through anyway. But the job might be easier if investigators weren’t flooded with so many (probably) false ledes.

Barack Obama, Stanley McChrystal and dithering in Afghanistan

That’s the subject of this week’s Scripps Howard column with Ben Boychuk. You’ll probably not be surprised that I’m suggesting it’s time to ratchet down our endless war against the Taliban. You might be surprised to find out my conservative colleague seemingly agrees. He writes:

Trying to pacify the ungovernable Afghan countryside or win the support of people who are nothing if not xenophobic is a waste of time, money and precious American lives. If the goal is to secure Americans at home, we’re unlikely to accomplish it on the present course.

Point-counterpoint columns are probably less entertaining when the point and the counterpoint make the same point. But still. My take:

In his memo to President Obama, Gen. Stanley McChrystal suggested that even if America does everything right, it might still lose the war. Why? Because victory depends on having a stable, corruption-lite ― nobody expects corruption-free ― Afghan government that meets the needs of its people. Afghan President Hamid Karzai cannot provide that government, which means America cannot win. More troops won’t change that.

There have been other signs that after eight years, Afghanistan is a quagmire. We’ve now been in that country about the same amount of time as the Soviet Union was during its doomed war in the 1980s. Karzai’s brother ― long known to be dealing in the drugs that finance Taliban operations in that country ― was this week revealed to be on the CIA payroll. And an American Foreign Service officer resigned after concluding that the presence of U.S. and NATO troops has fueled the insurgency. We’re still there because they’re fighting us; they’re fighting us because we’re still there. It’s a complete mess.

And it is a mess that was mostly achieved under President George W. Bush, who let his attention wander ― disastrously ― to Iraq. Dick Cheney’s recent criticism of President Obama’s “dithering” on Afghanistan policy is thus remarkable. Having screwed it up so badly, you would think the former vice president would have the good sense and grace to simply shut up. But political bickering won’t solve Afghanistan. Probably nothing can.

America originally invaded Afghanistan because al- Qaida, which attacked us on 9/11, was headquartered there. But fighting an endless war against the Taliban is not doing much, if anything, to make Americans safer from terrorism. It might be making things worse. Time to try something new.

Goodbye, civil liberties: The FBI can investigate you for terrorism just because it feels like it

Charlie Savage uncovers the FBI guidelines for beginning terrorism investigations. (Read the document here.) Word to the wise: Never give an FBI agent a funny look.

The manual authorizes agents to open an “assessment” to “proactively” seek information about whether people or organizations are involved in national security threats.

Agents may begin such assessments against a target without a particular factual justification. The basis for such an inquiry “cannot be arbitrary or groundless speculation,” the manual says, but the standard is “difficult to define.”

Assessments permit agents to use potentially intrusive techniques, like sending confidential informants to infiltrate organizations and following and photographing targets in public.

If you cannot define the standard, you cannot violate the standard. Basically, this is a blank check to the FBI to investigate whomever it pleases for any reason — or no reason — at all. But the FBI denies that will happen:

But Valerie Caproni, the F.B.I.’s general counsel, said the bureau has adequate safeguards to protect civil liberties as it looks for people who could pose a threat.

“Those who say the F.B.I. should not collect information on a person or group unless there is a specific reason to suspect that the target is up to no good seriously miss the mark,” Ms. Caproni said. “The F.B.I. has been told that we need to determine who poses a threat to the national security — not simply to investigate persons who have come onto our radar screen.”

I take seriously the need to prevent terror attacks. But: The FBI ought to have specific reasons to start delving into the lives of its citizens. Terrorism prevention by hunch will absolutely have bad results.

She also said that the F.B.I. takes seriously its duty to protect freedom while preventing terrorist attacks. “I don’t like to think of us as a spy agency because that makes me really nervous,” she said. “We don’t want to live in an environment where people in the United States think the government is spying on them. That’s an oppressive environment to live in and we don’t want to live that way.”

Indeed.

The meaning of Dover: Afghanistan is Obama’s war now

Here’s a picture that you never saw during the Bush Administration: The commander-in-chief at Dover Air Force base, solemnly welcoming home America’s fallen dead.

I’m certain that some folks on the right will pooh-pooh President Obama’s trip to Dover as making it “all about him.” (Though reaction at The Corner is surprisingly restrained.)

To me, this is the biggest signal that Obama understands — whatever his cherished domestic priorities — that he is a war president, like it or not. Allowing himself to be photographed with a flag-draped coffin shows that he understands that he is accountable for the results of that war: Not just to the American public, but to every family that sacrifices a son or daughter because of the president’s decision to continue to commit troops to battle. And that, in turn, signals that he won’t make his war decisions based on how well it’s polling, but with the safety of Americans — at home and abroad — in mind.

At least, that’s what I hope. It could be that the president doubles down in Afghanistan, and while I think that would be a mistake, I have renewed confidence that he understands the stakes.

George Bush puts on a uniform, and goes to war

George P. Bush, that is, the 33-year-old son of Jeb. And while the Naval Reservist hasn’t actually received any deployment orders, he assures us in this interview that it’s only a matter of time.

Was P. scared? “The intel guys are typically inside the wire,” he said. “It’s the guys who wage the real war who put themselves in real danger. I’m the guy that helps them find the battlespace and informs them with the latest and greatest information to help them defeat the enemy.”

“From the personal safety standpoint,” George P. added, “I’m probably the last guy that will be in harm’s way.”

Kudos to him — both for signing up and for the self-deprecation about his probable role. Bush comes from a family that recently has been derided for its enthusiasm in sending other people’s kids off to war. Noblesse oblige carries an undemocratic taint to it — who made YOU noblesse? — but it’s good to see that the youngest George Bush has a sense of responsibility. And no, it’s probably not a coincidence that the Daily Beast interview also spent a considerable amount of time talking about his (seemingly bright) political uniform. I’m not going to hold that against him, though.

The only thing I might hold against him is his decision to give an interview to the Daily Beast about his probable deployment. A little bit of silent humility — instead of national publicity — would go a long way.