[StBernard] Obama in Bush Clothing: America Fights On

[Westley Annis]

Obama in Bush Clothing: America Fights On
by Charles Krauthammer

"We were able to hold it off with George Bush. The idea 
that we might find ourselves fighting with the Obama 
administration over these powers is really stunning." 

-- Unnamed and dismayed human rights advocate, on legal-
izing indefinite detention of alleged terrorists, New York 
Times, May 21 

WASHINGTON - If hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to 
virtue, then the flip-flops on previously denounced anti-
terror measures are the homage that Barack Obama pays to 
George Bush. Within 125 days, Obama has adopted with only 
minor modifications huge swaths of the entire, allegedly 
lawless Bush program. 

The latest flip-flop is the restoration of military 
tribunals. During the 2008 campaign, Obama denounced them 
repeatedly, calling them an "enormous failure." Obama 
suspended them upon his swearing in. Now they're back. 

Of course, Obama will never admit in word what he's doing 
in deed. As in his rhetorically brilliant national-security 
speech on Thursday claiming to have undone Bush's moral 
travesties, the military commissions flip-flop is 
accompanied by the usual Obama three-step: (a) excoriate 
the Bush policy, (b) ostentatiously unveil cosmetic 
changes, (c) adopt the Bush policy. 

Cosmetic changes such as Obama's declaration that "we will 
give detainees greater latitude in selecting their own 
counsel." Laughable. High-toned liberal law firms are 
climbing over each other for the frisson of representing 
these miscreants in court. 

What about disallowing evidence received under coercive 
interrogation? Hardly new, notes former prosecutor Andrew 
McCarthy. Under the existing rules, military judges have 
that authority, and exercised it under the Bush administr-
ation to dismiss charges against al-Qaeda operative 
Mohammed al-Qahtani on precisely those grounds. 

On Guantanamo, it's Obama's fellow Democrats who have 
suddenly discovered the wisdom of Bush's choice. In open 
rebellion against Obama's pledge to shut it down, the 
Senate voted 90 to 6 to reject appropriating a single 
penny until the president explains where he intends to 
put the inmates. Sen. James Webb, the de facto Democratic 
authority on national defense, wants the closing to be 
put on hold. And on Tuesday, Democratic Senate Majority 
Leader Harry Reid said, no Gitmo inmates on American soil 
-- not even in American jails. 

That doesn't leave a lot of places. The home countries 
won't take them. Europe is recalcitrant. Saint Helena 
needs refurbishing. Elba didn't work out too well the 
first time. And Devil's Island is now a tourist 
destination. Gitmo is starting to look good again. 

Observers of all political stripes are stunned by how 
much of the Bush national security agenda is being adopted 
by this new Democratic government. Victor Davis Hanson 
(National Review) offers a partial list: "The Patriot Act, 
wiretaps, e-mail intercepts, military tribunals, Predator 
drone attacks, Iraq (i.e. slowing the withdrawal), 
Afghanistan (i.e. the surge) -- and now Guantanamo." 

Jack Goldsmith (The New Republic) adds: rendition -- 
turning over terrorists seized abroad to foreign countries; 
state secrets -- claiming them in court to quash legal 
proceedings on rendition and other erstwhile barbarisms; 
and the denial of habeas corpus -- to detainees in 
Afghanistan's Bagram prison, indistinguishable logically 
and morally from Guantanamo. 

What does it all mean? Democratic hypocrisy and 
demagoguery? Sure, but in Washington, opportunism and 
cynicism are hardly news. 

There is something much larger at play -- an undeniable, 
irresistible national interest that, in the end, beyond 
the cheap politics, asserts itself. The urgencies and 
necessities of the actual post-9/11 world, as opposed 
to the fanciful world of the opposition politician, 
present a rather narrow range of acceptable alternatives. 

Among them: reviving the tradition of military tribunals, 
used historically by George Washington, Andrew Jackson, 
Winfield Scott, Abraham Lincoln, Arthur MacArthur and 
Franklin Roosevelt. And inventing Guantanamo -- accessible, 
secure, offshore and nicely symbolic (the tradition of 
island exile for those outside the pale of civilization is 
a venerable one) -- a quite brilliant choice for the place-
ment of terrorists, some of whom, the Bush administration 
immediately understood, would have to be detained without 
trial in a war that could be endless. 

The genius of democracy is that the rotation of power 
forces the opposition to come to its senses when it takes 
over. When the new guys, brought to power by popular 
will, then adopt the policies of the old guys, a national 
consensus is forged and a new legitimacy established. 

That's happening before our eyes. The Bush policies in 
the war on terror won't have to await vindication by 
historians. Obama is doing it day by day. His denials 
mean nothing. Look at his deeds.