This was the reaction to Joe Biden’s defense of the Obami anti-terrorism approach on the Sunday talk shows:
The KSM trial has become a total mess. What Joe Biden said today on the program doesn’t pass the laugh test. The idea that we’re going to try a guy, not acquit him, apparently, if, beforehand, are we going to make Dick Cheney the foreman of the jury? I mean, how do we know that? … And then the second thing I think Cheney’s actually right about is Mirandizing. We, if we–say we’d captured the 9/11 guys on September 10th, or one of them, should we have read that guy his rights and given him a lawyer? No. We should have tried to get some intelligence out of the guy.
Cliff May? Andy McCarthy? Nope. David Brooks. And yes, when the Obami can’t even pass the “laugh test” with a moderate, sympathetic pundit who vouched for Candidate Obama and has dutifully reported the Obama’s best arguments, then you know the gig is about up. And Brooks didn’t stop there:
Eric Holder, the attorney general, took this decision without consulting the president, without consulting the national security apparatus, did it on his own. And slowly, and now quickly, the White House is pulling that back. And so they are going to try to, I think, take–well, take it out of New York. But they’re not there yet. The idea that we can try someone and, and guarantee a conviction and guarantee they won’t walk free, I mean, this, this is a betrayal of our values. I mean, what–the, the correct charges against Gitmo were that it’s a betrayal of our values. We’re fighting our values in a way that–we’re fighting this war in a way that betrays who we really are. And this is the essence of that. What Joe Biden said on the program today will be laughed at around the Arab world.
If Brooks can spot the not-Bush anti-terrorism policy collapsing in on itself, then Biden’s full-court press on the Sunday talk shows was all the more troubling. No one inside the White House can grasp how implausible the spin is? No one sees that a walk-back will be required — and be all the more embarrassing when preceded by another round of “how dare Dick Cheney say those awful things about us”?
Each day spent trying to beat back bipartisan opposition to their not Bush policies is a lost one for the White House, confirming that they are isolated, out of touch with our values (yes, irony alert), and not yet serious about fighting enemies who regard our foolishness as weakness. The president has not distinguished himself by decisiveness, but that’s certainly what he could use: a swift and decisive break from a year-long experience in reviving a failed criminal-justice model. The longer this goes on, the more of a mess it becomes and the harder it will be to unwind the self-inflicted damage (both from an intelligence and a political standpoint). So far, however, there is no a clear signal that Obama recognizes that such a firm, emphatic course change is required. He and the country will be the worse for it.
