• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 3804 0

human rights advocates, anti-Bush journalists, lawyers of suspected terrorists, and others have argued relentlessly that the war on terrorism detainees at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere should be viewed not as detainees held off the battlefield pending the end of the conflict, but rather as domestic criminal defendants presumed to be innocent and entitled to a speedy trial in civil courts or immediate release.7 Because those arguments were not countered effectively, they prevailed in the public debate. Half truths, distortions, and outright lies were too often met with little or no rebuttal. There is plenty of blame to share for the failures in communication. The responsibility was first and foremost with those of us who served as the senior officials in the administration. War is more than secret intelligence, combat, and military operations. To use a military phrase, the center of gravity in a long war shifts from battlefields overseas to the home front. In a democracy, a war can be lost in Congress and in the news media at home, even if battles are won abroad. On the important issue of communicating and formulating detainee policy, we did not confront with sufficient energy or skill the political challenge represented by those who argued for using our own courts and legal system against us.

When it came to detainee policies, it proved easy for outsiders to criticize the Bush administration’s perceived mistakes, sometimes in unusually harsh terms. When Barack Obama, for example, assumed the responsibilities of commander in chief in 2009, he found that making policy was much different from making speeches. To the disappointment of some of the President’s supporters, his administration has kept in place the most contentious and widely derided Bush administration policies. Terrorists are still not accorded POW status under the Geneva Conventions. Guantánamo Bay—the so-called “gulag of our times”—remains in operation as the best available facility for holding dangerous terrorists. After flirting with trying captured terrorists in civilian courts of law, and even bringing Khalid Sheikh Muhammed to a courthouse in lower Manhattan, the administration changed course in response to a growing public outcry. As a result, military commissions—patterned on those established under the Bush administration—continue to be used to try terrorists. The Army Field Manual on interrogation developed by the Bush Department of Defense in 2006 has been embraced (though unwisely imposed on the CIA). The electronic surveillance of suspected terrorists, once roundly denounced by civil libertarians and by then Senator Barack Obama, continues. Risking allegations of war crimes by international law advocates, the administration has continued UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles) attacks against suspected terrorists, reportedly even targeting U.S. citizens. It is worth noting that killing these individuals by drone missile attacks affords them fewer legal rights than the military commissions President Obama opposed for years.

These decisions by the Obama administration, in my mind, are the correct ones. They undoubtedly were made After careful scrutiny, an examination of the possible alternatives, and with the sure knowledge that our country remains vulnerable to terrorist attack. There is one difference, however: President Obama had the benefit of succeeding a president who in the chaotic weeks After 9/11 had to put all these plans in place quickly, withstanding bitter partisan criticism and unpopularity for having done what he believed was best for the country. President Obama’s latter-day support of these decisions is evidence that on most of the big questions regarding our enemies, George W. Bush and his administration got it right.

PART XIII

Pulling On Our Boots:

Challenges and Controversies Beyond the War Zones

Annapolis, Maryland

JULY 4, 2006

I was expecting fireworks on Independence Day, but not at 2:30 in the afternoon and not from a despot in North Korea. The multistage Taepo-Dong 2 missile had been on its pad in the northeast