Posted by
Patrick Henry on Sunday, November 15, 2009 3:20:29 PM
Since taking office Barack Obama has made a series of decisions which, to many Americans are unfathomable.
Why did he announce the closure of the prison at Guantanamo Bay before having a concrete strategy in place
to deal with the dangerous men being detained there? Why is he still dithering about what to do in Afghanstan
when continued delay plays into the hands of the Taliban? Why, after promising that he would not do so, does he
allow his attorney general to persecute, er, prosecute the CIA tasked with catching and interrogating these monsters?
But the question pushing others to the back of the line today is why did Obama and his attorney general decide to try
accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his co-conspirators as criminals, and in New York?
The simple answer to what goes on in the mind of a liberal is "not very much." But reflection reveals a carefully
calculated political and philosophical equation in which certain basic commitments drive everything else. It can
best be seen in Obama;s reaction to the Fort Hood massacre in which radical Islamist Nidal Hasan murderd
13 and wounded thirty more while screaming "allahu akbar," god is great. A number of White House critics
have rasied the question about why Obama's first response was to caution against "jumping to conclusions" and
to quickly label what happened "a horrific crime,." even insisting that the Senate delay investigating related
intelligence and security breaches until the criminal investigation is completed. The reason is simple, and it also
explains why Obama wants Mohammed tried in New York. He wants no linakge whatever between terrorism
and Fort Hood because if we call it terrorism then we have to concede that it was this man's radical Islamist
ideologoy that drove him to murder and thus connects him to the worldwide network of violent Islamic jihad.
If we paint him as a lunatic, or even a common criminal who acted alone, we are spared the exercise of
connecting the dots that Obama desparately wants to avoid connecting. If a person commits a crime, then
we simply try him as a criminal. If he commits terrorism, then that connects his actions with a broader international
consppiracy, whether specific to the event in question or generalized as a crusade to kill Americans.
If Americans reach the latter conclusion, which polls suggest more than 60% have, then the carnage becomes
an attack in a wider war for which Obama has no stomach. If he labels Fort Hood terrorism, then he concedes
that it is an act of war, involving not just an individual but a group. Since it is very difficult, if not impossible
to try a group so large as the whole jihadist movement in criminal court, some other means must be found to
render justice, i.e., war. Obama's liberal mindset will simply not allow him to countenance the possibility that we
are unalterably and unequivocally at war with radical Islam. It's a war he's afraid of, one which distracts from
his socialist domestic agenda and one which financially strains a nation he has already spent to the verge of
bankruptcy with his bailouts, stumulus packages and entitlements. And it is at odds with the version of reality
that he tried to seel to the Muslim world in his Cairo speech. In his mind, if we can simply convict and imprison
some of the more notorious jihadists, that will get us off the hook to succeed in fighting terrorism abroad. Ah,
if only it were that simple.
It is definotely more politically correct to say that Mohammed, Binalshib and, for that matter, Hasan were
random sociopaths who did terrible things. It is completely another to face the fact that it is an extreme and
violent faction of one of the world's most popular religions that motivates and binds them inextricably together
in their nefarious intent. Killing a few of the snakes can never substitute for wiping out the nest. In his pique to
appease Muslims, Obama has thrown criminality, war and terror all into the same perverse blender and concocted
a mixture too bitter for Americans to drink. In so doing he is using the typical liberal sleight-of-hand by calling
something obvious by another name, in hopes that no one will notice that he's trying to do a hammer's job with
a screwdriver.
Differentiate for us if you can, Mr. President, between 9/11, the attack on the USS Cole, the bombing of the
Nairobi embassy and the massacre at Fort Hood. Each wantonly took American life. Each was planned and carried
out by radical Muslims. Each was applauded worldwide by still other Muslims. Exactly what would it take for you
to admit that America is at war with radical Islam? The answer is that there is no imaginable set of circumstances
that would elicit such an admission from this president, because to make such would be to set in motion a nearly
infinite regress of policy shockwaves would simply unravel his liberal commitments.
So we have come to this. We bring one of America;s sworn enemies to our most populous city, a city he has
already profaned with his murderous acts and his obscene version of a religion, and we involve him, after the fact,
in a criminal prosecution in which evidence may now be suspect, procedure difficult to follow, security a nightmare
and the outcome uncertain. This is Barack Obama and Eric Holder's concept of justice. The only thing missing to
complete the farce is a judge with "empathy" for the murderers. But the White House is undoubtedly interviewing.
Why does Barack Obama make so many bad decisions? All of his intellectual water is drawn from a poisoned well.