As the Table Turns

It’s been my view that the anti-anti-terrorist movement amongst liberals since 2001 had little to do with principled stands on civil liberty or pacifism, but was driven by sheer vindictiveness against George W. Bush for having the nerve to beat Al Gore in 2000. Ever since then, more important for Democrats than the security and success of the nation was preventing the success of the hated Bush.

I went so far as to believe that the Democrats were perfectly willing to see us lose a war, or lose American lives in a terror attack because intelligence operations were compromised or obstructed--or otherwise allow harm to the country, if those things contributed to sabotage the Bush administration. I believed it, in part, because I watched it happening in front of my very eyes.

It is probably the most cynical opinion I’ve ever held. And it’s turning out to be absolutely true.

The proof of it is demonstrated in the Left’s sudden discovery, since Election Day, that Islamic terrorists are a threat to the country. Of course, the only thing that’s changed in the Islamic war against the West since November 4th is who’s turn it is to lead the fight. It's not as if we've just had another 9/11-type attack (thanks to George W. Bush).

But until Obama was elected the Left consistently treated Islamic terrorism as, at best, a marginal criminal matter whose root causes can be blamed on American racism, imperialism, and unwillingness to adopt the Kyoto Treaty, or, at worst, something made up by Cheney-Bush at a barbecue in Crawford, Texas.

Regardless, at no time has it been taken seriously by liberals.

(Asking “Why haven’t we caught bin Laden yet?” is not taking it seriously. That was only meant as a jibe at Bush. They said the same thing until Bush caught Saddam, and when Bush did they promptly went about-face and said catching Saddam didn't make any difference. No one who understands this battle believes that bin Laden’s head on a pole on international TV will end global Islamic jihadist attacks. And if he’s captured alive, no one on the Left will let him face justice without whimpering that his rights are being violated.)

Anyway, I see where Michelle Malkin has tapped into some of this, too, in her recent comments about the incoming administration’s sudden maturity on the subject of Gitmo:

Playing Games at Gitmo
Nothing clarifies the mind like a jihadi boomerang.

By Michelle Malkin

The human-rights crowd is right: Life is hard for a Guantanamo Bay detainee. The deprivation is unspeakable. According to the facility’s “cultural adviser,” their brains have not been “stimulated” enough. So this Thanksgiving, America is drawing up plans to provide the 250 or so suspected jihadists at the “notoriously Spartan” detention camp with basic sustenance including, as reported by the Miami Herald, movie nights, art classes, English-language lessons, and “Game Boy-like” electronic devices.

Next up: Wii Fi, Guitar Hero, Sudoku, People magazine, and macrame. Anything less would be uncivilized.

On a deadly serious note, the detainees aren’t the only ones playing games at Gitmo. Some top legal advisers and supporters of Barack Obama, whose name detainees chanted on election night, are now rethinking the president-elect’s absolutist campaign position on shutting the center down and flooding our mainland courts with every last enemy combatant designee. Yes, reality bites. And Democrats must now grapple with the very real possibility that an Obama administration could potentially release a Gitmo denizen who would turn around and commit mass terrorist acts on American soil or abroad.

Nothing clarifies the mind like a jihadi boomerang. Never before have an administration and its followers matured so quickly in office — and they haven’t even taken office yet.

While Obama paid lip service to the “Close the Gitmo gulag!” agenda on 60 Minutes over the weekend, his kitchen cabinet is proceeding more pragmatically. Believe it or not, the Obama crowd is now contemplating a preventive detention law and an alternative judicial system for the most sensitive national security cases involving the most highly classified information — information that has no place being aired in the civilian courts for public consumption.

Listen to relentless Bush critic David Cole, who told the New York Times last week: “You can’t be a purist and say there’s never any circumstance in which a democratic society can preventively detain someone.” Added Ben Wittes of the Brookings Institution: “I’m afraid of people getting released in the name of human rights and doing terrible things.”

Moreover, Obama transition team members have suggested to The Wall Street Journal that despite his campaign season CIA-bashing, “Obama may decide he wants to keep the road open in certain cases for the CIA to use techniques not approved by the military, but with much greater oversight.”

Next thing you know, they’ll start arguing that the world has been fooled by years of sob-story propaganda about the Gitmo detainees — funded by Kuwaiti government-subsidized lawyers who cast them all as innocent potato farmers and schmucks dazed and confused on battlefields.

Next thing you know, they’ll rediscover the facts that detainees have systematically lied and exaggerated stories about mistreatment at Gitmo, and that interrogators and military personnel have bent over backward to accommodate their personal and religious needs and wants.

Next thing you know, they’ll start reminding us that dozens of former Gitmo detainees have been released and recaptured on the battlefield while committing acts of terrorism.

Funny, when President Bush and his homeland-security team realized these very realities seven years ago, they were branded terrorists and hounded relentlessly by Congress, the media and the left. When Attorney General Michael Mukasey eloquently defended the administration’s counterterrorism policies at the Federalist Society before he collapsed, he was heckled as a “tyrant.” And when I wrote my second book expounding on this very thesis, I was labeled a racist and fascist whose ideas exploring the proper balance between security and civil liberties had no place in public discourse.

Now, at long last, some liberals have realized that the sacred goal of “regaining America’s moral stature in the world,” as Obama put it, may be less important than ensuring that al-Qaeda killers don’t strike on American ground again.

Viva la Hope and Change!
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