Following a surprisingly good showing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee this week in which he managed to parry one baseless Republican criticism after another, Attorney General Eric Holder delivered a speech before a civil libertarian crowd at the Constitution Project's awards dinner. What transpired, as Spencer Ackerman writes, was pretty much a political-science textbook definition of a Sistah Soulja moment:
Like every person sitting in this room, like the President and those who serve this Administration, and like every Member serving in our Congress, I am determined to win this war. I know we can, and I am certain we will. But victory and security will not come easily. And they won't come at all if we approach this work by adhering to a rigid ideology or narrow methodology.
The civil libertarian community is basically the only constituency Holder has had at his side since he announced the decision to try the 9/11 defendants in civilian courts. The GOP has continually smeared him as a weakling whose commitment to this sissy "rule of law" stuff prevents him from doing what it takes to Keep Us Safe. With his speech, Holder implicitly compared the people in the audience -- the people who have supported him through his extended media flogging -- to the very "rigid ideologues" whose attacks they have defended him from. From Holder's speech:
It says something, though, about the quality of the debate when the idea of using both the Article III justice system and military commissions has become deeply controversial. This Administration rejects the false choice critics would have us make, because if we were to exclusively follow only one path while blocking the use of the other, we would undoubtedly fail in our fundamental duty to bring every terrorist to justice. That is simply not an outcome we can accept.
Yes, the fight against al-Qaeda has become both a military and law-enforcement one, and there is a genuine legal conundrum here that was the catalyst for the Bush administration's lawlessness. But Holder's formulation is just an angry variation of Obamaism: Because the administration finds itself being criticized by both the right and left, that should mean its approach is inherently correct.
Holder makes no distinction between those critics who are against the use of military commissions because they see them as unfair and ineffective, and the Republicans attacking the effectiveness of the civilian court system out of pure political cynicism. Holder suggests he sees no difference in the "quality" of debate here and no "inherent contradiction" about declaring he has a "fundamental duty to bring every terrorist to justice" and his disclosure to the Senate Judiciary Committee that 48 of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay will never be tried or released if the administration has its way. I also await the administration's reconciliation of the "inherent contradiction" of prosecuting NSA whistleblowers all while "looking forward" when it comes to the architects of torture.
With the departures of Phil Carter and Greg Craig, Holder is the closest thing in the administration civil libertarians have to a champion, so they'll stick with him. But as Ackerman notes, there's something shocking about Holder perpetuating the myth to their faces that civil libertarians don't understand the realities of war with al-Qaeda. They get the stakes. They get that even wars of necessity are dire threats to American freedom. They understand James Madison's axiom that "no nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
That's why they fight.
-- A. Serwer
