If the Wall Street Journal ever fires Karl Rove, expect him to appear at the Washington Post, where they're running a veritable welfare program for former Bush flacks. Rove gave his seal of approval to an op-ed by Fred Hiatt today in which Hiatt calls the Obama administration's handling of the Christmas bomber "disastrous" and tries to argue that the Republicans' politicization of national security can "help America":
Similarly, Republicans want to depict Obama as weak on terrorism and gain electoral advantage from that. But their probing helped reveal a stunning failure by the Obama administration to weigh its options before committing the Christmas bomber to the judicial system -- and that, presumably, will lead to a more considered process the next time around.
Hiatt simply asserts that the Obama administration's "failing to weigh its options" (the administration says this isn't true) on whether or not to handle Umar Abdulmutallab as a criminal defendant was "stunning" and "disastrous," but he doesn't actually explain why this particular instance required a departure from the precedent. He definitely doesn't explain what was "disastrous" or "stunning" about it. Hiatt doesn't bother arguing what could have possibly been gained by placing Abdulmutallab in military detention. He also doesn't grapple with other instances in which other detainees captured on American soil have been placed in military custody -- perhaps because in both circumstances, the detainees were moved back into the criminal justice system. One of the detainees, Ali Saleh al-Marri, didn't talk until he was moved out of military custody. It's also not clear that treating terrorism suspects this way is legal, and the past two administrations have dodged legal challenges on the assumption that it likely isn't.
We've learned that Abdulmutallab started talking once his interrogators brought pressure to bear from his family, whose cooperation could not have been secured had he been mistreated or locked up indefinitely in military custody. Eli Lake reports on what the government has learned:
U.S. officials told The Washington Times that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, facing charges as a would-be suicide bomber, revealed during recent cooperation with the FBI that he met with other English speakers at a terrorist training camp in Yemen. Three U.S. intelligence officials, including one senior official, disclosed on the condition of anonymity some details of the additional bomb plots.
This is the kind of stuff the U.S. might not be learning about if the administration had listened to the shrieking cries of Republicans more interested in positioning themselves for political advantage in the aftermath of a potential terrorist attack than acquainting themselves with basic facts, such as how the FBI handles its terrorism suspects. One could imagine how "stunning" and "disastrous" that might have been.
So, presumably, the crux of Hiatt's piece is a sort of Madisonian "ambition counters ambition" argument, where both parties politicize national security in a way that leads to a kind of equilibrium. The problem is that this equilibrium involves moving the "center" from the late Bush-era right -- a status quo Obama has maintained -- to Cheneyist lawlessness. The "more considered process" Hiatt wants is one in which the government arbitrarily decides when to follow its legal obligations under the Constitution -- but not because there's any actual security benefit from doing so, and Hiatt doesn't even try to argue that there is.
Hiatt should leave the hack work to his newest hire, whose pro-torture screeds at least lack his own soft-headed Broderian pretenses.
-- A. Serwer
