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Rich Lowry crows in reaction to the news that Khalid Sheik Mohammed and the other alleged 9/11 conspirators will be tried by military commission:
Where does George W. Bush go to get his apology? The prior statements of Obama and his top officials on Gitmo and the commissions are an embarrassing farrago of amateurish, self-righteous posturing — tripe more fit for the opinion columns of a student newspaper than for the counsels of government.Lowry is committing a logical fallacy that is typical of those inhabiting his moral universe, where successfully forcing the administration to back down on the 9/11 trials is mistaken for a victory on the merits. Cowardice and cynicism from Congress and ineptness from the administration doomed Obama's effort to try KSM and his cohorts in the shadow of Ground Zero. The military commissions remain a weak, endangered system where even a guilty plea or conviction could delay justice indefinitely. Lowry refers to the hybrid legal system for trying terrorists as a "dream," without noting that it was one America had without interruption when a Republican was in the White House. Isolating all terrorism cases in the military system is unfeasible as policy -- although I can't wait for Lowry's small-government case for why the military needs to be investigating domestic crimes.
Beyond the cynical political reasons for Republicans' opposition to the 9/11 trials though, is a practical one. Republicans wanted to avoid a public airing of the Bush administration's barbarism.
In the end, Obama doesn't owe Bush an apology. Just everyone who voted for him.
