Last week, I wrote a post from Gitmo noting that the concerns National Review's Andrew McCarthy has expressed about civilian courts leaking sensitive information aren't resolved by military commissions. Spencer Ackerman responds:
In fairness, McCarthy told me he doesn’t carry any particular brief for military commissions. He favors the establishment of special national security courts for terrorism cases, an idea also favored by Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institution and Jack Goldsmith of Harvard — and, for that matter, by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) — but rejected by the Obama administration. (So far.)Yeah. Well that's also the position favored by current Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, whom McCarthy smeared as a traitor, one of the "al-Qaeda bar" now working at the Justice Department.
It's not just that McCarthy's arguments hold up poorly to scrutiny. It's that to caulk their weaknesses, he turns to smearing those whom he identifies with the other side not as merely wrong, but as individuals actively working to aid the enemy, criticisms that are then amplified by people like Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol. He does this even when these people offer few substantive differences from him on policy matters. This should make clear how completely craven, dishonest, and tribal these criticisms are.
-- A. Serwer
