Richard Cohen doesn't care about the law; he just wants to feel safe!
There is almost nothing the Obama administration does regarding terrorism that makes me feel safer. Whether it is guaranteeing captured terrorists that they will not be waterboarded, reciting terrorists their rights, or the legally meandering and confusing rule that some terrorists will be tried in military tribunals and some in civilian courts, what is missing is a firm recognition that what comes first is not the message sent to America's critics but the message sent to Americans themselves.
Cohen is in the minority of Americans in terms of his disapproval of the Obama administration's handling of terrorism. Later in the column, Cohen admits that Dick Cheney's "hearty endorsement of ugly interrogation measures" may have "soiled America's image." Never mind that those interrogation methods were originally developed to secure false confessions (not accurate intelligence), or that Cohen seems to have endorsed them quite heartily himself above. This isn't a matter of mere "image" -- I doubt another Muslim parent would come forth as Umar Abdulmutallab's father did, knowing that their child might be tortured at the hands of American authorities just so Cohen can "feel safe."
But hey, we already know Cohen's national security motivations. After the Iraq War, Cohen conceded that his support for the invasion was due to his desire to "go to 'them,' whoever 'they' were, grab them by the neck, and get them before they could get us. One of 'them' was Saddam Hussein." Cohen's tendency to support war as a form of collectivist revenge against "them" makes me skeptical that his reasons for supporting torture are rational, rather than emotional -- not that either would be acceptable.
Here's Cohen on the 9/11 trials:
KSM, Abdulmutallab and other accused terrorists should be tried. But these two are not Americans, and they are accused of terrorism, tantamount to an act of war -- a virtual Pearl Harbor, in KSM's case. A military tribunal would fit them fine. If it is good enough for your average GI accused of murder or some such thing, it ought to be good enough for a foreign national with mass murder on his mind.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other alleged 9/11 co-conspirators wouldn't be tried in military courts-martial, which are indistinguishable from civilian courts in their due process standards, but in a military commission, a newly constructed military system retroactively engineered to help the government to secure convictions. This is an error worthy of a correction, but I won't hold my breath.
Moreover, as Glenn Greenwald pointedout yesterday, the Constitution makes distinctions between "citizens"and "persons" and applies due process rights to the latter. Theprecedent for giving foreigners constitutional rights in criminalproceedings goes as far back as 1886.
On interrogating Abdulmutallab:
In a similar example of poor judgment, an undoubtedly delighted Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was told he had something called Miranda rights and could, if he so chose, cease talking about allegedly attempting to blow up a jetliner as it approached Detroit on Christmas Day. Abdulmutallab was Mirandized after just 50 minutes of interrogation and he, having probably seen more than his share of "Law & Order" episodes, promptly shut up.
Abdulmutallab was mirandized after he shut up, not that anyone would need a lawyer to tell them they don't have to talk. As a side note, maybe King Obama should cancel Law and Order by fiat, since it's making so many pundits wet their beds.
The pièce de résistance, however, is Cohen's view that "the ultimate civil liberty is a sense of security."
The Obama administration, on the other hand, seems to have bent over backward to prove to the world it is not the Bush administration and will, almost no matter what, ensure that everyone gets the benefit of American civil liberties. But the paramount civil liberty is a sense of security and this, sad to say, has eroded under Barack Obama.This is staggering: For Cohen, the most important "freedom" that is "guaranteed" to Americans is the "right" to a "sense of security." All others are unimportant and can be disregarded in favor of conveying a "sense of security."
An amendment outlining a right to a "sense of security" isn't in the Bill of Rights for a reason. The president takes an oath to protect and serve the Constitution, rather than the people of the United States, precisely because the Founders understood that an oath to the latter could be perverted and twisted into denying people's fundamental rights in the name of their "security." Further, this hysterical overreaction, the demand for symbolic displays of "toughness" in the name of "comfort" actively undermines the process of making good national security policy in a democracy.
Frankly, what frightens me most is not terrorism. It's this kind of fear -- the teeth-chattering of elite opinion-makers begging for the government to disregard all the freedoms that make America what it is in order to make them feel "safe." I can't think of a greater victory for al-Qaeda than the fear-induced self-destruction of American society.
-- A. Serwer
