Obama's Gitmo

Editorial - April 21st - Wall Street Journal

In an impassioned 2006 speech on the Senate floor on the right to habeas corpus, Mr. Obama declared, "I do not want to hear that this is a new world and we face a new kind of enemy." During the campaign, his language implied that all we needed to settle the detainee issue once and for all was to shut down Gitmo.

As president, he is finding out that this very much is a new world, that we do face a new enemy, and that the problems posed by Guantanamo have less to do with the place than the people we detain there.

Put simply, the U.S. needs the ability to detain people we know to be dangerous without the evidence that might stand up in a federal criminal court. Because we can't say when this war will end, moreover, we also need to be able to detain them indefinitely. This is what makes the war on terror different, and why our policies will never fit neatly into a legal approach that is either purely criminal or purely military.

The good news is that Mr. Obama is smart enough to know that the relative obscurity of Bagram, not to mention the approval he has received on Guantanamo, enables him to do the right thing here without, as Mr. Greenwald notes, worrying too much that he will be called to account for a substantive about-face.

It is an about face though and totally hypocritical on an issue that is not about the meaning of our Constitution during war. It is instead all about the hunger for power of corrupt Judges. For those who may not remember the exact quote, our Constitution says the following about habeas corpus during insurrection or war, "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." Article 1, Section 9, Clause 2.

So what we are talking about here is really all about totalitarian power of Judges to restrict a President's ability to fight a war, a power that Judges are clearly denied any role in fighting. Judges have decided that an article about Presidential power cannot be left to the President to invoke. This hypocrisy is at the root of judicial insistence Abraham Lincoln committed unconstitutional acts when he suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. It is the arrogance and judicial rage over the denial of judicial omniscience that is truly at stake here.

When the Magic Marxist Messiah insisted that Bush was committing illegal actions, it was a totally cynical appeal to those on the left who really are pacifists. They do not consider any provocation, or aggressive action against us no matter what, to constitute "invasion".

Did the Islamo-fascists invade us on 9/11? To anyone who demands that our government protect us from foreign invasion the answer is obvious. To socialists and progressives on the left, who despise our economic freedom and believe that the economic success of some of our citizens is appalling when others are failing, free enterprise must be ended. To them NOTHING justifies our government defending Americans. To them our form of government is considered an abomination and attacking it by anyone is ALWAYS justified.

A great deal of the problem with our nation at this point, the honest rage of people who see spending 2 trillion dollars bailing out Wall Street millionaires and unemployed home buyers, is that the left is as unwilling to have an honest discussion over these issues as it is unwilling to have an honest discussion over Guantanamo Bay. To them it is simple. Our President is black and that means he CANNOT BE CRITICIZED! If you went to a Tea Party, you are a racist. That is the cultural norm of the left.

Obama was elected by a slim majority. He is ruling as if he was elected King. I have stopped believing the outcome of this period in our nation has any chance to be resolved with our freedoms intact unless the people who are not socialists in our nation start understanding that we are at war. At war with Islamo-fascists. At war with global socialists. At war with illegal aliens. The near future is not going to be pretty or polite or nice. We better be prepared to win or we will be steam rolled by people who do not care about the greatness of our country. They only care about their own hatred for our foundations of freedom and winning political power at any cost.

The left is at war with us and we are losing. What are you going to do to change this?