Obama and Terrorism

This post is a response to Island Boy's comment on my previous post about how Obama's national security decisions are making us less safe. This issue is so important that I decided to respond with a full post instead of merely a responding comment. If there were ever an issue with life-or-death significance, this is it. I want to demonstrate three things in this post. 1.) The Bush Administration's tough approach to terrorism is both moral and necessary. 2.) The Obama Administration's weak approach to terrorism is immoral and dangerous. 3.) The evidence demonstrates that Obama's weak approach to terrorism is not working.

1.) Island Boy makes the following claim: "If we torture and waterboard terrorists, then are we any better than the terrorists we are trying to capture? Who gives us this divine right to do as we are please with another human? Nate, I guess you subscribe to 'an eye for an eye' belief." This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of the Bush Administration's "enhanced interrogation techniques," which are not the same as torture. The purpose of these techniques is not to take vengeance on people we don't like. It is to obtain valuable information about future planned attacks and terrorist activities that will enable us to stop those attacks, capture more terrorists, and in the process save many innocent human lives. There is no conceivable moral equivalency between us and the terrorists. Terrorists blow up innocent civilians, including women and children. CIA & military interrogators use tough, but not inhumane, methods to extract information from hardened killers in order to protect those innocent civilians. Terrorists are evil, violent murderers; CIA & military interrogators are heroes who work tirelessly to keep us safe day and night. There is no comparison between torture and enhanced interrogation techniques (including waterboarding). Torture is used by totalitarian regimes to inflict permanent physical harm on people they don't like. Saddam Hussein made torture chambers for his political opponents. Islamic countries in the Middle East sentence women and girls guilty of "unchastity" to have their arms sawed off or to be gang-raped. By contrast, our country under Bush subjected a select few of the most dangerous, top-level capture foreign terrorists to techniques like sleep deprivation, aggressive questioning, loud music, and drowning simulations to frighten hardened killers into giving up vital information for our national security. There were less than 30 terrorists who were interrogated in this way, and only three of them were waterboarded. No serious or permanent physical harm was done to any of them, and in each case we received valuable information about planned terrorist attacks that we had been previously unable to obtain. Thousands of lives were saved as a result of these targeted interrogations. This is the very definition of moral and right, at least in my book. These terrorists are being treated far better than they deserve -- reasonable living conditions, plenty of food and water, freedom to practice their religion of hate, no immediate execution. So don't claim "human rights" violations to me.

2.) By contrast, the Obama Administration has completely abandoned the "tough" approach to terrorism. His Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, abandoned the term "terrorism" in favor of the words "man-caused disaster." This sends a clear message that we are unwilling to recognize evil for what it is and confront it; instead we prefer to sugarcoat it. Obama is trying to shut down Guantanamo Bay, which means that dangerous terrorists will either be released overseas or brought to the U.S. The first option invites dangerous killers to kill more U.S. citizens, and the second option puts Americans at risk of having dangerous killers present in their communities. This sends a clear message that we are willing to compromise the security of Americans in order to appear "nice" to the world. Obama's Attorney General, Eric Holder, has announced that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, one of the masterminds of the 9/11 attacks, will receive a civilian trial in the U.S. along with numerous other foreign terrorists. Such a move gives foreign terrorists many constitutional and legal rights reserved only for U.S. citizens, offers them a huge public forum to spout their hatred for the U.S., puts the safety and security of American cities and communities at risk, risks the public release of a huge amount of classified intelligence information, and offers the opportunity that killers might go free based on any number of technicalities or procedural violations -- all at huge expense to taxpayers. This sends a clear message to terrorists all over the world that if they are caught by America they will be treated like U.S. citizens instead of the enemy combatants they are, and encourages them to believe that our country is more concerned about cultivating a non-threatening image abroad than protecting our citizens and giving justice to terrorists. After the failed Christmas Day attack, a vacationing Obama waited three days to give an extremely brief, detached public statement before quickly heading back to the golf course. This sends the message that our president doesn't think terrorist attacks are that big of a deal. Once the Christmas Day bomber was captured, he was only interrogated for about 50 minutes by the FBI before being read his Miranda rights and "lawyering up." Even though the initial interview revealed he could provide significant information about terrorist activities, as soon as this non-U.S. citizen was given a lawyer and constitutional rights, he clammed up and completely stopped cooperating. No one from the CIA and no terrorist experts ever had a chance to interview him or to follow up on any important information. People could lose their lives because of this mistake; yet no one in the Obama Administration was held accountable for this. This sends the message to terrorists that if captured they have nothing to fear from us. Obama's Attorney General has opened an investigation into the CIA for alleged human rights violations that were legal at the time they were committed. This sends the message to the CIA that they should be more focused on protecting themselves from internal investigations than tracking down terrorists, and encourages terrorists that our country is weak and disunited.

I could go on and on with these examples. All of them send the message that we don't take terrorism seriously, that we aren't going to be aggressive in tracking terrorists down and interrogating them, that we are more interested in being popular in the world than in keeping our citizens safe. These terrorists have spent their lives in a world of violence, have been taught hatred from their youngest years, and are hardened to the worst of cruelties. In their society, freedom and democracy are non-existent. The strong rule the weak. The only language they know is force. They perceive our gestures of goodwill not as a reason for them to renounce violence, but as an admission by us of weakness and defeat. Repeatedly backing away from confrontation with a bully just encourages his behavior rather than stopping it. This is far more true with hardened terrorists.

3.) In light of my previous analysis, it makes sense that radical Islamic terrorism would be emboldened by Obama's actions. And when we look at the evidence, we find that this is the case. Internationally, terrorist attacks spiked by almost 50% in 2009 compared with 2008, including significant increases in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Twelve terrorist incidents occurred on U.S. soil in 2009, compared with an average of less than three per year each year of the Bush Administration after 9/11. Of course, the worst of these was the only actual successful terrorist attack on our soil since 9/11 - the Fort Hood shootings. And we know that there were many warning signs prior to the attack that were ignored due to an obsession with political correctness. There were also the Christmas Day bombing and the plot to bomb NYC targets. Terrorist "chatter" is up significantly in recent months. Bin Laden recently released another videotape, and he doesn't seem very impressed with Mr. "Nice Guy" Obama. Iran continues to ignore our attempts at engagement and defy our repeated cooperation deadlines. The terrorists are becoming more active, not less. Obama's response cannot be prevention techniques like "full body scans." This just eats into our liberties. We have to go after the terrorists and destroy them. Or they will destroy us. This is a life-or-death struggle, and Obama and his people seem oblivious.