Soccer Dad

It's a war. no, it's a crime.

Charles Krauthammer:

The system worked.

Well, it did for Abdulmutallab. What he lost in flying privileges he gained in Miranda rights. He was singing quite freely when seized after trying to bring down Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit. But the Obama administration decided to give him a lawyer and the right to remain silent. We are now forced to purchase information from this attempted terrorist in the coin of leniency. Absurdly, Abdulmutallab is now in control.

And this is no ordinary information. He was trained by al-Qaeda in Yemen, and just days after he was lawyered up and shut up, the United States was forced to close its embassy in Yemen because of active threats from the same people who had trained and sent Abdulmutallab.

This is nuts. Even if you wanted ultimately to try him as an ordinary criminal, he could have been detained in military custody -- and thus subject to military interrogation -- without prejudicing his ultimate disposition. After all, every Guantanamo detainee was first treated as an enemy combatant and presumably interrogated. But some (most notoriously Khalid Sheik Mohammed) are going to civilian trial. That determination can be made later.

This is, of course, the problem of treating terrorism as a criminal matter. But as the Provocateur points out, if President Obama feels that terrorism is a criminal matter, why is he unleashing drones on the terrorists?

That's the point. This is a war. A drone is used in war. It isn't used as a tool of criminal apprehension. So, if President Obama wants to make sure everyone gets due process, he better start at the point of attack and send in police and apprehend and not a drone to kill.

This is a problem that Israel faces. When Israel has killed terrorist leaders - especially when they're among civilians - its critics scream "extrajudicial punishment." Of course if the guy was organizing terrror attacks he was a combatant even if he wasn't wearing a uniform.

Instapundit notes, that even if the Guantanamo inmates like their lawyers, they still apparently prefer the tropical climate.

The strident left-wing critiques of the Guantanamo facility have all centered around the fact that detainees there are horribly mistreated and conditions unbearable. But when push comes to shove, it would seem concerns about Guantanamo are overblown, and the prisoners there know that being held under the Geneva conventions outside the U.S. is much preferable to a maximum security prison in the U.S.

Surber notes a related irony.