February 3, 2010
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is talking. According to the FBI, the “Christmas Day bomber” is cooperating with them in obtaining more information about al-Qaeda in Yemen. Abdulmutallab’s case, prosecuted under the Obama administration, is a sharp turn from the Bush administration’s approach to handling terrorist. This latest success, if it can be called that, can not be good news for former Vice-President Dick Cheney and other Republicans who have been very visible in their criticism of President Obama’s handling of terrorist and detainees.
In a recent article by E.J. Dionne Jr. he said “rehabilitating Bush’s approach to terrorism depends on discrediting Obama’s”. A truer statement has never been spoken. Discrediting the Obama administration in general has been the Republicans approach on everything rather than offering viable alternatives that are constructive.
I hardly doubt that all of Obama’s ideas regarding terrorist and terrorism is going to work, but there’s an old saying: “there’s always two ways to skin a cat”. And one of the things that’s always set America apart from much of the rest of the world is our insistence on treating our enemies humanely. While we must be able to react quickly and decisively to our enemies actions, the Bush approach to detainees/prisoners placed us in the same camp as past and present day terrorist — torturers.
As though to put an exclamation point on the Obama approach, we’ve also learn that not a single one of the detainees released by the Obama administration has resurfaced as terrorist. Naturally there’s plenty of time for that to happen, and probably will, but 20 percent of those released by the Bush administration returned to the world of crime, according to this report. What does that mean? Well, among other possible things, it could mean that replacing torture with sensible, humane, meaningful methods, defining who is and who’s not a real threat is much easier. We’ll have to do what the Bush administration did — wait and see. In the meantime, I have no doubt that once a suitable spin has been agreed upon, we’ll see Dick Cheney on Fox News again telling the world how this latest achievement is no achievement at all.
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