In his first State of the Union address on Tuesday evening, President Trump announced that he has ordered Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis to maintain the terrorist detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay.
He is right to do so.
Yet Trump also hit the right note when he articulated the moral imperative of countering terrorist groups. It took him just 56 words to do so.
“Terrorists who do things like place bombs in civilian hospitals are evil. When possible, we annihilate them. When necessary, we must be able to detain and question them. But we must be clear: Terrorists are not merely criminals. They are unlawful enemy combatants. And when captured overseas, they should be treated like the terrorists they are.”
Those words were apt for two reasons.
Their truth and their simplicity.
Because in referencing attacks on innocent civilians in hospitals and other places, Trump drew attention to the profound immorality that defines the tactical and strategic operation of enemies like the Islamic State and the Taliban. And in referencing the terrorists’ injustice, Trump drew a baseline for why men like Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Hibatullah Akhundzada and Hafiz Saeed are not criminals but rather combatant enemies of the republic.
Don’t get me wrong, this does not mean we should torture terrorists in our custody. We should not, and Jim Mattis deserves credit for persuading Trump of a better moral code of treatment.
Nevertheless, it is grievous strategic folly to apply rules of civilian criminal procedure to those waging war against us.
Doing so doesn’t simply dilute the functional efficiency of our counter-terrorism operations around the world, it allows the enemy to render themselves propagandists from behind bars. It also allows terrorist groups to present the United States as weak and unwilling to take the fight to them aggressively.
As I say, Trump’s words tonight were well chosen. Pursuant to a new authorization of military force in Congress, Trump should push ahead on this course of moral and strategic clarity.
