Following the failed Christmas Day bombing of a Delta airliner, former Vice President Dick Cheney said President Obama does not consider the fight against terrorism to be war. Contesting this charge, the president cited his inaugural address. On that day, Obama insisted, “I made it very clear that our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred, and that we will do whatever it takes to defeat them.”
Having done virtually nothing to merit his ascent to the presidency other than give speeches and write books, Obama can be forgiven for confusing his rhetoric with reality. But Cheney can be forgiven for demanding better proof of Obama’s seriousness about combating terrorism than a speech he once gave.
It is telling, moreover, that even after canvassing his orations, Obama apparently failed to come up with one in which he had used the words “war” and “terrorism” in conjunction. The best he could find was an acknowledgment that we are at war with “a far-reaching network of violence and hatred.”
The absence of “war on terror” references is not accidental. The Obama administration has viewed that phrase as symptomatic of what its counterterrorism chief, John Brennan, calls “the inflammatory rhetoric, hyperbole and intellectual narrowness” that supposedly characterized the Bush administration.
Terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy, the deep thinkers in the Obama administration explained. How, they asked, can America be at war with a tactic?
But this turned out to be an easy riddle to solve. All it took was a terrorist attack that almost succeeded, followed by criticism from the dreaded Cheney.
Did Cheney’s criticism go too far? In some respects, the administration has acted as if it’s at war with terrorism. As Victor Davis Hanson observes, Obama has quietly adopted many of his predecessor’s responses to terrorism. For example, he continues to authorize intercepts, wiretaps and Predator attacks. And Obama has devoted more resources to fighting terrorists in Afghanistan than George W. Bush did.
Unfortunately, however, in crucial respects the Obama administration’s actions are inconsistent with the idea that the United States truly is at war with terrorism and the militant Islamists who engage in it. Foremost among them is its treatment of captured terrorists.
Consider the treatment of the would-be Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Despite the fact that there was good reason to believe, based in part on his own claims, that Abdulmutallab might well be the first in a wave of terrorist attackers dispatched by al Qaeda, the Obama administration placed him in the criminal justice system, rather than treating him as an enemy combatant and detaining him at a military facility for intensive interrogation.
This meant that Abdulmutallab was able to “lawyer up.” Thereafter, according to reports that the administration has not contradicted, he stopped talking.
Defending the administration’s treatment of Abdulmutallab, counterterrorism chief Brennan noted that during the Bush administration, terrorists such as Zacarias Moussaoui, Richard Reid and Jose Padilla were charged and tried in criminal court. But after being apprehended, Padilla was detained and interrogated at a military facility. Moussaoui was apprehended pre-9/11, before the war on terrorism began. And Reid was apprehended shortly after 9/11, before the mechanisms later used for Padilla were fully operational.
Obama’s policy with respect to releasing detainees has also been inconsistent with the view that we are at war with terrorism. Before Abdulmutallab’s bombing attempt, the administration had released several terrorists to Yemen and was poised to release dozens more there.
Yemen, though, had become an emerging center of al Qaeda activity and, indeed, was the source of the attack Abdulmutallab attempted. Moreover, several former detainees are now key al Qaeda leaders in Yemen.
It is difficult to reconcile Obama’s reckless release of detainees to Yemen with his claim that he considers us to be at war with terrorism. To the president’s credit, however, the administration has finally said that it will not send detainees to Yemen in the future.
Obama’s eagerness to negotiate with regimes that are key participants in the “network of violence and hatred” also undercuts his claim that he is at war with those forces. Iran, in particular, sponsors such a network throughout the Middle East. Its victims include Americans killed by Iranian agents in Iraq.
Being at war with terrorism does not necessarily require a shooting war with sponsors of terrorism. It may even be possible to be at war with terrorism while negotiating with its sponsors.
But Obama’s effort to sweet-talk Iran into negotiations with no preconditions, coupled with his tepid support for those who would overthrow the regime that sponsors so much terrorism, demonstrates an undue and even craven desire to accommodate that regime. This is inconsistent with being at war against the “network of violence and hatred.”
Finally, even in Afghanistan, where Obama has stepped up the shooting war, his seriousness is questionable. At the same time he announced the long-awaited troop surge, he informed the American public, as well as the enemy, that we will begin withdrawing troops by July 2011.
Setting an arbitrary date by which we will begin pulling out of what Obama stipulates is the central battlefield against terrorism is not consistent with treating the fight against terrorism as war — at least not for very long. Perhaps Obama should amend his inauguration statement to say: We will do whatever it takes to defeat the network of violence and hatred as long as it doesn’t take more than 18 months.
It is no accident that, until the Christmas near-catastrophe and for an uncomfortable period thereafter, the Obama administration was reluctant to speak of being at war, either with terrorism or with the militant Islamists who engage in it. Throughout 2009, whether the issue was interrogating and sidelining terrorists, fighting them on the battlefield, or dealing with the states that support them, Obama acted without the urgency and seriousness that characterizes a president at war.
We can only hope that, having narrowly avoided disaster, Obama will step it up in 2010.
Sunday Reflection contributor Paul Mirengoff is a lawyer in Washington and a principal author of Powerlineblog.com.
