(originally published November 21 on David Horowitz Newsreal blog---see below for link)
This week’s juxtaposition of Janet Napolitano’s theater of the absurd roll-out of new airport screening methods with the conviction of “man caused disaster doer,” Ahmed Ghailani, for conspiring to destroy property, almost makes one forget how bad our economic circumstances are.
When Napolitano was asked by reporters Monday “will you insist that {women wearing hijabs} go through full body pat downs?” she responded not with a “yes,” but said “with regard to that specific issue there will be more to come…..we are doing this to keep powders, liquids, and gels off the planes.” That really is all you need to know about Obama’s TSA. But for extra credit, I include the following.
Every time a shoe, underwear, a box cutter or whatever is used once in an attempted terrorist attack by a foreign Muslim, a specific prohibition on all Americans is enacted. For air travelers it is akin to the proverbial frog being slowly boiled to death. Ann Coulter is exactly correct—-the final step will be explicit cavity searches. There are approximately 50,000 commercial air flights a day worldwide. That is 18 million flights a year or about 1.5 billion travelers a year. It is interesting that whatever policy was in place at the time of the several post 9/11 attacks (shoe bomber guy, Detroit underwear guy—-probably others) they were unable to detect the “man caused disaster doer” in advance of boarding the plane. Yet each time he was foiled. The policies put in place early on in 2002, combined with passenger and crew awareness, have been very effective, despite these few exceptions among close to 200 million flights globally. Napolitano, who clearly is utterly clueless and not making any of these decisions, is a sight to behold. Despite these newer TSA prison search policies, there will still be some future Richard Reid. How much more effective can we reasonably be?
The most successful preventions have come well before people have even entered airports. This is because resources are actually focused on high probability targets instead of our one size fits all body searches. The probability of a terrorist attack by plane was and still remains remote. Passengers also will never again be surprised and unresponsive. I would like to see the statistics of actual would be terrorists caught just prior to boarding a plane. I do not recall ever hearing of any, but there must have been some, right? The TSA does perform checks on its screeners. USA Today reported in 2007 that 75% of TSA plants made it through the screeners. But we still have few incidents. We all are willing to endure slowdowns etc., to improve safety. But the spectacle now being imposed has become degrading and humiliating to us as individuals and as a nation. It is humiliating because what we are doing is transparently stupid and extreme.
If you disagree, why aren’t we demanding all cars be searched at rush hour on all bridges and tunnels in America? Or, why isn’t every package carried by an individual walking on a city bridge not checked for explosives or machine guns? Or why aren’t every person on crutches checked to see if their crutches can be converted to sniper rifles (Day of the Jackal).
Plus, apparently airports can choose to “opt out”, as Orlando just announced it will hire a private company. (Look for lawsuits from profiled passengers). How does that fit in? Homeland Security was always a bad idea. “Money is no object” bureaucracies are always looking to branch out to justify their roles. As they do, our common sense gets slowly boiled away.
Our second terror related event of the week was the trial of Ahmed Ghailani. Indisputable proof that civilian trials, such as the recently completed Ahmed Ghailani trial, are a “dead policy walking” is that Joe Biden was sent out to defend it. Whenever complex legal matters arise who but Syracuse Law School “plagiarizer” and VP Joe Biden (it really is amazing when you think about it) would one look to for nuanced analysis?
For reasons only Eric Holder and his all but drained and emptied boss can know, they attempted to embark on a US civilian trial path for foreign nationals captured in foreign countries engaged in violent actions against America in foreign countries. This was advertised as demonstrating our moral superiority to those who behead people for flouting resistance to various forms of Sharia Law. As such, they will hate us less. I think that’s the gist of the argument. I would prefer they focus on making sure things like trade agreements are already in place with, say, South Korea, before attending a victory signing.
The Ghailani case was originally cast as a trial balloon–no pun intended. It was scheduled as a practice run for the now canceled civil trial of 9/11 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. That plan was dropped almost a year ago as New York said “thanks, but no thanks.” Guess where KSM resides? Before we get to Guantanamo, let’s review the Ghailani case. He is a Tanzanian Muslim “preacher” who was a top 10 wanted terrorist on the FBI list created soon after 9/11. He was/is an al Qaeda member with an expertise in explosives. He was captured in Pakistan in July of 2004 after the Bush administration declared he and several others were planning a terrorist attack against the US. Democrats at the time accused Bush of pulling a political stunt to improve his poll numbers. He was also one of the major suspects in the Nairobi US Embassy bombings in 1998, the reason he made the 2001 FBI most wanted terrorist list. The primary reason 285 out of 286 counts were dropped in his case was that the government’s key witness was disallowed.
The Obama administration‘s 2009 emphasis regarding civilian trials of “enemy combatants” was intertwined with its views about Guantanamo. Obama campaigned hard on closing it down but an emphasis on civilian trials and elimination of water boarding is what distinguished his views from Bush, who also claimed a desire to close the base (as did McCain). For those who oppose it, Guantanamo represents the US taking away internationally sanctioned rights of imprisoned and uncharged Muslim terror suspects by never having to declare when they might be released or have charges brought against them. The physical location itself obviously has no bearing on this issue.
In case you have not noticed, the Obama policy actually remains unchanged from Bush’s. He has wanted to change it but was unable to because of popular opinion. His only explicit chance at demonstrating a difference turned out to be this Ghailani case, which is now a public relations nightmare. Having all but one count dropped may not have been as scary close as it seems, but it is close enough for people’s original suspicions to be justified.
The US is a party to all Geneva Convention protocols. But the concept of what constitutes an unlawful combatant, a lawful combatant, a POW and whatever sub-categories exist, is Talmudic to the extreme. Yet these interpretations do determine the legality of various policies. I am confident that logical arguments in the abstract, given the unanticipated recent rise of cross national guerrilla warfare organizations such as al Qaeda, can make opposing legal arguments each sound plausible. I am equally confident that such laws as now written have significant internal contradictions and undefined operational definitions that make the interpretation itself the precedent setting and law defining event.
Like all law, therefore, this means the choice to try Ghailani in New York City was purely political in nature. The Obama administration chose to take this course of action (which he effectively has already reversed by the cancellation of the KSM trial) based on his political views. It was designed to curry favor with the internationalist left wing element of the Democrat party of which he and Holder are a part. Obama even seemed to have the naive belief that this would actually help in our relationship with these terrorist organizations and enemy nations.
Now we have Biden proclaiming the civil trial is better because the sentence is longer than it would have been had there been a military tribunal. We have no idea what would have happened under a military tribunal. But is that the case he is supposed to make? Its process they have always argued for, not outcomes. I could be wrong, but is there any chance at all Ghailani would have been released under any circumstances even if declared not guilty? The answer is no. It would be absolute political suicide. This was all but stated explicitly by Holder in Congress when making his case for a civilian trial of Mohammed.
This “we guarantee conviction” argument is a strong reason for not having civilian trials of known terrorists. These really are and would be show trials. These guys would never go free because it would guarantee electoral disaster. So why push the envelope on this issue? The people have zero sympathy for fake constitutional rights for terrorist enemies such as Ghailani.
Obama actually has heard this message loud and clear. If the KSM revolt did not do the trick, the dismissal of 285 counts in the Ghailani trial certainly did. But he is stuck, hoisted once again on his own petard.
Perhaps if he only communicated with us more…………….
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