Obama Ends War On Terror; Terrorists On Different Page

Barack Obama ended the war on terror yesterday.  He announced he was going to end the practice of incarcerating terrorists; he said that we must treat all terrorists captured as the most gracious of hosts and precede questioning with the words, “Pretty please”; he selected a liberal political hack who would make it his life’s work to dismantle our intelligence apparatus; and he basically holds the position that the whole “war on terror” thing was just a big mistake to begin with.

The Washington Post has a powerful article entitled, “Bush’s “War On Terror” Comes To Sudden End,” which I shall post in its entirety at the end of this article.  Let me post a couple of introductory paragraphs:

President Obama yesterday eliminated the most controversial tools employed by his predecessor against terrorism suspects. With the stroke of his pen, he effectively declared an end to the “war on terror,” as President George W. Bush had defined it, signaling to the world that the reach of the U.S. government in battling its enemies will not be limitless…

Key components of the secret structure developed under Bush are being swept away: The military’s Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, facility, where the rights of habeas corpus and due process had been denied detainees, will close, and the CIA is now prohibited from maintaining its own overseas prisons. And in a broad swipe at the Bush administration’s lawyers, Obama nullified every legal order and opinion on interrogations issued by any lawyer in the executive branch after Sept. 11, 2001.

Unfortunately, in his haste to end the war on terror – which of course HAS been a source of embarassment to every liberal who glorifies world opinion – Barack Obama kind of forgot to consult with the terrorists.   I mean, no, we really don’t WANT our President getting cozy in dialogue with the kind of people who saw kidnapped victims’ heads off, but we might have wanted to know whether terrorists were interested in ending the war on terror before we decided to quit fighting.

There seems to be a prevailing notion among liberals that terrorism began during the Bush Administration, and that now that the Bush Administration is gone terrorism will end.  This attitude is wrong, and just-how-idiotic-are-you-people? wrong.

Modern terrorism began in the late 1920s in Egyptian prisons with the advent of the Muslim Brotherhood.  Whether it was founded with an aim toward “moral and social reform” or not is moot; it didn’t take them long to resort to political violence as a political weapon to win political gains.  And terrorism has been building and growing expontially ever since.

Israel has seen limitless violence since its birth in 1948.  The world saw terrorism first hand in the Munich Olympic massacre in 1972.  The world saw the advent of genuine state terrorism in the 1979 seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran.  The US took its first massive casualties to terrorism in the terrorist bombine of the Marine barracks in 1983 that took the lives of 241 Americans.

Then, throughout the Clinton years, terrorist violence took a near vertical climb on the graph chart.  There was the first World Trade Center bombing, and then the “Blackhawk Down” violence in Somalia in 1993.  There was the attempt to crash a plane into the White House and a bombing of the American military facility in Riyadh in 1995.  There was the Khobar Towers barrack bombings in Saudi Arabia in 1996.  There was the bombings of two U.S. Embassies in  Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.  And there was the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.  In all likelihood, that list is not exhaustive.

The 9/11 attack was nothing new; it was the continuation of a pattern of exponentially escalating violence that has been building for decades.  We may decide we are weary of fighting them.  But they will fight us until we submit to them.  Such “submission” is the true meaning of Islam.  Wake up to reality, or die as a naive fool.

Has that growth seemed to appear faster since President Bush’s declaration of the “war on terror” following 9/11?  Most certainly.  But war ALWAYS stimulates more recruitment, doesn’t it?  We certainly wouldn’t have decided it best to not fight against Hitler and the Nazis lest they expand their recruitment, would we?

Let me bookend two philosophies.

As a result of the “Blackhawk Down” incident in Somalia – after which President Clinton ordered the American presence to leave with their tails prominently displayed between their legs – Osama bin Laden said:

“You have been disgraced by Allah and you withdrew. The extent of your impotence and weaknesses has become very clear,” he said. “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.”

Now lets look at another approach:

9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – after being hounded all over the world and then waterboarded until he spilled his guts to CIA interrogators – said that he doubted that al Qaeda would ever again dare to attack the United States again due to the massive, overwhelming response.

In the philosophical approach taken by President Bill Clinton and now embraced by President Barack Obama, our enemies perceive weakness and hesitation, and as a result they attack without mercy.  In the philosophical approach taken by President Bush, the United States responds with such massive force that our enemies are cowed and disheartened.  The American military machine is the finest in the history of the planet, and when it is unleashed, it wins – and God, or Allah, or Buddha, or place your deities’ name here – help whoever stands against it.

At least until Barack Hussein Obama became our Commander-in-chief.

How should al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations bent on murdering Americans react now that the policy of Harry Reid – “I believe that this war is lost” – and Jack Murtha – our Marines are the real murders and criminals – becomes the new law of the land.

How should they feel now that they are facing Democrats – who acted the part of the paper tiger to a “T” by spouting tough talk only to spend the next five years advocating that we cut and run (see here and here and here)?  Do you think they’re still afraid of us, now that we have voted for a Paper Tiger-in-chief with a Paper Tiger House and a Paper Tiger Senate?

We were kept safe since 9/11 because our enemies became convinced that they could never defeat a powerful America that would go to great lengths to defend itself and protect its interests.  We are now about to see what happens when we repudiate that strength and embrace a policy of weakness and appeasement.

After Hitler proved that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain – with his Munich Accord and his “I believe it is peace in our time” in shreds – was a moral idiot and a completely unfit leader, his own party in the House of Commons told him, “Depart, I say, and let us have done with you.  In the name of God, go!” and forced him to resign in disgrace.  I truly believe that that will be the end of Obama’s political career, as well.  The only question is how many American bodies will be buried before we come to that conclusion.

Article follows below:

Bush’s “War On Terror” Comes To Sudden End
Washington Post: With Stroke Of Pen, President Obama Erases Controversial Measures

Washingtonpost.com) This story was written by Dana Priest

President Obama yesterday eliminated the most controversial tools employed by his predecessor against terrorism suspects. With the stroke of his pen, he effectively declared an end to the “war on terror,” as President George W. Bush had defined it, signaling to the world that the reach of the U.S. government in battling its enemies will not be limitless.

While Obama says he has no plans to diminish counterterrorism operations abroad, the notion that a president can circumvent long-standing U.S. laws simply by declaring war was halted by executive order in the Oval Office.

Key components of the secret structure developed under Bush are being swept away: The military’s Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, facility, where the rights of habeas corpus and due process had been denied detainees, will close, and the CIA is now prohibited from maintaining its own overseas prisons. And in a broad swipe at the Bush administration’s lawyers, Obama nullified every legal order and opinion on interrogations issued by any lawyer in the executive branch after Sept. 11, 2001.

It was a swift and sudden end to an era that was slowly drawing to a close anyway, as public sentiment grew against perceived abuses of government power. The feisty debate over the tactics employed against al-Qaeda began more than six years ago as whispers among confidants with access to the nation’s most tightly held secrets. At the time, there was consensus in Congress and among the public that the United States would be attacked again and that government should do what was necessary to thwart the threat.

The CIA, which had taken the lead on counterterrorism operations worldwide, asked intelligence contacts around the globe to help its teams of covert operatives and clandestine military units identify, kill or capture terrorism suspects. They set up their first interrogation center in a compound walled off by black canvas at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, and more at tiny bases throughout that country, where detainees could be questioned outside military rules and the protocols of the Geneva Conventions, which lay out the standards for treatment of prisoners of war.

As the CIA recruited young case officers, polygraphers and medical personnel to work on interrogation teams, the agency’s leaders asked its allies in Thailand and Eastern Europe to set up secret prisons where people such as Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh could be held in isolation and subjected to extreme sleep and sensory deprivation, waterboarding and sexual humiliation. These tactics are not permitted under military rules or the Geneva Conventions.

Over time, a tiny circle of federal employees outside these teams got access to some of the reports of interrogations. Some were pleased by the new aggressiveness. Others were horrified. They began to push back gingerly, as did an even smaller number of congressional officials briefed on the reports.

Eventually their worries reached a handful of reporters trying to confirm rumors of people who seemed to have disappeared: a Pakistani microbiologist spirited away in the dead of night in Indonesia. An Afghan prisoner frozen to death at a base code-named the Salt Pit. A German citizen who did not get back on his bus at a border crossing in Macedonia.

Front companies and fictitious people were used to hide a system of aircraft that carried terrorism suspects to “undisclosed locations” and to third countries under a little-known practice called rendition.

Unlike the federal employees, who could go to jail for disclosing the classified program, the reporters and their news outlets were protected by the Constitution — but not from government pressure. Then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss and, later, Bush summoned top editors of The Washington Post to press their case against disclosing the existence of the secret prison network.

The published reports in The Post and elsewhere earned the news media sharp recriminations from the administration, the Republican leadership in Congress and the public. Government leak investigations were launched. Bush administration officials argued that such methods and operations were necessary to effectively thwart terrorism, noting to this day that there have been no major attacks since 2001.

If there were dissenters back then, they were largely silent.

But in Europe, the reports set off a firestorm of criticism and government investigations in nearly every capital. Washington was pressured to move prisoners out of the secret jails. U.S. government officials scattered throughout the national security and foreign policy agencies scrambled to learn more about operations they knew little about. A growing chorus within the CIA and the State Department began to question how long the secret system of detention and interrogation could survive, and drew up plans for an alternative.

By then, the color-coded terrorist alerts had ended. Police disappeared from roadblocks around the Capitol. Washington the fortress drew millions of visitors again. Some Democratic members of Congress replaced the “war on terror” phraseology with language indicating vigilance and persistence, but not unending combat and military-only options.

On Sept. 6, 2006, Bush announced the transfer of 14 “high-value detainees” from secret prisons to Guantanamo. He suspended the CIA program, but defended its utility and reserved the right to reopen it. The secret was officially out.

Over the next 2 1/2 years, as Democrats gained power in Congress, as the violence in Iraq sapped public support for the president and as the fear of another terrorist attack receded, the debate over secret prisons, renditions and harsh interrogations grew louder. Presidential candidates felt comfortable to include these sensitive subjects in the debate on the efficiency of Bush’s war against terrorists, and even on the notion that it was still a war.

During his campaign and again in his inaugural address Tuesday, Obama used a different lexicon to describe operations to defeat terrorists. “As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals,” he said. “… And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.”