“…I’m the President, and I’m always responsible…”

Previously:

Presidential Debate: Benghazi, Libya was an act of terror (October 16, 2012)

Note that President Obama turned to Mitt Romney (r) during his response. Blistering.

The exchange:

….President Obama (D):  Secretary Clinton has done an extraordinary job, but she works for me. I’m the President, and I’m always responsible. And that’s why nobody is more interested in finding out exactly what happened than I do. The day after the attack, governor, I stood in the Rose Garden, and I told the American people and the world that we were going to find out exactly what happened, that this was an act of terror, and I also said that we’re gonna hunt down those who committed this crime. And then a few days later I was there greeting the caskets coming into Andrews Air Force Base and grieving with the families, and the suggestion that anybody in my team, whether the Secretary of State, our U.N. ambassador, anybody on my team would play politics or mislead when we’ve lost four of our own, governor, is offensive. That’s not what we do. That’s not what I do as President, that’s not what I do as Commander in Chief.

Candy Crowley: Governor, if you want to reply [crosstalk] quickly to this please.

Mitt Romney (r): Yeah, I, I certainly do, I certainly do. I, I think it’s interesting the President just said something which, which is that on the day after the attack he went in the  Rose gar, Garden and said this was an act of terror.

President Obama (D): That’s what I said. [not audible in video]

Mitt Romney (r): You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack it was an attack of terror, [pause] it was not a [crosstalk] spontaneous demonstration?

President Obama (D): Please proceed.

Mitt Romney (r): Is that what you’re saying?

President Obama (D): Please proceed, governor.

Mitt Romney (r): I, I want to make sure we get that for the record because it took the President fourteen days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.

President Obama (D): Get the transcript.

Candy Crowley:  It, it, he did in, in fact, sir. So let me, let me call it an [crosstalk] act of terror. He used the word.

President Obama (D): Can you say that a little louder, Candy?

[applause]

Candy Crowley:  He did call it an act of terror….

“…and the suggestion that anybody in my team, whether the Secretary of State, our U.N. ambassador, anybody on my team would play politics or mislead when we’ve lost four of our own, governor, is offensive. That’s not what we do. That’s not what I do as President, that’s not what I do as Commander in Chief…”

Given his position as the ranking minority member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, it was probably too much to expect that Kit Bond would refrain from joining the chorus of what David Brooks, in an unexpectedly excellent column, called the “rabid denunciation and cynicism”  that has characterized the right’s response to the Christmas bomber incident. On the topic of the bomber, Omar Abulmutallab, Bond holds, along with the rest of his party, that treating terrorist crimes in the criminal justice system is to privilege terrorists in some inappropriate way:

This is not a case for a series of criminal trials, … .  We should have held him as an enemy combatant and tried him in a military commission.

Earlier, on the issue of the Gitmo detainees, he had this to say:

The Obama Justice Department has prioritized political correctness over protecting the citizens of this country.

Apart from seizing an opportunity to ring the proverbial Pavlovian bell with phrases like “political correctness” applied to Obama and terrorism, one wonders why would-be tough guy politicians like Bond fail to remember the equal determination of one of their close allies, Margaret Thatcher, to deny IRA men “special status”.  This status would have accorded IRA members a prisoner of war status not too dissimilar to that accorded to those held in the military system of detention and justice that Bond and his pals prefer.

In 1981 Thatcher permitted ten young hunger strikers to starve to death, one after another, in a protest against the loss of political status for those convicted of terrorism-related offenses. As Padraig O’Malley notes in his book about those events, Biting at the Grave (p. 19):

Having what amounted to de facto prisoner of war status was of immense propaganda value to the IRA. It allowed the movement to describe the conflict in Northern Ireland on its own terms  …  and to claim that the British government accepted the IRA’s legitimacy and hence the legitimacy of its cause.

So do Bond et al. really want to legitimate Al-Qaeda by according their members military status? Do they really want to keep on handing Al-Qaeda these great propaganda tools for recruiting purposes? For that matter, if they don’t want to glamorize the terrorists’ cause, maybe they ought to shut up about the “war on terror.” Didn’t they learn anything from their onetime good friend, Dame Margaret?

Of course, in pointing out this disjunction, I do not mean to overlook the obvious – which is that what Bond and his pals really mean to say is that it is hard to torture folks when the process is open to scrutiny. And of course, no matter what status prisoners enjoyed in Northern Ireland, Dame Margaret had the Special Powers Act which gave her almost unlimited power to do whatever she wanted. Thank God we still have a few rights left. Maybe.

ADDENDUM:  Via TPM, Bond amplifies his position today:

We have learned the hard way that trying terrorists in federal court comes at a high price, from losing out on potentially life-saving intelligence to compromising our sources and methods. We must treat these terrorists as what they are–not common criminals, but enemy combatants in a war.

In December 2001, the Shoe Bomber, Richard Reid, was immediately charged in federal court, rather than being designated as an enemy combatant and questioned about his terrorist ties,” says Bond. “Fortunately, the Bush Administration did not repeat this mistake with Jose Padilla who was named an enemy combatant, which allowed him to be interrogated, before eventually facing criminal charges.”

He continues: “Yet today with the experience of eight years in this war behind us, we have regressed, treating the Christmas Day bomber and the Somali pirate as common criminals, rather than seizing the opportunity to obtain timely intelligence from these terrorists. This is a grave error that could have dangerous consequences for our nation.

AS TPM notes:

It’s worth noting that President Bush had military tribunals as an option by November 2001 when he signed an order establishing rules for tribunals. That was a month before Reid’s attempted attack on American Airlines Flight 63.

…..

A search on Nexis found no evidence of controversy over Bush decision to try Reid in federal court, and no criticism from Bond on the handling of the case.

The Politico article on Bond’s comments (2nd link above) reported that that the administration already has a deal underway to get information from Abulmutallab, but that Bond, seemingly with no real information to back up his prescience, declared that that it “would take too long.”  He either has second sight or, like a dog with a bone, he just can’t stop demagoguing the issue.

Missouri State Rep. Cynthia Davis’ persona has elements of the mid-20th century comedian Gracie Allen, who developed a sweetly stupid comic schtick derived from an earlier vaudeville stereotype, the “Dumb Dora.” Unfortunately, as Davis’ newsletters often demonstrate, in a political context Dumb Dora’s skewed logic is not always funny — particularly when dealing with topics such as the massacre at Fort Hood.

At this early point all that we can actually verify about the perpetrator, Nidal Hasan, is that he was a disturbed man whose discontent seems to have been expressed through religious preoccupations. To Davis, however, that Hasan is a Muslim is the only important fact. She writes in her latest Newsletter:

Christianity is the foundation of tolerance.  … Jesus teaches us to love our enemies.  On the other hand radical Muslims, such as Hasan’s imam (Islamic cleric) teach it is honorable to kill non-Muslims…. While some Muslims may be unaware of what their faith teaches and others do not adhere to these parts of the Koran, we as a country should not ignore the obvious

ooooh! We loving and tolerant Christians just can’t trust those scary Muslims, no matter how reasonable they seem!

But wait a minute – earlier this year another disturbed man, his anger focused through the lens of fundamentalist Christian dogma, erupted in a violent act. Christian anti-abortion activist Scott Roeder shot Dr George Tiller who had just been acquitted of violating Kansas’ late-term abortion law. There can be little doubt that Roeder’s motivation was influenced by his religious beliefs.  

And what did Cynthia Davis, Christian anti-abortion champion, have to say about fundamentalist Christian terrorism in the person of Scott Roeder?:

With no knowledge of the person who shot George Tiller, I can only speculate he may have been mentally unbalanced.  With the exception of self defense, it is hard to imagine how anyone could shoot another human being in his right mind,…

.

Gracie Allen may have presented a Dumb Dora face to the public, but her stage character never allowed stupidity to lead her past the bounds of decency and fairness. One wishes that one could say the same for Cynthia Davis.  

Stu Bykofsky, a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News wrote a piece on August 9, 2007 titled “To save America, we need another 9/11”.

In it, he wrote:

ONE MONTH from The Anniversary, I’m thinking another 9/11 would help America….

….What would sew us back together?

Another 9/11 attack.

The Golden Gate Bridge. Mount Rushmore. Chicago’s Wrigley Field. The Philadelphia subway system. The U.S. is a target-rich environment for al Qaeda….

The rest of his mindless pabulum can be paraphrased: “9/11! 9/11! Unity!…short attention spans…dismay…Clap Louder!”

Eh, what a maroon.

Colbert via Atrios:

Philadelphia Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky wrote an editorial last month wrote a column entitled, “To save America, we need another 9/11.” He even suggested some targets for Al Qaeda, like the Golden Gate Bridge, Mt. Rushmore, and Chicago’s Wrigley Field.

Do not be so humble Mr. Bykofsky. You are clearly enough of a patriot that your house belongs on that list.

We are not worthy.