Now, it is a notoriously difficult region to govern, for demographic and geographical reasons.  So I was a bit skeptical about the initial military intervention...too soon.  But regardless, the Taliban was a serious threat.  Something had to be done, which was the main reason I defended the invasion even though I had friends and family who adamantly opposed it.

 Afghanistan represents the real front on the abstract "war" on "terror," to the extent it can be reduced to a portrait of conventional warfare, which is minimal.  Iraq was an unnecessary, devestating and horrible distraction.

That he doesn't really mean it.

Hey.  All politicians do it.

But on the off chance one lurker happens by TL, someone who worries about terrorism, and scenarios described above, someone who would agree with Obama here (if he really meant it), I now feel I've let the cat out of the bag.    Ooooooops.  Butterfingers!

fail that, and the rest becomes moot.

i would also tend to agree that afghanistan, which essentially declared war on us by refusing to extradite those responsible for the destruction on 9/11, should have stayed our primary focus in that region.

because assets were unnecessarily diverted to iraq, afghan farmers have gone back to their cash crop, opium poppies. you can thank bush for the increase in heroin on our streets.

How many times should Richard Jewell have been waterboarded?

If the Olympic Park Bombing had happened in '04 at some other event, with all of the 9/11 hysteria at the time, you could have heard the shrieking war cry of a million deranged demons DEMANDING that he be treated as a "terry-ist" and sent to Gitmo pronto.  And it would have happened.  And he would have been given the same treatment as any other terrorist (or unlucky schmo who was rounded up because someone wanted a bounty, which is the majority of them, but don't worry, after years at "Club Gitmo" they'll be terrorists soon enough upon release.)

How would have SNL made a funny skit out of that?  We need to get rid of these (non)rules that allow this garbage and get back to winning hearts and minds, instead of freaking drowning them.

My thoughts at least.  (I hope this isn't considered a thread hijack, that wasn't my intention.)

On the highest level, I just don't trust him.  I don't trust that he'll do what I think he'll do or even what I'd expect him to do (as a democrat) or even what I wish he would do.  I just don't trust him.

McCain has said that he would close Gitmo and transfer the detainees back to the USA.  That would put them under control of our "regular laws" which appear to have been good enough in the past.  Does Obama have a problem with this?  Is there some reason he doesn't think our regular judicial system can handle terrorists?  I think McCain is on the right end of this argument.  

From everything I have read and read again, it appears that Obama would be going for even more military than McCain would.  That's kind of scary!  Obama has increases in troops on his website and he keeps talking an increasingly "military" talk.  I don't like this because Obama has never been upfront with any group.  He's all talk.  He has nothing to show for any of it -- but he's never been in control of anything either so we don't know if he would put talk into action or not. Consider me "worried."  

Obama as General.  I'm not crazy about this.  This is a person who has never been in combat at all, unless you want to consider his battle with Hillary "combat."  If you had an 18-year-old son, would you want to send him into combat with Obama as General?  Or would you feel better sending him into combat with McCain as General?  My bets are on McCain who has "been there, done that."  For all the hard-ass ranting and raving McCain might do, McCain knows what it is like to be a POW.  Obama has no idea.  To Obama, a tough situation might be a night when Michelle says she has a headache.  We don't know.  

The meme that much of this is "standard election boilerplate" isn't inaccurate.  It's just that the first thing I thought of was McCain's "Safe." ad.  The second thing I thought of was GWB in 2004.  It doesn't hurt that my pet right wing blogger has repeated the "You are alive now because GWB personally has protected your life from the terrorists." which invokes a Rambo-esque meme.

There can only be one "single greatest", you know...

If he instead said that universal health care was the single greatest priority, then those who hoped that it would be creating more jobs, reducing our country's reliance on incarceration or keeping us safe would be disappointed.

We can crack down on terrorists within the constraints of our Constitution.

Obama noted that after the first World Trade Center attack in 1993 we were able to track down and arrest those responsible and put them on trial and put them behind bars, bringing them "to justice" (in Bush's immortal words although Bush has never brought anyone to justice, only to injustice). Obama continued:

The fact that the administration has not tried to do that has created a situation where not only have we never actually put many of these folks on trial but we have destroyed our credibility when it comes to the rule of law all around the world and given a huge boost to terrorist recruitment in countries that say, 'Look, this is how the United States treats Muslims.'

Not just Muslims but any sort of detainees. I was pleased to see the essential thrust of this statement -- as a start -- because I've been waiting for Democrats to get smart in framing a more effective approach to terrorism based more on law, the Constitution and law enforcement and less on military force and "war," although military force is always available when needed in this combined approach (See Law vs. War, PDF, essays by CIA/FBI pros commended to me by Coleen Rowley, FBI whistleblower who testified before Congress). Even Obama's statement above, assertive as it was, needs to be turned into a positive statement rather than simply impugning the US position which is easy enough for us to do here on the blogs but not a good approach for a candidate running for president.

Subsequently, only a day later when he met with his foreign policy team (who, apart from Clark whom I like, look like same-ole same-ole), Obama's language and framing were defensive. He was back on his heels when he said:

"That is not the same as giving these detainees the same full privileges as Americans citizens. I never said that, the Supreme Court never said that, and I would never do that as President of the United States. So either Senator McCain's campaign doesn't understand what the Court decided, or they are distorting my position." Etc etc.

He lost the thread of the power of the law in the eyes of the world which includes would-be terrorists abroad. He needs to climb back into a robust view of the Constitution, to see it as our shield against tyranny -- including the tyranny of terrorism. He needs to express the fact that the Constitution is big enough to help us reduce terrorism. He needs to say that until we fully restore the Constitution by undoing illegal wiretaps, illegal detentions, illegal renditions, illegal torture, illegal signing statements and the illegal war in Iraq, we are losing the so-called "war on terrorism," not to mention our democracy.

The fear in his defensive quote stems from the Right accusing him of giving terrorists "rights," "privileges" -- in other words "freedom." This sounds like permissiveness, a classic bugaboo used against liberals. No. Freedom is not what the Constitution guarantees. It guarantees a process -- a "due process of law" -- which is not the same thing as freedom although it could end up in freedom (The lawyers on this blog will be bored by this but I'm walking through the frame). The Constitution guarantees suspects have a big job to do, with the help of an attorney, to answer charges against them (I'm not a lawyer so I might not be putting this properly but you get the idea).

Obama should have put it this way so that it did not seem that he wants to "give away the store" to criminal suspects. He wants to give them a fair process (sort of the opposite of torture which seems to be purely a function of Bush-Cheney cruelty, sadism and revenge). Giving terror suspects a fair process of law is good counter-propaganda that could help us reduce terrorism in the long run.

The Supreme Court in Boumediene took a big step by granting habeas as part of the process to challenge the US government to show suspects are lawfully detained. The Supreme Court has done a large part of Obama's work for him, fortunately.

This is a complex "teachable moment" for a young law professor like Barack, yet utterly simple if he loses his fear and finds the core, the heart of the Constitution, and presents it to the American people and the world. Heaven knows, we haven't seen much of it in nearly 8 years.

I'm probably not expressing this very well, but if we think we have the best system, if we are determined to bring democracy to all the people of the world, what sense does it make to set it aside to take up the tactics and methods of the people and governments we abhor?  It's good enough for us, but not anyone else?  Or it's good enough except when it's about terror and then it's not?

I suppose what disturbs me is Obama's fear that to explain the sense of subjecting detainees to our system of justice is to be cast a