Israel Matzav

Obama vindicates Bush: Will the Left notice?

Has the Left not noticed that President Obama is pursuing President Bush's war on terror, or are they too embarrassed to say anything? Rich Lowry captures the double standard.

Needless to say, had Dick Cheney consulted “baseball cards” to decide in weekly meetings attended by Karl Rove who deserved to have close encounters with drone-fired missiles, Nancy Pelosi would have drafted the articles of impeachment herself.

The Obama killings vindicate the core premises of the Bush war on terror: This is a war, and the protections of our criminal-justice system don’t apply to the enemy. In light of the kill list, it’s a wonder anyone ever objected to Bush-era detentions or interrogations. If we can pick someone off a roster of names and sentence him to death without due process, surely we can capture and hold that same person. If we can execute someone — and any of his associates who happen to be in the vicinity — from on high, surely we can keep him awake at night and otherwise discomfit him should he fall into our hands.

The Times notes that “Mr. Obama’s record has not drawn anything like the sweeping criticism from allies that his predecessor faced.” True enough. It hasn’t been subjected to a highly politicized assault at home and abroad by people desperate to put it in the worst possible light and even make it a war crime.

With a few exceptions, the Left has retired from the field when it comes to smearing the executive branch for prosecuting the war. If the Left were still in the game, it would insist on always calling the actions assassinations, demand congressional authorization and judicial sign-off, excoriate the secret proceedings, and pour scorn on the entire notion of enemy combatants’ standing outside the criminal-justice system. It would call the assassinations a “terrorist-recruiting tool,” as indeed they are, since almost anything we do to combat al-Qaeda will offend some sympathizers of al-Qaeda.

For most of the left, the highest principle of just-war theory is licet si Obama id faciat (it’s okay if Obama does it). This is how Gitmo, formerly a standing repudiation of all that we hold dear as a nation, becomes an afterthought when it is owned and operated by one Barack H. Obama. As it happens, the president holds exactly the same Obama-centric view. So long as the kill list is overseen by him as judge and executioner, it’s beyond reproach.

Imagine what a second Obama term would be like with the fawning media, God forbid. What could go wrong?

Read the whole thing.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, George W. Bush, leftists, war on terror

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:19 AM