More validation of Bush anti-terror policies
The Obama administration said Tuesday it could continue to imprison non-U.S. citizens indefinitely even if they have been acquitted of terrorism charges by a U.S. military commission.
Jeh Johnson, the Defense Department’s chief lawyer, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that releasing a detainee who has been tried and found not guilty was a policy decision that officials would make based on their estimate of whether the prisoner posed a future threat.
Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration argues that the legal basis for indefinite detention of aliens it considers dangerous is separate from war-crimes prosecutions. Officials say that the laws of war allow indefinite detention to prevent aliens from committing warlike acts in future, while prosecution by military commission aims to punish them for war crimes committed in the past.
Mr. Johnson said such prisoners held without trial would receive “some form of periodic review” that could lead to their release.
Detainees, Even if Acquitted, Might Not Go Free - WSJ.com
Notes
posted 7 / 21 / 2009
It was the Supreme Leader’s Special Representative though, who put it most graphically and with evident disgust. “Obama’s is the hand of Satan in a new sleeve”, explained Hossein Shariatmadari. “The Great Satan now has a black face”. His words have weight because he speaks for Ayatollah Khamenei, the man who makes the big decisions in Iran; on foreign policy and all matters nuclear. His fingernails have regrown since they were pulled out by the Shah’s torturers thirty years ago and Shariatmadari now edits Iran’s most hardline newspaper. “Obama won’t make any big change in American policy towards Iran”, he told me. “Because he has little room for change in anything. And we won’t change our goal; we are determined to have nuclear power but not nuclear weapons.”
Barack Obama greeted with hatred and quiet hope in Iran - Telegraph
This kind of reaction is despicable, though hardly unexpected. I just hope Obama responds to the Iranian threat with more than personality-based diplomacy. Something tells me the leaders of Iran won’t swoon over Barack’s winning personality the way some Americans do.
Notes
posted 1 / 22 / 2009
robot-heart:
election08:
McCain just can’t catch a break. McCain loves him some Gen. Petraeus, but apparently the General has some different ideas than John McCain. Despite McCain’s attempts to characterize Obama’s intention to negotiate with our adversaries as naive, McCain’s living hero thinks it’s a reasonable idea. In a Q&A at the Heriatage Foundation, Petraeus engaged in the following exchange:
QUESTION: One question, it came up in the debate last night, I know it has to do—
Petraeus: Oh, I’m not walking into minefields now [laughter from crowd). I try to go around —
QUESTION: It was a British general who said we must learn how to talk to our enemy. A british general — not a U.S. Can you comment?
Petraeus: Well, all I would say — I didn’t actually see that, we were doing some other stuff last night — look, I’m trying to go around minefields these days, not blunder into them. But I do think you have to talk to enemies.
I mean again, you’ve got to set things up, you’ve got to know who you’re talking to, you’ve got to have your objectives straight, all the rest of this stuff. I mean, so I’m not trying to get into the middle of domestic politics. But I mean what we did do in Iraq ultimately was sit down with some of those that were shooting at us. What we tried to do was identify those who might be reconcilable.
Surely strategic negotiations and meetings with a local insurgency by combat forces on the ground is vastly different from the president of the United States meeting with the Islamofascist president of a terrorist-sponsoring nation. Would anybody support a President Obama meeting with Bin Laden?
Notes
posted 10 / 9 / 2008
The problem that the world, including the U.S., has today is not with Iran as a nation-state but with the Islamic Republic as a revolutionary cause bent on world conquest under the guidance of the “Hidden Imam.” The following statement by the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the “Supreme leader” of the Islamic Republic – who Mr. Obama admits has ultimate power in Iran — exposes the futility of the very talks Mr. Obama proposes: “You have nothing to say to us. We object. We do not agree to a relationship with you! We are not prepared to establish relations with powerful world devourers like you! The Iranian nation has no need of the United States, nor is the Iranian nation afraid of the United States. We … do not accept your behavior, your oppression and intervention in various parts of the world.
—
The Problem With Talking to Iran - WSJ.com
The article’s main thesis: Iran can be negotiated with when it acts as a nation-state, but not when it acts as a cause/revolution. Read the whole thing.
Notes
posted 5 / 29 / 2008
Secretary Rice’s threat of still-more sanctions will be seen in Tehran for the diplomatic evasion it is. The last set of sanctions took months to pass and were watered down to nothing much. The Administration would do better to withdraw from this international charade and consider means by which the mullahs might be persuaded that their regime’s survival is better assured by not having nuclear weapons. A month-long naval blockade of Iran’s imports of refined gasoline – which accounts for nearly half of its domestic consumption – could clarify for the Iranians just how unacceptable their nuclear program is to the civilized world.
—
Punxsutawney Condi - WSJ.com.
The West still has some useful options to impede Iranian nuclear ambitions; why doesn’t it use them?
Notes
posted 5 / 28 / 2008
The Obama view of negotiations as the alpha and the omega of U.S. foreign policy highlights a fundamental conceptual divide between the major parties and their putative presidential nominees. […] On one side are those who believe that negotiations should be used to resolve international disputes 99% of the time. That is where I am, and where I think Mr. McCain is. On the other side are those like Mr. Obama, who apparently want to use negotiations 100% of the time. It is the 100%-ers who suffer from an obsession that is naïve and dangerous. Negotiation is not a policy. It is a technique. Saying that one favors negotiation with, say, Iran, has no more intellectual content than saying one favors using a spoon. For what? Under what circumstances? With what objectives? On these specifics, Mr. Obama has been consistently sketchy.
—
Bring On the Foreign Policy Debate - WSJ.com
Bolton elaborates on why negotiating with “terrorists and radicals” is a bad idea.
Notes
posted 5 / 20 / 2008
Jim Geraghty fisks a recent Obama speech that reveals the latter’s naivete in dealing with enemy regimes.
Notes
posted 5 / 19 / 2008
Next, please
squashed:
A post back, I asked people to explain to me why they thought meeting with Iran (as Obama proposes) was a worse idea than the Bush/McCain/Clinton strategy of blustering in the irrational hope that this somehow persuades Iran to do what we want it to. SDS took a shot at it, citing “author and student of Middle Eastern politics” Joel Rosenberg. According to Rosenberg (and Rush Limbaugh), Ahmadenejad believes the annihilation of millions of jews is his life’s purpose. And, according to Rosenberg, his beliefs get crazier from there.
I was a bit hesitant—because I’ve listened to Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric and while he was certainly a hard-liner, he didn’t sound like a religious zealot. So I looked up Rosenberg. By “author,” SDS apparently meant “fiction author,” apparently of the Dan Brown variety. And by “student of Middle Eastern politics,” he means the kind of student without citable laurels. Needless to say, I’m not willing to base a foreign policy on Rosenberg’s fictional conspiracy theories.
So, would anybody else like to take a crack at explaining why we can’t talk to Iran?
OK, here are some more reasons why the U.S. should not talk directly with Iran: to quote John McCain, “It enhances prestige of a nation that is terrorist sponsor and is directly responsible for the deaths of young Americans.” We should not lend legitimacy to a regime funding Hamas, funding Hezbollah and providing weaponry for attacks into Israel, providing weaponry to insurgents in Iraq, having secret dealings with North Korea, maintaining a cozy relationship with Hugo Chavez, threatining to wipe Israel off the map, capturing and humiliating troops of our ally Britain, repeatedly flouting UN demands to halt their pursuit of nuclear weapons, etc. Not to mention that he believes his 2005 five speech to the UN assembly put everyone present in a trance.
I am not a gunslinger on this. I’d much rather we didn’t have to bomb Iran; indeed, I have high hopes for the effect serious economic sanctions could have on the country. But when it comes down to it, we should not negotiate with this nutjob, and we should draw a hard line and stick by it.
Notes
posted 5 / 15 / 2008
