Reject False Choices Between Law Enforcement & Military

When it comes to battling suspected terrorists it's time to reject the false choice between law enforcement and military; to be safe, America needs the best of both.

President Obama's critics say that law enforcement does not prevent disaster, but, as a former prosecutor I can say categorically that this is false and defy them to find one prosecutor who will swear that law enforcement cannot help prevent terrorists from committing their crimes.

Consider the analysis offered by George F. Will in his 2006 column "The Triumph of Unrealism," written after British law enforcement and intelligence personnel worked together to avert disaster:

The London plot against civil aviation confirmed a theme of an illuminating new book, Lawrence Wright's "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11." The theme is that better law enforcement, which probably could have prevented Sept. 11, is central to combating terrorism. F-16s are not useful tools against terrorism that issues from places such as Hamburg (where Mohamed Atta lived before dying in the North Tower of the World Trade Center) and High Wycombe, England. Cooperation between Pakistani and British law enforcement (the British draw upon useful experience combating IRA terrorism) has validated John Kerry's belief [...] that "many of the interdiction tactics that cripple drug lords, including governments working jointly to share intelligence, patrol borders and force banks to identify suspicious customers, can also be some of the most useful tools in the war on terror." [...] Kerry said that although the war on terror will be "occasionally military," it is "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world."

Immediately after the London plot was disrupted, a "senior administration official," insisting on anonymity for his or her splenetic words, denied the obvious, that Kerry had a point. The official told The Weekly Standard: "The idea that the jihadists would all be peaceful, warm, lovable, God-fearing people if it weren't for U.S. policies strikes me as not a valid idea. [Democrats] do not have the understanding or the commitment to take on these forces. It's like John Kerry. The law enforcement approach doesn't work." This farrago of caricature and non sequitur makes the administration seem eager to repel all but the delusional. But perhaps such rhetoric reflects the intellectual contortions required to sustain the illusion that the war in Iraq is central to the war on terrorism, and that the war, unlike "the law enforcement approach," does "work." The official is correct that it is wrong "to think that somehow we are responsible -- that the actions of the jihadists are justified by U.S. policies." But few outside the fog of paranoia that is the blogosphere think like that. It is more dismaying that someone at the center of government considers it clever to talk like that. It is the language of foreign policy -- and domestic politics -- unrealism."

The President's critics also say that when disaster strikes, Americans have to surrender our independent judiciary to our executive branch via military tribunals. But our Constitution, drafted during a war of secession against a monarch, expressly requires separation of powers and an independent judiciary to punish offenders.

 

 

As President Obama tasks our independent judiciary with trying more suspected 9/11 terrorists, count me among those who agree with Mayor Giuliani's first position on trying alleged terrorists in US courts: in the yes column.  When it came to trying "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui in federal court just miles from the Pentagon, Giuliani said: "I think there is value in demonstrating to people what America is like — that we can have these kind of emotional disagreements, but that there is a law and we will follow it." 

Agreed; it's time to reject false choices, end the politics of unrealism, and let justice be done.

 

 

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