Attention, Dick Cheney: Don't the Germans Know We're At War?

While the Cheneys, father and daughter, continue to hammer away at the accusation that the Obama administration has a "mindset" problem because it (sometimes) chooses to deal with terrorists through the criminal justice system, another bullet-hole has been leveled at their argument by, of all nations, Germany.

This isn't France that chose to try terrorist suspects in a civilian criminal court. This is big bad Germany. And these were not just any terrorists. The judge in the case declared,

they had dreamed of "mounting a second September 11 2001" by killing US civilians and soldiers by bombing targets like Ramstein Air Base.

They were accused of operating as a German cell of the radical al-Qaeda-linked group, the Islamic Jihad Union.

In Cheneyworld, that would be an act of war. So why aren't the Cheneys attacking the German government for its "mindset" problem? Because they have no political interest in weakening that administration, and they do in attacking the American administration. Or they're more scared of Angela Merkel than they are of Barack Obama.

Unlike the US, Germany has had a recent successful experience in rolling up a terrorist threat against the country, when the Baader-Meinhof Gang was dealt with as... a criminal conspiracy. If this were a country where other countries' successes at least suggested something to be emulated, that record might be persuasive. But despite our self-image as a nation obsessed with success, some of us, at least, seem more obsessed with making a political point than with pursuing a successful course in dealing with terrorism.