Behind the Kidnapped Briton’s Release

1Jan/100

Behind the Kidnapped Briton’s Release

In case you hadn't read it, the Guardian did the heavy lifting in discovering the details regarding the release of the British journalist Peter Moore by Iran's al-Quds force, in alliance with the Soldiers of Righteousness. The timing could hardly have been worse for the Obama administration, amid reports claiming that two Yemenis released from Gitmo in 2007 were behind the attempted explosion of an airliner on Christmas Day.

Meanwhile, Iraqi and Iranian forces are still squared off over disputed ownership of oil fields, and China's reaction to regime brutality towards citizens is to send armored vehicles to the mullahs.

As Jennifer Rubin says, there's no conceivable justification for this. I understand that the Obama administration's foreign policy, such as it is, is largely based on the premise, "What would Bush not do?" but after almost a year of offering the open hand and getting punched in the nuts, you'd think they might have learned something.

Maybe I'm not turtley enough?

[a Serr8d joint]

Apparently, she's turtley enough for David Broder.

UPDATE, Krauthammer:

Once we've given Abdulmutallab the right to remain silent, we have gratuitously forfeited our right to find out from him precisely who else was involved, namely those who trained, instructed, armed and sent him.

This is all quite mad even in Obama's terms. He sends 30,000 troops to fight terror overseas, yet if any terrorists come to attack us here, they are magically transformed from enemy into defendant.

The logic is perverse. If we find Abdulmutallab in an al-Qaeda training camp in Yemen, where he is merely preparing for a terror attack, we snuff him out with a Predator -- no judge, no jury, no qualms. But if we catch him in the United States in the very act of mass murder, he instantly acquires protection not just from execution by drone but even from interrogation.

The president said that this incident highlights "the nature of those who threaten our homeland." But the president is constantly denying the nature of those who threaten our homeland. On Tuesday, he referred five times to Abdulmutallab (and his terrorist ilk) as "extremist[s]."

A man who shoots abortion doctors is an extremist. An eco-fanatic who torches logging sites is an extremist. Abdulmutallab is not one of these. He is a jihadist. And unlike the guys who shoot abortion doctors, jihadists have cells all over the world; they blow up trains in London, nightclubs in Bali and airplanes over Detroit (if they can); and are openly pledged to war on America.

Any government can through laxity let someone slip through the cracks. But a government that refuses to admit that we are at war, indeed, refuses even to name the enemy -- jihadist is a word banished from the Obama lexicon -- turns laxity into a governing philosophy.