Andrew C. McCarthy's Blog, page 48

The real debt problem: the debt, not the ceiling

I just watched Fox's Neil Cavuto interview a top S&P guy and break the news -- which shouldn't be all that shattering -- that August 2 may not be the important deadline. As early as Monday, our credit rating could be downgraded from AAA. That's because of what Kevin, Veronique and Mark Steyn have repeatedly pointed out, and what Mark Levin hammered during his radio show this week: The real issue is not the debt ceiling (which is statutory and artificial) but the underlying lack of a credible plan, committed to be government, to live within our means -- not just to slash spending but to address the structural drivers of spending, and to convince the markets that we will continue to pay our obligations as they come due, including the interest on our debts, which is almost certainly going to rise, soon. Simply adding $2.5 trillion to an already bankrupt nation's $14.3 trillion credit line would not only fail to address the real issue; it would signal a lack of resolve to address the real issue. That's the opposite of a solution. 

We could start to see by the evening on Sunday, when overseas trading gets underway, whether the markets are working off the same calendar Washington is. 

A practical suggestion for Sens. Lieberman and Ayotte: Amend the AUMF

Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) had a very good op-ed in the Washington Post this week, protesting the Obama administration's treatment of Somali terrorist Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame.

Warsame is a member of al-Shabab, which has a working relationship with al Qaeda (particularly its Yemen-headquartered outpost, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP). He was captured aboard a ship in the Gulf of Aden in April, and is believed to have been training AQAP (which targets the United States) in the use of firearms and explosives. After detaining him for two months on a navy vessel (i.e., seemingly as an enemy combatant), the Obama administration whisked Warsame into the U.S. about three weeks ago. The plan is to give him a civilian trial -- meaning that Warsame, a Somali whose only connection to our country is to levy war against us from the east coast of Africa, will be vested with all the rights of an American citizen, including our civilian system's lavish discovery rights for criminal defendants.

Sens. Lieberman and Ayotte are right to argue that this is reckless. The nation is at war, and our enemies should be treated as enemy combatants, not common criminal defendants. They should be held at Guanatanamo Bay, a first-rate facility where they can be interrogated without counsel and where they (and confederates who would plot to try to break them out) pose no threat to the American people. In the absence of some new system designed to deal with the unique challenges of terrorism, they should be tried by military commission -- a constitutional process enacted by Congress and endorsed by Presidents Bush and (at least ostensibly) Obama.

But now we get to a big problem, one I pointed out when a Pakistani Taliban operative, Faisal Shahzad, tried to bomb Times Square last year. The Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) enacted by Congress days after the 9/11 attacks is now nearly a decade old. It has never been updated. The enemy in the war on terror has to be described with specificity in the legislation by which Congress targets combat operations. If it is not, then we run into the problem critics on the right and the left have warned about from the start: an amorphous, never-ending "war" in which legal protections owed to Americans and non-enemies are steadily degraded.

As presently written, the AUMF confines the enemy to those complicit in the 9/11 atrocities -- "nations, organizations, or persons [determined by the President to have] planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons." These are the only persons/entities that the AUMF permits to be treated as enemy combatants. Liberties have been taken with this narrow definition on the ground that it goes on to say that military force is authorized against these persons/entities "in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States[.]" But this only states the reason military force is authorized -- it does not expand the circle of enemy combatants beyond those complicit in 9/11 (a fact that is underscored by the AUMF's repetition that we are only trying to prevent anti-U.S. terrorism "by such nations, organizations or persons" who were complicit in the 9/11 attacks).

The problem is that organizations like Shabab, AQAP, and the Pakistani Taliban arguably either did not exist at the time of the 9/11 attacks or had no real involvement with them -- their cooperation with the enemies specified by the AUMF happened well after 9/11. (Indeed, the AUMF aside, we've even had trouble getting the Taliban designated as a terrorist organization.) 

Congress needs to update the AUMF to reflect the present reality of the war and include all the nations, organizations and persons who are and have been fighting in allegiance with al Qaeda, the Taliban, their state sponsors (e.g., Iran), and their global affiliates. If Congress continues to neglect this significant aspect of its power and duty to authorize warfare, the Obama administration will continue to have a valid legal basis to treat our wartime enemies as mere criminals -- and, perversely, to reward their barbarism with gold-plated due process.

Relatedly, my column this weekend is about the administration's treatment of Ali Mussa Daqduq, a Hezbollah commander who, at Iran's urging, set up the Shiite terror network in Iraq that killed (and continues to try to kill) Americans serving there. The administration wanted to give him, too, a civilian trial, and now appears poised to release him if that's what's necessary to avoid detaining him at Gitmo and trying him by military commission.

I think Daqduq presents a slightly different legal situation than Warsame because (a) Hezbollah is different from Shabab, and (b) in addition to the aforementioned AUMF, the war in Iraq is also covered by a separate AUMF that gives the president leeway to "defend the national security of the United Staes against the continuing threat posed by Iraq." Hezbollah (like its masters in Iran) had a long history of pre-9/11 aid to al Qaeda. Moreover, the 9/11 Commission suggested that it may have been directly complicit in the 9/11 plot, and it helped harbor al Qaeda members post 9/11. Thus, Hezbollah and its operatives may be deemed enemy combatants under both the original AUMF and the Iraq AUMF. But there is no reason not to make that explicit. An amended AUMF should expressly include Hezbollah and Iran (which our commanders, again and again, have cited as training and arming the terrorist organizations we are fighting).

The Daqduq Dilemma

An Iran-backed Hezbollah commander who killed American soldiers in cold blood has been in U.S. custody for four years. Most Americans would see this as a good thing. For the Obama administration, it is a vexing dilemma. This highlights, yet again, why the country can’t afford a second Obama administration.

Ali Mussa Daqduq has been a Hezbollah operative for almost 30 years. He is the hardcore. When he joined back in 1983, the “Party of God” (hizb Allah) was just getting its start as Iran’s forward militia in Lebanon, announcing its allegiance to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and killing hundreds of Americans in bombings, abductions, and hijackings that targeted U.S. military personnel, intelligence agents, and civilians. Daqduq quickly climbed the ranks, becoming a top terrorist trainer in an organization so adept that al-Qaeda began taking its instruction in the early 1990s. He rose to command Hezbollah’s most lethal cells and even ran the security detail for its leader, “secretary general” Hassan al-Nasrallah.

#ad#It was only natural, then, that Iran turned to Daqduq in 2005 when the mullahs decided to reprise in Iraq the strategy that had worked so well in Lebanon. He was tasked with building an Iraqi version of Hezbollah: a jihadist network that would first use terrorist attacks to sap America’s will to remain in the region and then be poised to seize de facto control of the country -- to run Iraq as an Iranian satellite.

It worked like a charm. As Bill Roggio recounts at The Long War Journal, Daqduq partnered with Iran’s deadly special-operations unit, the Quds Force, to set up an intricate web of Shiite terror cells. Battalions of 20 to 60 recruits were brought to Iranian bases for schooling in close combat tactics, kidnapping, and intelligence collection, while also learning to use explosively formed penetrators, mortars, rockets, and sniper rifles. When their training was complete, they were loosed on Iraq. Fueled by Iranian supplies, they targeted and killed American and allied forces. Most notoriously, they carried out the January 2007 Karbala massacre, in which five American soldiers were killed, four of them as captives, handcuffed and shot before U.S. rescue teams could close in.

Daqduq was captured by American forces two months later. He has been in the custody of our military in Iraq ever since. He is not a defendant. He is not a capo in some Iranian Cosa Nostra family. He is a terrorist enemy of the United States, who has committed atrocities against American soldiers during a war authorized by Congress. Compared with him, most al-Qaeda jihadists are pikers. Hezbollah is as bad as it gets, and Daqduq is as bad as Hezbollah gets.

If one accepts that the object of war is to defeat the enemy, there is no doubt about what must happen here. Under the laws of war, Daqduq is an enemy combatant: He may be detained until the conclusion of hostilities, subjected to trial by military commission, and put to death -- or, at the very least, imprisoned for the rest of his life.

These laws of war are codified in American statutes. Candidate Obama may have pined for a return to the law-enforcement approach to counterterrorism (i.e., treating alien enemies as mere defendants entitled U.S. constitutional protections and civilian trials), but President Obama has grudgingly accepted -- at least on paper -- the need to maintain combatant detention and trial by military commission. In 2009, he signed a cosmetic revamping of the Military Commissions Act (MCA). Under it, unlawful enemy combatants -- who are now called “unprivileged enemy belligerents,” lest the use of Bush terminology betray the adoption of Bush methods -- may be detained by our armed forces and tried by commission if they have “engaged in” or “purposefully and materially supported” “hostilities against the United States.” The definition fits Duqdaq to a tee.

In saner times, this one would be easy. Daqduq should be transferred to Guantanamo Bay. Once the military determines he is no longer of use for intelligence purposes (we’re told Daqduq talked after originally pretending to be a deaf mute), he should be given a commission trial for war crimes and, upon conviction, executed. If there is a lack of sufficient admissible evidence to try him -- if, for example, our knowledge of his atrocities comes from intelligence sources or confessions that can’t be used in a trial -- he should be detained indefinitely. Case closed.

But for an administration that has politicized justice more than any in history, nothing is that simple. Displaying his familiar penchant for taking one position in public while unleashing the faceless bureaucracy to undermine it, Obama agreed to military commissions strictly for electoral purposes. By signing the MCA, he pandered to a public strongly opposed to civilian trials for enemy combatants; behind the scenes, though, the Lawyer Left that staffs Obama’s Justice and State Departments works to ensure that commissions will not actually be used -- or, at least, that they will be used only when public outcry forces the administration’s hand, as it did in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the 9/11 plotters.

#page#With their water carriers in the legacy press cooperatively mum, administration officials figure few cases will get the kind of attention paid to KSM. They’re right. Rather than authorize a commission trial, Obama released al-Qaeda terrorist Binyam Mohammed to Britain, where he is free. There was nary a peep, even though Mohammed had plotted with convicted terrorist Jose Padilla to carry out a second wave of post-9/11 attacks. Similarly, the Qazali brothers, two of the top Iraqi terrorists trained by Daqduq, were released, even though they were complicit in the Karbala massacre. Enemy combatants sprung from Gitmo return to the jihad at a very high rate, but administration officials shrug their shoulders and bleat that criminals recidivate all the time. And right now, little is reported about the Obama Justice Department’s efforts to cut the 23-year sentence of Abdurrahman Alamoudi, a Hezbollah and Hamas supporter who financed terrorist organizations and plotted with the Qaddafi regime to kill Crown Prince (now King) Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. As long as the Obamedia averts its eyes, the president can chest-beat as the fierce, anti-terrorist slayer of Osama bin Laden, while his minions quietly slip jihadis out the back door.

#ad#Daqduq is supposed to be no exception. The Obama administration does not want to transfer him or anyone else to Gitmo, because the president and his base ludicrously claim that the existence of Gitmo causes terrorism. Similarly, the administration doesn’t want to give him a military commission -- after all, the president ran against commissions, and successful military prosecutions would create more public pressure to use the commission system, infuriating Obama’s base. Some administration officials, particularly in the Justice Department, would like to transfer Daqduq to the United States for a civilian trial. They know, however, that Americans would react angrily, as they did when Attorney General Eric Holder tried to orchestrate a Manhattan trial for KSM. With the 2012 election looming, the administration realizes this is not the best time to remind people that the last time DOJ whisked an enemy combatant into Manhattan -- Ahmed Ghailani, who helped bomb the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania -- a jury acquitted him on 284 out of 285 counts.

In short, the administration is ensnared in a web of its own making. It has politicized terrorist trials just as it has politicized terrorist detention. The latter lunacy means our forces now kill enemy terrorists we’d be better off capturing and interrogating. The former is leading the administration to opt for releasing enemy terrorists -- even killers of American troops -- so Obama won’t have to hand-wring over whether they get civilian or military prosecution.

The plan was to transfer Daqduq to the Iraqi regime as early as yesterday -- without fanfare, the administration hoped, the debt ceiling crisis having saturated news coverage on a mid-summer Friday. But the Associated Press got wind of the transfer, and its brief report provoked outrage. Senate Republicans, joined by independent Joe Lieberman, fired off a letter to secretary of defense Leon Panetta, ballistic at the notion that the United States would surrender “the highest ranking Hezbollah operative currently in our custody.” Inevitably, the senators observed, Daqduq would return to the jihad “to harm and kill more American servicemen and women” when Iraq releases him, as these new “allies” of ours have done with other terrorists.

The unexpected blowback caused the administration to retreat on its release plan#...#at least for the moment. Nevertheless, under the security agreement the Bush administration negotiated with Iraq’s Maliki government, our military will no longer be permitted to detain prisoners in Iraq after the end of this year. Obama cannot vote present on this one: He’ll need to decide whether Daqduq gets military detention and trial outside Iraq, civilian prosecution inside the United States (which would require ignoring the will of Congress, including laws excluding known terrorists from our country), or the release for which Iraq has been clamoring under intense pressure from our Iranian enemy.

For an American president committed to American national interests, this would be a no-brainer. For Obama, it’s a cliffhanger. From how many more cliffs can we afford to hang with this guy?

—  Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.

So, we should profile when it helps Muslims?

 Early reports quote witnesses as describing the Oslo suspect who is in custody as “blond,” “Nordic-looking,” and "Norwegian." Naturally, MSNBC is going up in a balloon over this, reporting that a “specialist in Islamic movements” is “caution[ing] that widespread assumptions that the attacks were connected to international terrorism could be wrong.” The expert, Magnus Ranstorp, concludes that the description of the suspect points “to an internal rather than an external extremist.”

Again, it is premature to draw conclusions at this stage. Still, having debated the subject of profiling for years, I am always amazed at how quickly the people who say we must not profile become committed profilers when it suits their purposes.

In point of fact, if one of what appears to be several conspirators is neither a Muslim nor from an Islamic country, that does cut against the likelihood that this is another episode of Islamic terrorism. On the other hand, there are facts and circumstances that cut in the other direction – including that a jihadist organization has already claimed responsibility; that most terrorism is carried out by Islamists; that al Qaeda and other jihadist groups have for years been seeking European and American recruits (precisely because such operatives would defy the profile, drawing less suspicion); that al Qaeda tried to attack Oslo last year; and that Mullah Krekar recently appeared to threaten attacks if legal action were taken against him, and now legal action has been taken against him.

The point is that, correctly understood, profiling is a natural, sensible thing to do, and we all do it -- not just MSNBC but everyone from intelligence analysts to the father eying the guy at the door who wants to go out with his daughter.

Nobody is convicted over fitting a profile -- any more than some organization's claim of responsibility necessarily means that organization actually carried out an attack. But the fact that claims of responsibility are notoriously suspect right after a terrorist attack does not mean investigators should ignore them. And in the same way, you can't avoid considering the profile. It is simply a way for investigators to organize their suspicions in a rational way, to beam their attention on the most likely culprits first – recognizing that you still need to show by evidence, not by mere characteristics, that the suspect is guilty. Profiling avoids constitutional problems because the Constitution prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, and it is unreasonable to regard every single person as a suspect just to avoid offending the tender sensibilities of this or that group.

If it turns out that the suspect in custody is a non-Muslim with no connections to jihadist groups, it would be unreasonable to focus the investigation on Muslims and Islamic terror groups. I imagine Muslims would be the first people to make this argument (or, I suppose, the second people after MSNBC). But you can't have it both ways. It makes no sense to contend, as the anti-profiling crowd does, that you can’t profile terrorists because some terrorists (e.g., the British Muslim Richard Reid, or Jose Padilla, an American Muslim from Puerto Rico) do not match the profile, but then to insist that a plot must necessarily be unrelated to Islamic terror because a suspect fails to match the profile. Moreover, it is self-evident that not all terrorism is committed by Muslims and that most Muslims are not terrorists. That, however, does not alter the fact that the vast majority of anti-American, anti-Western terrorism is committed by Muslims who follow an interpretation of Islam that is alarmingly mainstream. It would be ridiculous to ignore this reality when conducting terrorism investigations.

Norway Terror Attacks

Obviously, it is important to be cautious in drawing conclusions when the attacks just happened and facts are still coming in. But at the Standard, FDD's Tom Joscelyn, as usual, provides some essential context. A year ago, an al Qaeda cell embedded in Oslo, under the direction of superiors in Pakistan, was thwarted in an attempted bombing. (Thwarted by aggressive intelligence collection, it should be added, including the penetration of email communications -- the sort of thing frowned on by European and American critics of Bush counterterrorism.)

Tom points out that al Qaeda tends to go back after the same targets after failures. (He notes that it is not known whether they'd zeroed in on a specific Oslo target the last time, but they clearly intended to hit the city.) He also observes that the attack comes only days after Norway finally indicted Mullah Krekar, the founder (with bin Laden) of Ansar al-Islam. Earlier this month, Krekar threatened to attack government officials if they deported him, as they had threatened to do. 

Update On Hezbo Commander Obama Administration May Transfer To Iraqis

Yesterday, I posted about Ali Mussa Daqduq, the Hezbollah commander responsible for terrorist operations in Iraq that targeted U.S. forces -- including the killing of five of our troops in Karbala in 2007. Daqduq has been in U.S. custody in Iraq for several years, but it was reported yesterday that his transfer to the Iraqi government was imminent.

In a nutshell, the Obama administration is ensnared by its own politicization of the war on terror: It cannot bring itself to send jihadist murderers to Gitmo for detention and possible military trial under the laws of war; yet it knows that if it does what it wants to do -- namely, bring the war criminal to the U.S. for a civilian trial at which Daqduq would be awarded all the rights of an American citizen and lavish discovery of our intelligence files -- it will face the same public backlash that met its debacle of an effort to give KSM a civilian trial. Administration officials may have figured they had an out: quietly transfer Daqduq to the Iraqis. That reportedly was about to happen, as early as today. But something this significant does not happen that quietly. Since everyone knows transfer to our "allies" the Iraqis would result in Daqduq's instant release to Iran (the regime that sent him to set up terror networks to kill Americans in Iraq in the first place), an AP report about Daqduq's imminent transfer to the Iraqis prompted vigorous opposition. (Your faithful correspondent ended yesterday's post with a plea that responsible actors in government not allow the debt-ceiling crisis to cause inattention to Daqduq.)

Thankfully, 20 senators (mostly Republicans, led by Armed Services Chairman John McCain -- I will list all the signatories below) fired off a letter to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, protesting the reported transfer of Daqduq, described as "the highest ranking Hezbollah operative currently in our custody," and as the terror trainer "suspected of orchestrating a brazen kidnapping in Karbala#...#that resulted in the murder of five U.S. military personnel." The senators aptly concluded: "If he is released from custody, we firmly believe he will seek to harm or kill more American servicemen and women."

The AP is now reporting that Daqduq's transfer is on hold. Something has to give, though -- and soon. Under the security agreement the Bush administration signed with the new Iraqi government, any prisoners in U.S. custody must be transferred to Iraq by the end of this year. President Obama cannot vote "present" on this one -- Daqduq will have to be detained (and possibly tried) outside Iraq as an enemy combatant, transferred to the U.S. for a civilian trial, or handed over to Iraq (translation: released to return to the jihad). 

In the meantime, our gratitude to the senators who mobilized so quickly to stop Daqduq's release. In addition to Senator McCain, the 19 Republicans included Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Sens. John Thune, Jim Inhofe, Jeff Sessions, Saxby Chambliss, Roger Wicker, Scott Brown, Kelly Ayotte, Lindsey Graham, David Vitter, Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, Richard Burr, Roy Blunt, Marco Rubio, Jon Kyl, Mark Kirk, and Susan Collins. Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent, also signed the letter to Secretary Panetta. 

What Is Going On with the Hezbollah Commander Who Killed U.S. Troops in Iraq?

Ali Mussa Daqduq is the Hezbollah commander who trained the network of "insurgent" terrorists responsible for the killing of many American troops in Iraq -- including the five murdered in Karbala (four in execution style) in a 2007 attack. I wrote about that incident back in 2009, when the Obama administration -- in a shameful and reckless departure from prior U.S. policy -- began negotiating with the Iraqi terror network and releasing its captured leaders in exchange for five British hostages (actually, the remains of British hostages -- four of the five were dead).

Daqduq has recently been back in the news because of the Obama administration's bull-headed determination to give the most atrocious war criminals the gold-plated due process of American civilian trials. In May, at the Long War Journal, Bill Roggio reported that Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee had gotten wind of the administration's plan to transfer Daqduq to the United States and give him a civilian prosecution for the wartime murder of American soldiers in Iraq.

The senators fired off a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, demanding to know Daqduq's status and pointing out that he should be given a military trial for war crimes. They also expressed concern that if Daqduq were instead transferred to the Iraqi government, he would promptly be released -- just as the Iraqis released the terrorists he trained once we'd transferred them. In nothing flat, he would, the senators predicted, "return to the battlefield and resume his terrorist activities against the United States and our interests."

Now comes this report from the Associated Press:

A Hezbollah commander held in Baghdad by the US military and considered a threat to American troops could be transferred soon to Iraqi authorities, and US security officials worry he could escape or even be freed.

Ali Mussa Daqduq worked with Iranian agents to train Shiite militias who targeted American soldiers in Iraq, according to the US military. He was captured in 2007 and US officials have linked him to a brazen 2007 raid in which four American soldiers were abducted and killed in the Iraqi holy city of Karbala. [H/t Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch.] 

If this report is true -- and to my knowledge, it has not been confirmed that Daqduq has been or will be surrendered to the Iraqis -- it would constitute one of the most irresponsible actions of the Obama presidency, and that is saying something. As Bill Roggio observed, Daqduq "is perhaps the most dangerous of the Shia terror commanders captured in Iraq" during the war. He is a veteran of nearly 30 years with Hezbollah, and he has commanded its special ops and the security detail of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah. He was tasked by Hezbollah and Iran to build an Iraqi terror network that mirrored Hezbollah's organization in Lebanon. In carrying out that mission, his main strategy was to kill Americans -- and he carried that strategy out ruthlessly.

I realize that the debt ceiling controversy is making it very hard to focus on anything else, but Daqduq must not be allowed to slip through the cracks. We need answers on what is happening, pronto.

Laura Robbed at the Airport

Add pillage to the increasingly infuriating experience of flying in the U.S. On tour to promote her terrific new book, Of Thee I Zing, Laura Ingraham's checked baggage was rifled through at Newark airport. The thief or thieves made off with about $11K in jewelry, including a baptismal cross, blessed by the pope, which she'd bought at the Vatican. The New York Post has more details. Hang in there, Laura. 

Meeting with Governor Perry

As Katrina has reported, I did indeed travel to Austin last week to meet with Governor Rick Perry. There was a small group of us former government official types, and we talked about a variety of national security issues.

The Governor is a very impressive guy. I admire him, and I hope I was of whatever help he thought I could be in thinking through the challenges we face. It's a very good thing for the country when people weighing decisions as important as whether to run for president tap into the relevant experience of current and former officials.

I've had similar discussions with some of the other candidates. My rule of thumb is that if a public official thinks consulting with me will help him or her arrive at good policy, I make myself available to do that, regardless of party affiliation or whether I generally agree with the official's politics. (People of very different political persuasions can often find common ground on national security and law enforcement issues, and I've learned an awful lot banging things around with folks whose politics are very different from mine.) I've occasionally declined to meet, but only when I had good reason to think the purpose of a proposed meeting was just to say a meeting happened rather than to engage in a good faith discussion.

Most of the time, there's not publicity attendant to these sorts of things. This time, for whatever reason, there was. In any event, if Gov. Perry decides to run, he will be a very strong candidate in a field that includes a number of very strong candidates -- good news for those of us who believe it is imperative that the incumbent be defeated.

More Ryan: A Brief History of President Obama's Fiscal Record

Very valuable -- here.