Andrew C. McCarthy's Blog, page 62

Grahambled

Author: 
Andrew C. McCarthy

Senator Lindsey Graham, who was for Qaddafi before he was against him, has gotten a well deserved thrashing here the last few days for suggesting a Koran exemption from the First Amendment. My column from yesterday takes issue with another of his latest brainstorms, the notion that President Obama can label Qaddafi an "unlawful enemy combatant" so U.S.forces can kill him, perhaps with the assistance of intelligence operatives Obama has placed on the ground in Libya. Sounds like a great idea . . . except for the fact that an executive order forbids assassinations of heads of state; the executive order specifically forbids intelligence officers from planning or participating in such assassinations; Congress has not authorized a war against Libya (the principal purpose of Congress's power to declare war is to fix the rights and privileges of combatants); and -- under a law Senator Graham helped write -- Qaddafi does not qualify as a combatant, as an enemy, or as unlawful. Oh details, details . . .

Honoring the Compact

Author: 
Andrew C. McCarthy

That is the title The New Criterion gave to my review of The Language of Law and the Foundations of American Constitutionalism, a fabulous book by University of Richmond Professor Gary L. McDowell about the wayward course American legal education has charted away from the Constitution. It's in the April 2011 issue of TNC, where you can also find characteristically top-shelf offerings from guys named Nordlinger, Pryce-Jones, and Williamson. 

Baradei's Promise to Declare War on Israel

Author: 
Andrew C. McCarthy

Mario, how could you say the execrable Mohammed El Baradei is "obviously playing to public opinion" by threatening war against Israel. I thought we'd been told that there is a blossoming Arab spring of freedom and democracy, spearheaded by liberty lovers who -- to borrow Condi Rice's words -- just want to live side-by-side in peace with their Israeli neighbors. There wasn't the slightest cause for hesitation about getting rid of that thug Mubarak -- the anti-terrorist pro-American dictator who kept the peace with Israel for 30 years even though Egyptians had killed his predecessor for agreeing to that peace. Remember? It was time for Mubarak to go. And after all, the likely new rulers were the "largely secular," "moderate" Muslim Brotherhood, and Iran-friendly leftists like Baradei who are even more progressive than the Brothers if that's possible.

What could go wrong -- they're gonna be a democracy, right? And if a substantial majority of Egyptians denies Israel's right to exist, why shouldn't they be able to enact that policy democratically? Don't our values require that we support them in their quest to chart their own destiny?

Stanley notes that Baradei broke with the Muslim Brotherhood over the election, choosing instead to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with those throngs of progressive Egyptian democracy lovers -- who are so numerous they were wiped out, 77–23 percent, by that teeny-tiny fringe of Egyptians who prefer fundamentalist Islam. I would add though (as Ray Ibrahim has observed) that Baradei's break with the Brotherhood came only after he enthusiastically agreed with the Brotherhood's position that Article 2 of the Egyptian constitution had to be preserved. That's the provision that establishes Islam as the state religion and installs sharia law as "the principal source of legislation." Talk about playing to public opinion: That's a position an Egyptian democrat has to take not only to be viable for electoral purposes but to be viable as in stay alive.

But, hey, spring is in the air.

Not Unlawful, Not an Enemy Combatant

Senator Graham prepares to set the law of war on its head.

Is there a limit to the damage this government is willing to do to American credibility and security in its sudden haste to rid the world of Moammar Qaddafi -- known until recently as a valuable new American ally? Here’s the latest: Sen. Lindsey Graham is ready to make a mockery of what’s been the legal foundation of our counterterrorism agenda since the Bush administration: the concept of “unlawful enemy combatant.” That is the basis, under the law of war, on which we detain terrorists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed without trial, in order to prevent them from slaughtering more Americans, as well as authorize military-commission trials against those terrorists for war crimes against the United States. There are many good reasons to do this, one of which is the fact that under this process we don’t have to vest them with all the rights of American citizens and surrender to them the intelligence trove that would be made available under civilian due-process rules.

#ad#Senator Graham was interviewed by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday. He repeated the now-familiar interventionist creed: Qaddafi is an incorrigible terrorist enemy of the United States, has been for 40 years, and therefore he must be removed by force -- by U.S. force -- regardless of the fact that he has neither attacked nor threatened to attack the United States, that Congress has not authorized war against him, and that we have great reason to surmise that his regime would be replaced by Islamists who would pose an actual threat to Americans. Graham bewailed President Obama’s failure to be clear on the objective of regime change and his lack of resolve to jump unambiguously onto the side of the “rebels” -- Obama prefers the camouflage of a humanitarian mission to protect civilians, even though, as Blitzer pointed out, he has dispatched covert intelligence operatives to help Qaddafi’s opposition (despite telling the American people there would be no U.S. “boots on the ground”).

Toward the end of the interview, Blitzer asked the natural question: Since we have these U.S. operatives on the ground, couldn’t we just have them kill or capture Qaddafi? Is that something President Obama could authorize?

Graham acknowledged that this was “a good question.” He is more right about that than he seems to realize. There is an executive order still in place that prohibits assassinations of foreign officials -- that, indeed, is why, when our forces attacked Qaddafi’s compound during the Reagan administration, commanders stressed that they were targeting command-and-control assets, not targeting Qaddafi personally.

Yes, it’s only an executive order, which means President Obama could rescind it. But no one -- least of all Senator Graham -- is suggesting such a politically fraught course. A big part of the order’s rationale is to discourage hostile foreigners from assassination attempts against top American officials, including presidents. No one wants to appear cavalier about that possibility.

Thus the quandary: If Qaddafi is a head of state, and you have no intention of repealing the proscription against assassinating heads of state, does that mean we can’t have the CIA rub out the dictator? Not at all, contends Graham in his clever-lawyer persona. Abracadabra, President Obama could just wave his magic wand (or is it a scepter?) and unilaterally declare Qaddafi an unlawful enemy combatant. That way, see, he’d no longer be a chief of state.

#page#Evidently, it’s not a problem that most of the “international community” still recognizes Qaddafi as head of state, while our own government has thus far declined to recognize the rebels -- the Libyan mujahideen -- as the legitimate government. The senator figures, with this hocus-pocus, we could kill Qaddafi just like we’d kill any other terrorist in the War On Terror.

This is just jaw-dropping coming from Senator Graham. Remember his pontifications during the debates about interrogations and other detainee policy? According to the senator, even though al-Qaeda terrorists are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, failing to afford them similar legal protections would be unconscionable. It would endanger our troops in this and future wars, he said. That al-Qaeda tortures and kills its prisoners regardless of how we comport ourselves made no difference. Nor did it matter that how the U.S. treats a terrorist organization has no legal bearing on any future conflict between the U.S. and another Geneva Convention nation-state. Graham declaimed that this was about our values, about what kind of people we are, our regard for the rule of law, etc. Respecting the supposed rights of our enemies was more important than collecting life-saving intelligence#...#but it’s apparently not more important than killing Qaddafi.

#ad#Isn’t that a bit bizarre? As with most American politicians, it is difficult to find any objection by Senator Graham to the U.S. policy, in seven-plus years from late 2003 until the start of Libya’s civil war a few weeks ago, of regarding Qaddafi as an American ally. Perhaps I’ll be corrected, but I don’t find any indication that Senator Graham voted against the foreign aid to Libya sought by the Bush State Department. I can’t find him piping up to protest President Bush’s appalling decision to pay Qaddafi reparations for damages sustained in President Reagan’s missile strikes on Tripoli -- an attack in retaliation for Libya’s terrorist bombing that killed U.S. soldiers in Germany. I’ve failed to find any Graham condemnation of President Obama’s equally appalling decisions to increase the amount of American taxpayer dollars poured into Qaddafi’s armed forces and into foundations run by Qaddafi’s children (including his son Saif -- the guy who has now promised Libyan streets flowing with “rivers of blood”).

The Obama proposal to increase funding for Libya’s armed forces -- the ones we are now shooting at, because they have predictably been used against regime opponents -- happened only a few weeks ago. And everyone knew at the time that Qaddafi was a prodigious human-rights violator. So in the blink of an eye, with no intervening threat to our country and no vital U.S. interest at stake, Washington goes from making laws that lined Qaddafi’s pockets to breaking laws so Qaddafi can be killed?

Senator Graham was a key player in the enactment of the Military Commissions Act (MCA). You may recall that a salient attack by the Obama Left on Bush counterterrorism was that the label “unlawful enemy combatant” was hopelessly elastic and, thus, arbitrary. The Bush administration, they argued, was capriciously -- and often incoherently -- selecting which alleged terrorists were detained indefinitely as war prisoners and which were indicted as civilian defendants. Especially sensitive to such criticism (which was amplified by the Bush-bashing media), Graham and his co-authors took pains, in the very first MCA provision, to define precisely what an “unlawful enemy combatant” is and to distinguish such militants from “lawful enemy combatants.” And guess what? Under Graham’s own handiwork, Qaddafi is undeniably a lawful combatant -- to the extent he can be seen as a combatant at all.

We have to add “to the extent he can be seen as a combatant at all” for a crucially important reason: The only relevant combatants under our law are our enemies. To be an enemy combatant under American law, a person has to be fighting against the United States. That he is somebody’s enemy does not make him our enemy.

#page#Senator Graham is among the intrepid congressional legions who don’t seem to have a problem with the fact that President Obama has unilaterally embarked on a war against a nation that had not threatened us -- that he consulted the U.N., the Arab League, NATO, and seemingly every international cabal under the sun but ignored Congress, the only department of our government constitutionally empowered to declare war. It’s worth pausing over that power.

I have a slight disagreement with my friends Mark Levine and John Yoo over the scope of Congress’s authority -- I think it’s broader than they do, that it means a president is supposed to get Congress’s assent under circumstances where our country has not been attacked or threatened. (It’s a “slight” disagreement, because I don’t think there’s a judicial remedy -- no matter which of us is technically correct, the bottom line is the same: Any inter-branch dispute over sending our forces into battle has to be worked out politically.)

#ad#But here is the point on which there is universal consensus: At a minimum, the power to declare war means Congress has the sole constitutional authority to determine that there is a state of war between the U.S. and another belligerent (usually, another nation-state) and therefore to fix the rights and privileges of combatants under the laws of war. In other words, presidents don’t get to say, “You’re now an enemy combatant, and I’ll decide what rights you get -- including whether you live or die.” If the power to declare war means anything, it means that such matters are for Congress to determine.

But now, according to what he told Blitzer, Senator Graham would not only cede to Obama plenary power to start an unprovoked war, he also wants the president empowered to make up the war as he goes along, to change its objectives at will, and to arbitrarily decide who is a combatant and who is not and whether he is comporting himself lawfully or unlawfully. When the law or the purported objectives announced yesterday prove inconvenient tomorrow, the president can just change them. Moreover, the senator would endow our increasingly imperial president with the power to override congressional statutes whenever the president decides wartime imperatives dictate doing so. That, you may recall, is exactly the “blank check” the Left claimed George W. Bush had to be denied with respect to al-Qaeda terrorists who, unlike Qaddafi, were actually trying to kill us for the last several years.

Under the MCA, an “unlawful enemy combatant” is “a person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents.” Qaddafi has not even threatened to engage in hostilities against the United States -- we attacked him. Further, according to the president, we are not at war with the Libyan regime -- we are on a humanitarian mission to protect civilians who might otherwise be mass-murdered in a civil war between the regime and the rebels. The regime and the rebels are combatants as to each other, not as to us. Officially speaking, if I may borrow words the Bush and Obama State Departments have been using for the last seven years, we don’t have any enemies in Libya.

But wait a minute. Senator Graham told CNN that Qaddafi could be deemed an unlawful enemy combatant, a distinction that purportedly clears the way to kill him. As he elaborated, if Obama were suddenly to refuse to recognize Qaddafi as Libya’s ruler (something many in Washington and Europe are urging the president to do), he’d no longer be Libya’s lawful ruler, and therefore, in Graham logic, he’d no longer be a lawful combatant.

Let’s put aside for now the irony that Graham would put Obama -- the president who makes a point of apologizing to the world for America’s purported legacy of arrogance -- in charge of deciding each country’s legitimate ruler. Graham’s reasoning is hopelessly flawed. To begin with, and to reiterate, no one is a combatant (lawful or unlawful) under U.S. law unless he is our enemy. What makes a combatant lawful or unlawful is his conduct; but what makes him a combatant is his status -- and status means he needs to be part of a country or faction that is in a war against us, not in a civil war within his own country.

Quite apart from that, though, the MCA expressly defines a “lawful enemy combatant” to include “a member of a regular armed force who professes allegiance to a government engaged in such hostilities [i.e., against the United States], but not recognized by the United States.” That is to say, a combatant cannot be stripped of his privileges under the laws of war by a facile declaration that we no longer recognize his regime or faction as the legitimate government of his nation.

So, Qaddafi is not an enemy, because neither is he fighting us nor, according to the president, are we fighting him. That means he is not even a combatant as to us. And even vis-à-vis our new friends the rebels, Qaddafi is not an unlawful combatant -- he commands a regular armed force that professes allegiance to his regime. According the the MCA Graham helped write, it makes no difference whether our government continues to recognize that regime as the legitimate government of Libya.

Unlike the war in Libya, maintaining the integrity of the legal framework that enables us to detain anti-American terrorists actually is a vital interest of the United States. Given that our government was content to view Qaddafi as a “valuable ally” up until what seems like a few minutes ago -- even to the point of fortifying his armed forces -- is the sudden craving to exterminate him really worth undermining our long-term security -- and embarrassing ourselves more by the minute?

—  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.

Andrew C. McCarthy

More On Koran Burning

Author: 
Andrew C. McCarthy

Jonah, my problem with the Koran burning stunt is that it is counterproductive. I hear what you're saying about decency. But on that score, I don't find the burning any more offensive in principle than I do its opposite extreme: the bizarro hyper-reverence with which the Koran is handled by the Defense Department.

Down at Gitmo, the Defense Department gives the Koran to each of the terrorists even though DoD knows they interpret it (not without reason) to command them to kill the people who gave it to them. To underscore our precious sensitivity to Muslims, standard procedure calls for the the book to be handled only by Muslim military personnel. Sometimes, though, that is not possible for various reasons. If, as a last resort, one of our non-Muslim troops must handle or transport the book, he must wear white gloves, and he is further instructed primarily to use the right hand (indulging Muslim culture's taboo about the sinister left hand). The book is to be conveyed to the prisoners in a "reverent manner" inside a "clean dry towel." This is a nod to Islamic teaching that infidels are so low a form of life that they should not be touched (as Ayatollah Ali Sistani teaches, non-Muslims are "considered in the same category as urine, feces, semen, dead bodies, blood, dogs, pigs, alcoholic liquors," and "the sweat of an animal who persistently eats [unclean things]."

This is every bit as indecent as torching the Koran, implicitly endorsing as it does the very dehumanization of non-Muslims that leads to terrorism. Furthermore, there is hypocrisy to consider: the Defense Department now piously condemning Koran burning is the same Defense Department that itself did not give a second thought to confiscating and burning bibles in Afghanistan.

Quite consciously, U.S. commanders ordered this purge in deference to sharia proscriptions against the proselytism of faiths other than Islam. And as General Petraeus well knows, his chain of command is not the only one destroying bibles. Non-Muslim religious artifacts, including bibles, are torched or otherwise destroyed in Islamic countries every single day as a matter of standard operating procedure. (See, e.g., my 2007 post on Saudi government guidelines that prohibit Jews and Christians from bringing bibles, crucifixes, Stars of David, etc., into the country -- and, of course, not just non-Muslim accessories but non-Muslim people are barred from entering Mecca and most of Medina, based on the classical interpretation of an injunction found in what Petraeus is fond of calling the Holy Qur'an (sura 9:28: "Truly the pagans are unclean . . . so let them not . . . approach the sacred mosque").

I don't like book burning either, but I think there are different kinds of book burnings. One is done for purposes of censorship -- the attempt to purge the world of every copy of a book to make it as if the sentiments expressed never existed. A good modern example is Cambridge University Press's shameful pulping of all known copies of Alms for Jihad (see Stanley's 2007 post on that). The other kind of burning is done as symbolic condemnation. That's what I think Terry Jones was doing. He knows he doesn't have the ability to purge the Koran from the world, and he wasn't trying to. He was trying to condemn some of the ideas that are in it -- or maybe he really thinks the whole thing is condemnable.

This is a particularly aggressive and vivid way to express disdain, but I don't know that it is much different in principle from orally condemning some of the Koran's suras and verses. Sura 9 of the Koran, for example, states the supremacist doctrine that commands Muslims to kill and conquer non-Muslims (e.g., 9:5: "But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war) . . ."; 9:29: "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the last day, nor hold forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the Religion of Truth, from among the people of the Book [i.e., the Jews and Christians], until they pay the jizya [i.e., the tax paid for the privilege of living as dhimmis under the protection of the sharia state] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued"). I must say, I've got a much bigger problem with the people trying to comply with those commands than with the guy who burns them.

I think the big problem with what Jones did is the gratuitous insult to all Muslims, including the millions who do not subscribe to the violent jihadist or broader Islamist construction of Islamic scripture. They have found some way to rationalize the incendiary scriptures -- and if it works for them, who the hell am I to say they're wrong? They are our natural allies in this battle, and as I've often pointed out, without their help, we could not have done things like infiltrate the Blind Sheikh's terror cell, gather vital intelligence, thwart terrorist attacks, and refine trial evidence into compelling proof.

These people regard the Koran as the most important of their scriptures. When someone burns the Koran in an act of indiscriminate, wholesale condemnation, the message to them is that their belief system is incorrigible. Freedom of speech means that we have to allow that argument to be made, and I'm not entirely sure it's wrong. But good Muslim people give us reason to hope that what ails Islam can be reformed. I don't see the upside in alienating those people. I think you can condemn the condemnable aspects of the Koran without condemning everything. But that's just my opinion, and Mr. Jones is as entitled to his as I am to mine. And for what it's worth, I doubt my opinion would be much more popular than his in Mazar-e-Sharif.

Obama Administration Decision to Return KSM to the Military Courts

Author: 
Andrew C. McCarthy

The Obama administration's decision to return the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 mass-murderers to a military commission demonstrates, yet again, that the American people can force reversals in bad government policy by protesting strongly against them.

Today's reversal comes not because the administration wanted to abandon the push for a civilian trial. It comes because the president -- as he not coincidentally announced today -- is seeking reelection. Trying to force a civilian trial of the 9/11 attacks would doom that effort.

No one should be under the misimpression that today's decision was made by the Justice Department, even if it is being announced by Attorney General Holder. From the start, the attorney general has been implementing President Obama's policy -- it was the president who, as a candidate, campaigned on returning the country to the pre-9/11 counterterrorism model that regarded al-Qaeda's onslaught as a mere law enforcement problem.

That policy was a debacle. The American people want national security challenges treated like national security challenges, not like a crime wave. While public opinion regarding military operations in Iraq has been sharply divided, Americans strongly support a war footing when it comes to protecting our homeland from terrorist attack. 

Never in the history of the United States have our wartime enemies been invited into our civilian courts, clothed in the majesty of our Constitution, enabled by our due process rules to comb through our intelligence files, and given a platform to put our government, our troops, and our society on trial. Unless and until we devise a new system for prosecuting enemy combatant terrorists, military commissions remain the appropriate vehicle for war crimes trials. This is not a departure from the rule of law, it is the rule of law during wartime.

The shame here is that the decision announced today should have been announced in January 2009. That was when the Obama administration pulled the plug on the war crimes military-commission against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 jihadists at the very moment when they were prepared to plead guilty and move on to execution.

By that point, millions of dollars and three years of effort had been expended to make discovery, litigate pretrial motions, and prepare for trial. Now, because of the administration's politicized dithering, the case will have to start again from scratch and the terrorists will be able to raise new legal challenges to the prosecution based on prejudice they will inevitably say this dithering and delay caused.

Fortunately, officials in the military justice system are highly competent and well equipped to handle these complications. It's just a shame that they'll need to do that.  

Clinton's 'I'd be inclined' to arm the Libyan 'rebels'

Author: 
Andrew C. McCarthy

Dan, did Clinton say whether he'd also be "inclined" to have Iran arm the Libyan "rebels" -- the way he had them arm Bosnian "rebels" in the mid-nineties? Look how well that "freedom movement" worked out! And if you think about it, it's a natural since Iran has been arming jihadists with ties to al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood for years -- they know exactly how to do it.

I love it when a plan comes together!

No More Dhimmitude

Author: 
Andrew C. McCarthy

As always, Mark leaves nothing left to say regarding Sen. Lindsey Graham -- though I am tempted to suggest that maybe the country would have been better off if he hadn't exercised his First Amendment right to offer help beefing up the Libyan regime when he was a special guest in Qaddafi's tent a few months back.

I would instead like to draw attention to the repugnant statement issued by General David Petraeus and NATO Ambassador Mark Sedwill:

KABUL, Afghanistan (April 3, 2011) – In view of the events of recent days, we feel it is important on behalf of ISAF [i.e., the International Security Assistance Force] and NATO members in Afghanistan to reiterate our condemnation of any disrespect to the Holy Qur'an and the Muslim faith. We condemn, in particular, the action of an individual in the United States who recently burned the Holy Qur'an.



We also offer condolences to the families of all those injured and killed in violence which occurred in the wake of the burning of the Holy Qur'an.



We further hope the Afghan people understand that the actions of a small number of individuals, who have been extremely disrespectful to the Holy Qur'an, are not representative of any of the countries of the international community who are in Afghanistan to help the Afghan people.

Notice he condemns the moron who torched the Koran -- um, I'm sorry, the Holy Qur’an (including all its holy verses that command Muslims to strike terror into the hearts of unbelievers) -- but not a word of condemnation for the sadistic jihadist killers who struck terror into the hearts of the unbelievers. Rather, there is just an expression of sympathy for the families of those who were slain. And, of course, there is not a word of condemnation for our great ally, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the jihadi-pandering sleaze who did more to incite murder than the nutty Florida pastor did.

The warped moral universe we've turned into policy has become a national embarrassment. Leave aside the mind-bending idiocy of the Graham theory, under which it would have been condemnable to torch Das Capital during the Cold War. Our Middle East policymakers can no longer distinguish between evil and stupidity. They go out of their way to genuflect to the scriptures that catalyze our enemies while willfully ignoring bible burning, church burning and infidel burning, which are everyday events in Islamic countries. Their strategy prizes the lives of people who despise our country over the security of our troops. After a decade of our sacrifice, they have managed to birth states in which Americans are hated, religious minorities are persecuted, and people who attempt to convert from Islam face prosecution and -- unless they get whisked out of the country -- the death penalty. And now, they've decide the big problem is not their skewed value-system but our First Amendment.

Enough. Petraeus says, "we are in Afghanistan to help the Afghan people." Is that why you thought we sent troops to Afghanistan? Is that what you think we should be doing in Afghanistan now? I am pretty confident that most Americans couldn't care less about the Afghan people, and I know the Afghan people couldn't care less about us -- except to the extent they trouble themselves to dislike us.

We got in this to defeat our enemies, and we're ending up defeating ourselves and the principles for which we once stood. We never had any strategic vision of the global war, we had no stomach to follow through on the Bush Doctrine commitment to eradicate the rogue regimes that were behind the terror networks, and we decided we could outreach and democratize them into submission. Now we are predictably hoisted on our own petard as Islamists exploit our rhetoric to make themselves the champions of "democracy" -- meaning of elections that are bringing to power those who hate our country and whose ambition is to destroy Israel and the West. Obviously, no one in government is willing to change this policy, so let's end it. 

What should our new policy be? We should have as little to do with Muslim countries as possible. At home, we should focus on the political and legal terrain with an eye toward: 

(a) distinguishing between our allies in the American Muslim community (i.e., those who do not want to impose sharia on public life) and those who seek to undermine our constitutional system, so we can marginalize the latter;

(b) excluding from the United States aliens who would support supplanting the U.S. Constitution with a sharia system (i.e., revisiting the hash Congress and the courts have made regarding the reliance on anti-American ideology -- not just ties to violence -- as a basis for keeping non-Americans out of our country); and

(c) cutting off immigration from, and sharply reducing contacts with, Muslim countries until they take it on themselves to reform -- on separation of mosque and state, freedom of conscience, equality, interfaith tolerance, individual liberty, and unambiguous rejection of terrorism.

Not only is that a policy that can work, it is one an insolvent country can actually afford.

The Senators Sway

Before they wanted to kill Qaddafi, they were celebrating in his tent.

John McCain, Joseph Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham are the Senate’s most energetic proponents of sinking the nation ever deeper into the Libyan morass. In a joint interview on Fox last weekend, Senators McCain (R., Ariz.) and Lieberman (I., Conn.) were breathless in their rendering of the “freedom fighters” and the “Arab Spring” of spontaneous “democracy.” Friday they upped the ante with a Wall Street Journal op-ed, rehearsing yet again what an incorrigible thug Qaddafi is and how “we cannot allow [him] to consolidate his grip” on parts of Libya that he still controls.

For his part, Senator Graham (R., S.C.) told CNN Wednesday that he would like President Obama to designate Qaddafi an “unlawful enemy combatant” with an eye toward legitimizing the strongman’s assassination. He and Wolf Blitzer discussed whether the hit could be pulled off by the covert intelligence operatives President Obama has inserted in Libya. The next day, in his plaintive questioning of Defense Secretary Robert Gates at a Senate hearing, Senator Graham wondered why American air power could not just “drop a bomb on him, to end this thing.”

#ad#As a matter of law, Graham’s proposal is ludicrous -- no small thanks to federal law that Graham himself helped write, about which more in an upcoming column. What was especially striking about the hearing was the tone of righteous indignation Senators Graham and McCain took in whipping the Obama administration over government blundering.

But what about their own blundering? The senators most strident about the purported need to oust Qaddafi, to crush his armed forces, and to kill him if that’s what it takes to empower the rebels, are the very senators who helped fortify Qaddafi’s military and tighten the despotic grip of which they now despair.

It was only a short time ago, in mid-August 2009, that Senators McCain, Lieberman, and Graham, along with another transnational progressive moderate, Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine), paid a visit to Qaddafi’s Tripoli compound. If they seem to have amnesia about it now, perhaps that’s because the main item on the agenda was their support for the Obama administration’s offer of military aid to the same thug the senators now want gone yesterday.

A government cable (leaked by Wikileaks) memorializes the excruciating details of meetings between the Senate delegation and Qaddafi, along with his son Mutassim, Libya’s “national security adviser.” We find McCain and Graham promising to use their influence to push along Libya’s requests for C-130 military aircraft, among other armaments, and civilian nuclear assistance. And there’s Lieberman gushing, “We never would have guessed ten years ago that we would be sitting in Tripoli, being welcomed by a son of Muammar al-Qadhafi.” That’s before he opined that Libya had become “an important ally in the war on terrorism,” and that “common enemies sometimes make better friends.”

On and on it goes, made all the more nauseating by the reality that nobody was under any illusion that Qaddafi had truly reformed. McCain made a point of telling the press that “the status of human rights and political reform in Libya will remain a chief element of concern.” Note the gentle diplomatic understatement: Qaddafi is -- and was, as McCain well knew -- a savage autocrat. Yet this brute fact was softened into “an element of concern” regarding “the status of human rights and political reform.” Pretty sharp contrast from the senator’s sardonic grilling of the U.S. defense secretary on Thursday. The McCain who was face-to-face with Qaddafi was very different from the McCain who today rails about Qaddafi. Back in the tent, none of his concern would dampen the cozy mood. The Arizonan swooned over “the many ways in which the United States and Libya can work together as partners.”

#page#This would build on the partnership with Qaddafi that, as I’ve detailed, was struck by the Bush administration, a blunder if ever there was one. But did McCain, Lieberman, and Graham have a problem with it -- because Qaddafi is an incorrigible terrorist enemy of the United States, who must be exterminated right away? If they did, perhaps they’ll enlighten us. None of these gents is exactly a wallflower when it comes to telling us what he thinks on matters great and small. If they were protesting our Qaddafi policy, the public record is strangely silent on the matter. Truth be told, it runs decidedly in the opposite direction.

As is his wont, President Obama took President Bush’s blunder and ran with it. Not only did the new administration continue Bush’s aid to Qaddafi, the aid was stepped up. In fact, Obama increased military aid to Qaddafi’s regime only a few weeks before the current crisis began -- support Hillary Clinton’s State Department said would go to further strengthening Qaddafi’s air force (the one our no-fly zone is now shooting down), to train his military officers (the ones the senators now want to bomb to smithereens), and to support what the Obama administration, echoing the Bush administration, insisted was Qaddafi’s staunch anti-terrorism.

#ad#With eyes wide open, the interventionist senators abetted the U.S. aid to Qaddafi and the legitimizing of his dictatorial regime. Given that this policy has contributed mightily to Qaddafi’s current capacity to consolidate his grip on power and repress his opposition, one might think some senatorial contrition, or at least humility, would be in order. But, no. Having been entirely wrong about Qaddafi, the senators would now have us double down on Libya by backing Qaddafi’s opposition -- the rebels about whom McCain, Lieberman, and Graham know a lot less than they knew about Qaddafi.

As for what they knew about Qaddafi, the story gets even worse.

It goes without saying that the interventionist senators’ case for why Qaddafi must go always comes back to his terrorist past and, in particular, to the bombing of Pan Am 103. What they neglect to mention is that at the very moment they were huddling with Qaddafi, reports were circulating that the dictator was pressuring British and Scottish authorities (with the knowledge of the Obama administration) for the release of the Lockerbie terrorist, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi. In fact, while the senators were on their Tripoli jaunt, the imminence of Megrahi’s release was so well-known that the American embassy in Libya began advising that, because a celebratory “youth rally” was being planned, American citizens should steer clear of downtown Tripoli on August 20 and 21. Contemporaneously, President Obama was pleading with Qaddafi not to give the bomber “a hero’s welcome.”

#page#In the event, Megrahi was in fact released five days after the senators’ visit. Upon being escorted home by another Qaddafi son, Saif, the terrorist was given a hero’s welcome at the Tripoli airport by thousands of Libyans -- the liberty-loving civilians we are now risking American blood and treasure to protect, from the country that, by percentage of population, sent more jihadists to fight American troops in Iraq than any other.

What has been much missed is that Qaddafi discussed the prospect of Megrahi’s triumphant return with his distinguished senatorial guests. The Wikileaks cable indicates that McCain took the lead on this issue. In its August 21 report on Megrahi, the Associated Press mentioned in passing that the senators had “warned Libyan officials of possible damage to U.S.-Libyan relations if Megrahi’s return were to be handled in the wrong fashion.”

#ad#“If Megrahi’s return were to be handled in the wrong fashion” -- mull that one over for a moment. There was no Libyan threat to the United States when Obama ordered our troops into battle last week. Intervention proponents seek to fill that inconvenient gap by stressing Qaddafi’s history of anti-American terrorism. Lockerbie, among other atrocities, is what McCain, Lieberman, and Graham say makes it urgent that we remove or even kill Qaddafi, the sooner the better.

Yet, there they were in Qaddafi’s tent only a year and a half ago, amiably chatting about our new bilateral “partnership” and plans to give this terrorist sundry assistance, prominently including military aid. Hovering over the meeting is Lockerbie. Far from ancient history, it is very much front and center because Qaddafi’s chief perpetrator of the attack is on the cusp of being released. So, with this powerful a reminder of Qaddafi’s monstrousness staring them in the face, do the senators say, “Don’t you dare try to spring that bomber”? Do they declare Lockerbie to be Exhibit A in the case that Qaddafi is an incorrigible terrorist who must be removed? Do they assure Qaddafi that if he rubs our nose in that mass-murder again by feting the murderer, there will be hell to pay?

No. Instead, it was taken as a given that the Lockerbie bomber would be released at Qaddafi’s insistence. The only thing left to talk about was the fashion in which Megrahi’s return to Libya would be handled. There appears to have been none of the indignation reserved for televised Senate hearings. Echoing Obama, the senators merely insisted that Megrahi’s return to Libya be managed lest it disrupt our growing “partnership” with Qaddafi, lest it complicate the important work of bulking up his regime on the backs of American taxpayers.

Having taken the measure of his guests, and of President Obama, Qaddafi -- being Qaddafi -- went right ahead with the raucous celebration his regime had planned for its returning terrorist hero. And, just as Qaddafi figured, the U.S. responded by continuing to support his regime, then by increasing support for his regime, and, until a few weeks ago, by envisioning a long-range, bilateral partnership with steadily escalating support for his regime. All of this appears to have been done with nary a peep from McCain, Lieberman, and Graham.

We all make bad mistakes. For most of us, they are occasions for introspection, for saying, “I’m sorry.” In the case of Libya, the senators’ miscalculation about Qaddafi is a fine opportunity to acknowledge that we’ve already botched things badly enough, that maybe we should avoid additional entanglement in a place where we have no vital interests, risking more American lives and dollars at a time when we are militarily stretched and financially tapped out.

For most of us, a mistake is not an occasion for doubling down, for fits of pique, or for painting everybody else as the fool.

—  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.

Andrew C. McCarthy

More on that Senate resolution "authorizing" the Libya war

Author: 
Andrew C. McCarthy

As new Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee push for Senate consideration of the president's initiation of a war in Libya without congressional authorization, the State Department continues to wave around that Senate resolution (Resolution No. 85) in a disingenuous effort to claim Congress has authorized the war. Senator John Ensign is not amused. These remarks he contributed to the record (part of a larger statement on Libya) do not go into the embarrassing fact that the GOP seems to have been snookered -- Sen. Ensign's approach is to say the offending paragraph doesn't mean what Democrats say it means, not that Democrats caught the GOP napping and slid it into a larger resolution that the GOP allowed to be rubber-stamped. But he effectively makes the point that, contrary to Secretary of State Clinton's pretensions, the resolution doesn't authorize anything.

No Congressional Authorization

While Secretary Clinton has continued to refer to S. Res. 85 as a Senate endorsement of the President’s establishment of a no-fly zone, I’d like to point out to the American people that this talking point is very misleading.

Senate Resolution 85 received the same amount of consideration as a bill to rename a post office; it was ‘hotlined’ and there was no debate allowed on this issue and no legislative language provided to consider.  There was no vote.

S. Res. 85 described a no-fly zone as a “possible” course of action for the U.N. Security Council’s consideration.  It did not instruct the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations to take action, let alone authorize a military operation.

Using the hotline process for S. Res. 85 as a congressional endorsement for the President’s policy is simply not an adequate use of Congress’ role in authorizing military action.

The Administration unilaterally developed, planned and executed its no-fly zone policy. President Obama consulted the UN, NATO and Arab League, but did not consult what is mandated under our laws and Constitution. There was no Congressional approval or oversight of this military commitment.

S. Res. 85 simply does not authorize or endorse the use of force.  It urges a multilateral body to consider a no-fly zone as a possible course of action.

That is not the legal equivalent of an authorization to use force. That is not the political equivalent of an authorization to use force.

So what is S.Res. 85?  It is a disrespectful checking of the box by this Administration for congressional approval of its unilateral military decision.