Last night, Mark Levin compared the speech of President Barack Obama to remarks made by former Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday. (Full audio of Cheney speech here.):
Here is a sampling of how others reacted, starting off with the leading voice of the hate-America-first crowd; the Leftists are not quite publicly in tune with President Obama:
There are Guantanamo prisoners who violated the laws of war and should be tried in military tribunals, but not the existing ones created by Congress in 2006. That law should not be tinkered with. It should be scrapped and those prisoners should be tried under military law. Some prisoners can be transferred to other governments’ custody and some, who committed no crimes, should be released. And, yes, some should be allowed to live in the United States. — the Editors, New York Times
True to his September 10 philosophy, President Obama declared on Thursday that the civilian courts were “tough enough†to convict terrorists. That has never been the question. The problems are that the criminal-justice system cannot apprehend many terrorists (only 29 terrorists, mostly low-level, were prosecuted during the eight years of attacks leading up to 9/11), and that the few trials it manages become intelligence troves for the many thousands of terrorists remaining at large. — the Editors, National Review Online
It is also not true, no matter how many times Mr. Obama and his supporters repeat it, that Guantanamo Bay and enhanced interrogation (or “torture†as they call it) are primary drivers of terrorist recruitment. The principal exacerbating factor in recruitment is successful terrorist attacks. — Andy McCarthy, National Review Online
Excoriating Bush is good politics for Obama, which is what makes his repeated exhortations to look ahead so disingenuous. In his speech, he rued that “we have a return of the politicization of these issues.†In other words: Dick Cheney, please shut up. But when did the politicization of these issues end? Has the Left ever stopped braying about Bush’s war crimes? — Rich Lowry, National Review
Obama sought the high ground yesterday, arguing about laws, values and morals. Again, Cheney had a powerful answer: No moral code requires Americans to commit suicide to spare terrorists unpleasantries. “When an entire population is targeted by a terror network, nothing is more consistent with American values than to stop them,” [Cheney] said. Obama can switch course to reach some “higher” moral plane if he wants. But if he does, he may be putting the nation at risk. — the Editors, New York Post
Also see what the editors at the Wall Street Journal and Bill Kristol wrote.
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The more I listen to Cheney the more it becomes obvious that he would have made a better President than GW. He is not a reconfigured politician designing a strategic explanation of his Administration’s history. He is the same unabashed conservative today as he was before he became VP and he is neither apologetic nor bashful about the fact that we have not had another event since 911. And despite his compassion and love for America he does not need to define himself as a compassionate conservative. Compare that to the televangelist, convoluted and discombobulated attempt to reconfigure our Constitution based upon values the founding fathers never had in mind. The Bush Administration expended an enormous effort to govern and conduct a war well within the boundaries of Article 2. The fact of the matter is that statutes cannot supercede a superior document and are not a substitute for amending the very generous war powers the president is Constitutionally granted. A war is not a police action. The legislature will continually attempt to confiscate Executive authority and the Supreme Court will attempt to confiscate the authority of all branches of government including itself as it undermines much of its previous decisions. It is, in fact, time that the legislature goes the other way and prunes the Court by Amendment.
Yes, you can look at the Civil War and what Lincoln did and his eventual need to obtain Congressional approval to deny habeas to some Americans. That is not the case for combatant nationals representing a nation at war with the US and certainly not true for combatants representing an international jihad allegiance to a terrorist cult captured outside the US even if some are supposedly eventually entitled to requesting a habeas hearing as afforded by the incredible recent Supreme Court decisions. What conclusions could be drawn from the Supreme Court regarding an invading army of jihadists when they are captured on American soil? Should they be granted habeas corpus? Based upon such ridiculousness we might as well grant citizenship to the children of the women combatants born on our soil (as they are killing Americans) using the 14th Amendment, when we all know that amendment section was solely designed for the children of black slaves post civil war.
There is nothing in the Constitution that limits the use of any interrogation techniques when we at war any more than FDR was limited when he interned 110,000 Japanese Americans; although that decision was immoral and eventually overthrown it was not done so on Constitutional grounds and represents just how much power a President does have when conducting a war. Today a case might be made to attack such behavior but when it was done it was not difficult to Constitutionally defend.
Obama has no problem short-circuiting life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness when it comes to babies born alive, when it comes to looting auto maker first tier lenders and bankrupting dealerships, when it comes to assuming authority that belongs to CEO’s and private enterprise, when it comes to expanding the role that the commerce clause was never intended for and when it comes to demolishing the 10th Amendment and bankrupting a nation though expenditures that never were within the domain of limited government… but somehow when it comes to the clear role that the previous Executive had in running a war, twice approved by Congress, he disapproves. It may be his prerogative to run things his way but should he fail in his primary role of protecting the citizens of the nation that he heads the next Administration will overturn all of his unprecedented social machinations as though they never existed and we will become a nation much more like the Framer’s envisioned. Unfortunately that is not a price anyone cares to pay or should pay to secure liberty.
When Stevens recently suggested that a cabinet position be created to act as some sort of liaison between the Executive and the Supreme Court it spells just how far adrift we have gone. Forgetting even the concept behind the separation of powers what we really need is 535 Congressional members and 2 executives who read, study and understand the Constitution for which they took an oath to uphold. If they did that job many of us, including myself, could spend much more time doing other things rather than looking over their shoulders to insure that these officials only do what they were constitutionally elected to do and not a bit more. Once upon a time we had everyday people spend a little bit of time in government to improve commerce. Today we have a group of professional politicians that use government to control and loot the rest of us. They do so when they are in office and for a long time after they leave. With unlimited government seized by anti-constitutionalists and devout statists the profound solution can only be limited government with term limits that closely adheres to original conservative founding principles and from my vantage point we have a long way to go to get back to where we originally came from.