“Breathe in deeply. Do you smell that? That’s the scent of vindication.”
Ryan Mauro is rejoicing this morning that the RUMOR that the Obama Administration MAY try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a military tribunal vindicates his point that there is no difference between George Walker Bush and Barack Hussein Obama when it comes to the war on Islamist terrorism or foreign policy in general.
MAURO: For those of you that want the history of the debate about my George W. Obama argument, click here, here, and here. David Forsmark woke up one morning and decided it’d be fun to be wrong and criticized my viewpoint here, to which I responded here
The fact that Obama/Holder has been dragged kicking and screaming may bow to both objective reality and political reality is gratifying, but hardly evidence of a continuity of policy.
I will concede Ryan’s point– which I never disagreed with– that “The truth is that there are limitations on what a president can actually change in terms of national security policy. All democratic leaders have to operate in a fairly confined box of unfortunate realities (both geopolitical and political) that can only be broken by a dramatic event like 9/11.”
But that IS the point. The fact that Obama’Holder TRIED to implement insane policies like CIA persecution (and they HAVE seriously hobbled interrogators) and wanted the KSM trial in New York– and had actually set the wheels in motion to do so– DOES MATTER.
When we have an actually “dramatic event like 9/11″ it will indeed matter whether we have a President who has a firm grip on reality.
In the meantime, be careful what you inhale.
