It’s definitely change:
Abdulmutallab remains in a Detroit area prison and, after initial debriefings by the FBI, has restricted his cooperation since securing a defense attorney, according to federal officials. Authorities are holding out hope that he will change his mind and cooperate with the probe, the officials said. (Emphasis added)
Yes, hoping that he’ll talk is so much more effective than, you know, interrogating him. But hey, just because he’s an illegal combatant, in violation of the Geneva Conventions, doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have Miranda rights. Right?
[Update a couple minutes later]
More thoughts on the suicidal law-enforcement mentality:
Charging Mutallab with a crime is no cause for relief, however. Instead, the decision renews concern about how seriously the administration is taking the threat posed by al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, and whether we are slipping back into the pre-9/11 mindset of treating terrorism as principally a law-enforcement problem. Whatever legitimate role our civilian authorities may have in eventually bringing Mutallab to justice for attempting to blow up the airplane, experience and common sense tell us they are a poor means of addressing the more immediate problem — acquiring intelligence to stop the next attack before it happens.
That’s OK. If there’s another attack, we’ll just arrest the attackers. And make sure they get a fair trial. If they survive.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Apparently the Washington Post has given up hope.
I am sure he was briefed on his legal rights before he left.
Who knows? Maybe his actual mission is to test how the Obama administration would act under fire.
I think there’s a simple, pragmatic criteria for whether it should be a strictly law enforcement matter or not. Namely, can law enforcement reach and have the resources to deal with all the parties responsible? Given that the decision makers for Al Qaeda are well out of reach of US law enforcement (including extradition) in places like Pakistan and Yemen, we’re going to need something more.
Originally I was reluctant to consider this guy an illegal combatant. But he seems to be carrying out orders for powerful organizations that are out of reach of US law enforcement and who continue to mount paramilitary attacks on US targets.
Dick Cheney should personally torture the shit out of this guy. After all, that’s how he got full confessions out of Richard Reid — right before they shipped him off to Gitmo.
Oh wait, it didn’t happen like that at all, did it.
Seriously, guys, this is entirely analogous to how the Bush administration dealt with the shoe bomber.
Seriously, guys, this is entirely analogous to how the Bush administration dealt with the shoe bomber.
Yes, because it happened shortly after 911, and they still hadn’t figured out how to deal with this threat. They later changed the policy to one more sensible (see Padilla, Jose), but Obama has turned the clock back.
If imprisoning a US citizen on the say-so of the President is “a more sensible policy” I for one hope for less sense. Allowing the imprisonment of a US citizen as in the Padilla case makes the President a dictator.
This administration generally says one thing and then goes about doing the 180 opposite. One can only hope that when they say, “Authorities are holding out hope that he will change his mind and cooperate with the probe” it really means that Vick Mackey and Jack Bauer have his face shoved into the floor and lit matches between his toes.
1) “Are you a member of Al Queda?”
2) “Are you in a jihad against America?”
If the answer to either question is “Yes,” you’ve renounced your citizenship.
Well, one thing we know…guys who have been president of the Islamic Society at University College, London, have a huge likelihood of becoming terrorists.
There have been four of them so far including Abdulmutallab. Though given how many other signs were ignored adding that to the pile wouldn’t have changed a thing.
The Administration is striding back to the ‘law enforcement’ model, not slipping back. Another case where ideology is blinding to common sense. I guess the Constitution is becoming a suicide pact – even when it doesn’t prohibit actions in defense in war.
The real problem is the mindset of most people. Someone captured in an act of terrorism on American soil can’t be an enemy combatant because that would require they be captured on the battlefield and most people can’t seem to wrap their mind around the fact that we are living, working, and raising our families on just that. The ‘battlefield’ is everywhere, now. You can’t point to one small point on a map and say “there is where the battle is taking place.” But that would be scary and so people don’t acknowledge it choosing instead to insist that it’s just lone nuts and we are not at war.
Until that mindset changes I see no hope for even obvious terrorists to be treated to anything other than the same legal system we use to deal with your run of the mill crook.
“…because that would require they be captured on the battlefield and most people can’t seem to wrap their mind around the fact that we are living, working, and raising our families on just that.”
Bravo! You have hit the nail squarely on the head.
Yes, Fuloydo wins the thread hard. I would go a step beyond — the battleground is memetic, it is ideological, it is the mind of every brain connected to the global infosphere, which is just about damn near everyone now. If you don’t understand this, you’re just part of the battlefield.
Yes, because it happened shortly after 911, and they still hadn’t figured out how to deal with this threat. They later changed the policy to one more sensible (see Padilla, Jose), but Obama has turned the clock back.
NRO would like you to believe that. Except that Bush signed the executive order for military tribunals a month before that: http://www.semissourian.com/story/50534.html
I don’t know what anyone expects to get out of this guy. Does anyone really believe that a depressed, suicidal jihadist, who can’t correctly light a bomb on his pecker has any useful information?
He didn’t build the bomb – so he could easily know who gave it to him, or possibly even who built it. He’s been open enough about his activities to alarm his own father. Who are his other contacts? And what fo they know? He’s reported to have flown to Africa for the express purpose of picking up the bomb. He didn’t stand at the airplane terminal with an upturned hat and a sign “Will bomb for food – if you could just get me a bomb.” He knew some way of getting into contact with someone, somewhere.
All of those vague spots? The answers are in his head. And the criminal justice system really doesn’t have much to offer him in the carrot department – because he’s already being granted “insane and too stupid to be considered compos mentos.”
If there’s another attack, we’ll just arrest the attackers. And make sure they get a fair trial.
Which is exactly what we did with Timothy McVeigh, and criminals responsible for thousands of deaths and rapes every year.
How exactly does it advance U.S. interests to exaggerate the danger posed by these losers?
It isn’t an exaggeration to say any of these things:
Abdul considered himself at war with us. Abdul was in contact with people who were more cowardly fellow travelers. The fellow travelers are still at large. Abdul is not a lone gunman, nor is he the member of a small club.
He failed in his task, but brushing him off with the ‘deranged lone incompetent bomber’ meme is nuts.
How exactly does it advance U.S. interests to exaggerate the danger posed by these losers?
When exactly are you going to stop beating your wife?
Which is exactly what we did with Timothy McVeigh
What worldwide totalitarian ideology with millions of adherents sent Timothy McVeigh to bomb the Murrah Building?
What worldwide totalitarian ideology with millions of adherents sent Timothy McVeigh to bomb the Murrah Building?
And the best these scary millions can come up with is flaming underwear?
The panty bomber wants to see himself as the vanguard of a worldwide movement with millions of adherents. How does dignifying his delusions advance our interests?
He failed in his task, but brushing him off with the ‘deranged lone incompetent bomber’ meme is nuts.
No pun intended, I’m sure.
How, exactly, is it “nuts”? We’ve spent millions, if not billions, in lost productivity in reaction to his stunt. He’s succeeded already. Giving a deranged lone incompetent bomber the leverage we’ve given him is what’s nuts.
And the best these scary millions can come up with is flaming underwear?
No, so far, the best they can come up with is leaving a huge smoking hole in downtown Manhattan, and thousands dead and injured. We are indeed fortunate that so far they have been less than competent, but “hope” that this will continue to be the case is not a strategy.
How does dignifying his delusions advance our interests?
Why do you delude yourself that he deludes himself?
What worldwide totalitarian ideology with millions of adherents sent Timothy McVeigh to bomb the Murrah Building?
Right-wing militia whackos who believed Clinton was out to take away their guns and install a UN world gov’t. Though their numbers don’t count in the millions I don’t think.
McVeigh wasn’t a member of any militia except the one described in the Dick Act as the Unorganized Militia which also includes every able-bodied non-felon Male in the US ages 18-45.
“http://reason.com/archives/1996/08/01/the-militias-are-coming”
“Yet Dees and Stern build their books around the claim that the militia/patriot movements are unindicted co-conspirators in the Oklahoma City murders. The link between accused bomber Timothy McVeigh and the militia movement is based mainly on two pieces of information: First, he and his friend Terry Nichols attended two Militia of Michigan meetings–which, significantly, they were told to leave because they were advocating violence. Second, allegedly Mark Koernke, a short-wave radio personality who runs a mail-order business that sells militia gear, was seen with someone who looks like McVeigh. In addition, a Michigan talk show host supposedly said (he denies it) that the host’s Rolodex listed McVeigh as a contact for Koernke. This evidence does not come remotely close to showing that militia members encouraged McVeigh to do anything illegal, let alone to perpetrate one of the most vicious mass murders in history.”
Perhaps you should try thinking for yourseld Dave instead of trying out to be the boards Parrot.
No, so far, the best they can come up with is leaving a huge smoking hole in downtown Manhattan, and thousands dead and injured.
Check your tense; they shot their wad, and the smoke has long since blown away. The trend since then has been towards smaller, less competent attacks. They killed 3,000-ish in the 2000s; they will be lucky to kill 1,000 in the 2010s. Even if they pulled off a 9/11 every decade that would still make them less dangerous to the lives of Americans than lightning strikes and bathtub falls.
It isn’t jsut the loss of life, it was the hundreds of Billions in economic damage associated with the loss of 10% of the office space in Manhattan and the sudden orginizational loss of that much institutional memory.
The trend since then has been towards smaller, less competent attacks. Why on earth could that be.
The progression of attacks leading up to 2001 grew in size, complexity, and effect.
Should we:
a) do things the way we did in the 1990s, where we had new attacks every year or so with no response other than “Just words?”
b) Lean on whatever rock harbored the latest crop? (Not “bomb flat”, I said “lean on”.)
It’s a damned shame the Poles weren’t nuanced enough in 1939 to realize that they were dealing with a law-enforcement issue. If only they had arrested all those illegal immigrants who were causing such problems and put them on trial, a whole bunch of unpleasantness could have been avoided.
Even if they pulled off a 9/11 every decade that would still make them less dangerous to the lives of Americans than lightning strikes and bathtub falls.
I wonder whether your reaction would be the same if we lost a blue city every decade or so. The weapons available to jihadis are ramping up in lethality, and there are certain rogue states that would be happy to use jihadis as proxies.
I get the strong impression that, one way or another, you never stood up to a bully who wanted your lunch money.
Even if they pulled off a 9/11 every decade that would still make them less dangerous to the lives of Americans than lightning strikes and bathtub falls.
The ending of the essay that my previous post was a badly formatted proto-introduction to. Bold added to address the above quote. I was being, I thought, over dramatic for affect when I wrote what follows. It sickens me that it turns out I was being literal.
*****
…With that said, we must lay the blame for any lack of progress in changing that mindset directly at the feet of our elected officials, our unelected bureaucrats (FBI, CIA, etc), and our media, all of whom bend over backwards to deny the battle space as it exists while they reassure us that there is no war happening here. How many times must we hear the phrase “it was a lone nut with no ties to *fill in the blank*”?
The fun part of all this is that it does work, to an extent. That much is certain because it’s been working for years. We are a large enough and a powerful enough country that, assuming you don’t mind losing a few hundred people who you probably don’t even know every once in a while, you can ignore the battle going on around us, take the economic hit that each attack also generates, and go about your life as if nothing were wrong. That doesn’t mean you’re right, just that it’s possible.
Those who would kill us, who have been trying to kill us for the past thirty or forty years, very nearly managed to break through our illusions on 9/11/2001. In fact I would say that they did break through, at least for a while. But the absence of successful follow up attacks for the best part of 10 years coupled with the soothing litany of “nothing to see here” coming from those who wish it would all go away have allowed the complacency to take hold once again. I imagine that complacency will hold, for a while. Until another large attack succeds, anyway. It’s hard to be complacent while watching a mushroom cloud grow over the remains of a city.
We have forgotten that we live on a battlefield, and a battlefield is a very dangerous place to be. Especially if you insist on ignoring the shells going off around you.
The response to a threat should be in proportion to a threat. Reason, not emotion should dictate the response. Even with 9/11 which was the high point for the jihadists, the threat to the individual is very, very small. The latest demonstration of the threat shows that it is smaller still. Since the fall of the Soviet Bloc, US deaths from terrorism average 200 per year. Most of the average is contained in two events, 9/11 and Oklahoma City. Compare that to other threats to life and limb. Forty thousand Americans per year are killed in their autos. Another fifteen thousand are murdered and five thousand die from flu. On a daily basis, that’s something you should worry about and modify your behavior and resources accordingly.
I find it interesting that so many posters on this blog are, on other topics, very cooly rational. They will consider the facts, avail themselves to reason and suggest very sane policy solutions. These same posters frequently claim to support individual and economic liberty. They are critical of frivolous government spending. All of which I agree.
But turn to the subject of Islamic terrorism and they throw reason aside. We are at war. We live on a battlefield now. They want to kill us all. What about when they get nukes? Like a bull in a china shop they run. No price is too high. No compromise of the Constitution is too great. We must spend hundreds of billions bringing war to them. We must take the lives of 4000 American soldiers and maim several tens of thousands more. Don’t worry about foreign civilian collateral damage because foreign civilians don’t really count when we are after the terrorists which kill an average of 200 people a year.
I am sorry, but that doesn’t make sense. The response we have had might be valid for a real threat to the nation at large, like Hitler’s Germany or the Soviet Union but for a loosely affiliated group of feuding pre-industrial, illiterates we need a better strategy. The response should be proportional to the threat. The response should promote liberty not diminish it.
We have forgotten that we live on a battlefield, and a battlefield is a very dangerous place to be. Especially if you insist on ignoring the shells going off around you.
The analogy is nonsense. There aren’t shells going off around me. I haven’t been within a thousand miles of a Islamic themed terrorist attack, I think since some guy tried something in LA and I happened to be in Sacramento.
Second, what metaphorical activity should I be doing? Digging foxholes? Charging the enemy? Fleeing the battlefield? None of those ideas makes sense. The analogy neither matches my situation nor gives me an idea of how I should act.
If reading this wasn’t so sad, it would actually be funny.
These guys have already beaten people like Rand. It’s kinda pathetic. They’ve won, you’re acting just the way they want you to.
Their goal isn’t to get us to resist, it is to get us to submit islam.
Well, the strikethrough worked in the preview. hmm.
It isn’t jsut the loss of life, it was the hundreds of Billions in economic damage associated with the loss of 10% of the office space in Manhattan and the sudden orginizational loss of that much institutional memory.
Hundreds of billions is a wild over-estimate (the towers were insured for a few billion). Virtually all of the economic costs of 9/11 stem from choices we made in reaction to the attack, not from the attack itself. Which is just what bin Laden hoped.
We are a large enough and a powerful enough country that, assuming you don’t mind losing a few hundred people who you probably don’t even know every once in a while, you can ignore the battle going on around us,
Which is exactly what we do when we choose to allow the sale of alcohol and the driving of automobiles (except that “every once in a while” comes every single week).
Our lizard brains may tell us to be 10,000x as frightened of a panty bomber as we are of a drunk driver, but our rational minds should be better than that.
Daveon @ December 31st, 2009 at 9:59 am
“They’ve won, you’re acting just the way they want you to.”
Does anyone have a Tylenol? I think I burst a vessel trying to make sense of that.
“Our lizard brains may tell us to be 10,000x as frightened of a panty bomber as we are of a drunk driver, but our rational minds should be better than that.”
This lizard brain doesn’t comprehend the logic that we must choose between going after drunk drivers or going after terrorists. Is there a reason we can’t do both at the same time?
“Why are we attacking Germany and Japan? More Americans die from farm accidents each year than were killed by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.”
-Daveon, Jim, Jardinero1, et al; circa 1942
No one is saying not to go after terrorists.
Virtually all of the economic costs of 9/11 stem from choices we made in reaction to the attack, not from the attack itself.
Jim, this little slice with a razor blade will barely hurt you at all. The loss of blood from severing your carotid artery is a reaction your body chooses to make in reaction to the cut.
Jim, this little slice with a razor blade will barely hurt you at all. The loss of blood from severing your carotid artery is a reaction your body chooses to make in reaction to the cut.
No, I have to agree with Jim here. The body has an adequate reaction to losing blood out of an artery. Consider instead the peanut allergy. That’s an overreaction of the immune system that tends to be serious and even life-threatening. But the cause? Eating a trace or even just touching a peanut. That shouldn’t trigger the reaction.
To be blunt, there was a huge overreaction by the US to the September 11 attacks: security theater and economic hardship imposed by bad security schemes, the Iraqi invasion justified on weak pretexts (I still think the Iraqi invasion was justified on the grounds that Hussein would be trouble in the future and Iraq continued to not comply with UN resolutions), and huge, unconstructive spending from 2001 onward that has only been dwarfed by the Obama era.
The response we have had might be valid for a real threat to the nation at large, like Hitler’s Germany or the Soviet Union but for a loosely affiliated group of feuding pre-industrial, illiterates we need a better strategy. The response should be proportional to the threat. The response should promote liberty not diminish it.
Well, whatever we’re supposed to be doing, this isn’t it.
Wow, accusations of a large prisoner swap for a British journalist and three bodies? If that’s true, it’s remarkably irresponsible. It’s also interesting to note that this group is Iranian backed and that Obama has released Iranian agents earlier this year. Might imply some secret deal with the Iranians as well.
Is there a reason we can’t do both at the same time?
The same reason you can’t have a cake and eat it too. Resources (notably money and attention) are finite.
Why are we attacking Germany and Japan? More Americans die from farm accidents each year than were killed by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor
Prior to Pearl Harbor the Japanese and Germans had killed 10^5 (if not 10^6) in Asia and Europe. They had hundreds of ships, thousands of tanks, and millions of guns. They had scientists developing the most sophisticated weapons on earth.
The notion that Al Qaeda bears any resemblance to the Axis in 1941 is laughable.
Jim, this little slice with a razor blade will barely hurt you at all. The loss of blood from severing your carotid artery is a reaction your body chooses to make in reaction to the cut.
This is wrong in a couple ways.
1) The U.S. does not have a carotid artery, a single point of failure that can easily be severed by a handful of fanatics.
2) The body does not “choose” to bleed out — it has no way of getting oxygen to the brain other than by pumping blood through the carotid. A society, on the other hand, can choose to redirect its resources away from a wound, and towards more productive ends.
Jim Says: @December 31st, 2009 at 6:10 pm
“The same reason you can’t have a cake and eat it too. Resources (notably money and attention) are finite.”
I had no idea we were so hard up. Maybe we should stop funding ACORN and Wall Street banks.
The “Al-Quida in Arabia” is in a different situation than the Al-Quida in Afganistan in 2001. Then, the plotters were in peaceful training camps and bases in Afganistan. Now the plotters are caught inbetween Yemeni and Saudi forces. On December 17th, the U.S. launched two cruise missiles at Al-Quida camps in Yemen.
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htterr/20091222.aspx
Abdulmutallab attempted his attack a week later. I think this was a desparate attempt get the U.S. out of the fight.
These are the same people who thought up the “Butt Bomb.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEKfDbYR9BA
I had no idea we were so hard up.
Not to be rude, but where have you been the last 18 months?
Maybe we should stop funding ACORN and Wall Street banks.
We don’t spend any interesting amount of money on ACORN. We leant a lot of money to banks, which is being paid back; having them fail would have cost us even more.
“Not to be rude, but where have you been the last 18 months?”
Oh, under my usual rock, I suppose.
BTW, I had some cake today, and I ate it. Mind you, this was only one experimental outcome but, I think maybe you need to go back to the drawing board on that one.