Why do conservatives like Bill O’Reilly of Fox News blame Pres. Obama for not trying would-be 2009 underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab in military court? I know it happened long ago. But 2001 shoe bomber Richard Reid was in fact tried in civil court by then-president George W. Bush. My question: What exactly is the difference?
There must be some difference for people to feel this way (apparently a majority of Americans support Mr. O’Reilly’s view too btw). But while people are coming up with the differences, let me throw out some striking similiarities: They both happened on a plane, in the air. They both used the same chemical explosive, hidden somewhere in their clothing. They both were thwarted by other passengers. They both came after 9-11, and thus came the blame that we should have been better prepared. And they both came early on in a president’s first term. There are the similiarities. Now I want to know the exact differences.
BTW, I wanted to have some links. But I couldn’t find anything on the Fox website or doing a Google search for some reason (maybe I used the wrong search terms). But the O’Reilly Factor is a well-know tv show. And he did also cite a (presumably reliable) statistic on his show that a majority of Americans supported the military tribunal for Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab.
Obama is “Them”; Bush “Us”. That’s all that matters to the Right; they have no principles higher than “us-versus-them”. They’ll bash everything about Obama, blame everything they can on him regardless of consistency or the facts.
What I hear them say is that we hadn’t set up the Military Tribunal system yet back in 2001. The Shoe Bomber incident was only a few months after the 9/11 attacks, before the Guantanamo detention center was operational.
Not saying I agree with that, but it’s what I heard.
The exact differences boil down to this: To the constituency of Fox News, Bush was a tough guy who knew what to do when America was threatened. If he thought Reid should be tried in a civilian court, then that was a appropriate measure. Because he always had the U. S.'s security in mind.
By contrast, Obama is a sketchy, perhaps illegitimately elected Marxist whose intelligence and demonstrative ability to work with others make him weak and ineffectual as a leader in wartime. Any attempt to separate shoe and underwear bombers from al-Qaeda proper is just some Ivory Tower mental masturbation that threatens the homeland.
I’d really be interested in the source of that poll, too.
Seems pretty cut and dried to me. There weren’t military tribunals for terrorists in 2001, and there are now. Like John, I’m not commenting on whether this is a good thing or a bad one, but seems like an apples to oranges comparison to me.
I understand that the right wing has to have its Outrage of the Day to keep the rabble whipped up, but looking logically at the issue, what possible difference does it make whether the underwear bomber is tried in a civilian court or not? He is an apparent civilian who apparently committed a serious criminal act, and it is extremely hard to believe that the evidence on hand would ever allow him to walk following a conventional criminal proceeding. So, what’s the problem exactly? Is someone afraid that criminal statutes don’t provide for enough of a penalty, should he (as is almost guaranteed to be the case) be found guilty, or what?
The Right tends to always favor military over civilian solutions to everything ( when they don’t decide to simply ignore problems, that is ). Look how they want to treat terrorism as a military problem and not a police/intelligence one; they are less concerned with effectiveness than in rooting for the military and beating their chests about how “tough” they are.
Because it’s much easier to lawyer up in criminal court than it is in the military tribunal system, where interrogation can proceed for a longer period of time. More interrogation = more info about future attacks and about other al Qaeda operatives.
I imagine the OP is looking for more than “Pubbies are teh suxor” on this.
Exactly. These are not reasonable, competent, well meaning people. These are Republicans. Hypocrites who care not at all about right and wrong or the welfare of the country, but care very much about making Obama look as bad as possible while making excuses for Bush.
Note that Jose Padilla was treated differently, as he was arrested in 2002, and Bush fought for years to have him tried in military court. And Padilla was a US citizen.
And are you going to defend how Padilla was treated?
Anyway, it is a very different case. So far as I can tell, the issue there was that they had no real evidence that they could use in court against him, so they tried to an end run (one of many) around the constitution. That is not an issue with Mutallab (nor wsa it with Reid). There is no way he is going to be found not guilty.
Yes, there are minor contextual differences in the situation (of Mutallab and Reid), but it is perfectly clear that the only reason anyone is making an issue out of what venue he should be tried in is to score partisan points by implying that Obama is “soft” on terrorism. Do you seriously believe otherwise?
No. I think it was abhorant. However, I’m using it to show how Bush’s strategy towards these types of incidents differed pre-Gitmo vs post-Gitmo. Do you have a post-Gitmo example to refute this?
But that’s not the point anyone is arguing. See my first post.
I think you are offering a false dichotomy. Do you seriously believe that conservative commentators really want this guy tried in criminal court and are lying about their desire to have him held for more interrogation and then for a trial in a military tribunal? They can believe that and still use it to score partisan points against Obama.
You brought Padilla into teh argument. I was merely pointing out that Bush had some reasons for not wanting him tried in a regular court, reasons that do not apply in this case.
I think conservative commentators may have a slight preference for a military court, but I doubt whether they really care very much, and I do not think they would be protesting like this if it were Bush proposing to give him a civilian trial. I think they care a lot about trying to make Obama look bad.
That’s nice, and I think we can all agree. The question this thread is addressing is how do we best do that given the knowledge UB* might have about the ones we haven’t caught yet-- put him thru the criminal system in the US or thru the military tribunal process? That is the argument being put forth by some in the US as a response to Obama choosing the former.
But we still trust the various federal agencies to extract useful information out of arrested Mafia goons and Mexican gun-runners and South Asian human traffickers and Columbian drug cartels. It seems to go back to the arguments against moving detainees to the US as though they’re some sort of super criminal who’ll scoff at the measures we use to hold mass murderers and criminal masterminds so we need to keep them on an island.
I get the impression from other people I’ve spoken to that the real gripe is that he won’t get waterboarded, made to stand for 16 hours in a box or have ketchup soaked tampons thrown at him while being questioned in a civilian prison.
Which says nothing about the fact that we’re still confident in the ability of the “civilian” branches of the government to handle those sorts of cases so there’s not much reason to suspect that they’re suddenly inadequate here. The complaints about him not being held in a military prison seem predicated upon the assumption that a military prison would get better results/information.
Sure. If someone’s going to complain, I figure exploring their motives for complaining makes a bit of sense. Particularly if they can’t explain why the civilian system is significantly inadequate compared to the military system.