- Republicans are turning up the pressure on President Obama by resurrecting the kind of 'soft on terrorism' charge that has dogged Democrats in the past. Photo: AP
A series of recent controversies — capped by Friday’s decision to pull a key 9/11 trial out of Manhattan — is prompting Republicans to turn up the pressure on President Barack Obama, by resurrecting the kind of “soft on terrorism” charge that has dogged Democrats in the past.
Obama largely escaped any controversy over terrorism in the 2008 campaign, because voters were so focused on the economic crisis and because many were supportive of Obama’s plans to break from the Bush-era war on terror, by ending the Iraq war and shutting down Guantanamo Bay prison.
But a series of stumbles in recent weeks has given Republicans a chance to renew that line of attack against Obama, at a time when he’s already confronting public criticism of his handling of the economy and health care.
The GOP has leapt on Obama’s handling of the Christmas Day bombing plot, saying he was slow to speak to the public about the initial attack and criticizing the Justice Department’s decision to try the suspect in a civilian court, not a military one. Republicans also are criticizing the Justice Department for an FBI decision to end questioning of the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, after less than an hour and read him his Miranda rights.
That came on top of the congressional uproar over Obama’s plan to close Guantanamo Bay prison by moving the detainees to U.S. prisons. Obama missed a self-imposed one-year deadline to close the facility. Republicans also criticized the Justice Department’s decision to send five alleged 9/11 plotters to trial in Manhattan, just blocks from the World Trade Center site — a decision the administration abruptly abandoned Friday after powerful Democrats came out against the New York venue.
“It’s the death of a thousand self-inflicted cuts,” said Peter Feaver, a National Security Council official under presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. “Conservatives like Vice President Cheney have been making the critique from the beginning but it did not stick until the self-inflicted wounds reached a culmination point.. I think they did with the underwear bomber. Prior to that the self-inflicted wounds were separated. They didn’t congeal into a single story line, but now I think they have.”
Republicans howled after Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said “the system worked” because passengers on the plane jumped on the Abdulmutallab. And the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, Michael Leiter, went on a ski vacation shortly after the attack.
“The terrain changed on them with the Christmas bombing. It provided, fairly or unfairly, Exhibit A for what the critics on the right ... were arguing: that by not taking terrorism seriously, you make America more vulnerable. Mirandizing [Abdulmutallab] plays right into that. ‘The system worked’ plays into that. Having someone take a vacation for a week plays right into it,” Feaver said.
GOP stalwarts like Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) have been pummeling Obama over these issues since last spring, when the White House badly misjudged congressional sentiment and lost a series of votes related to closing the Guantanamo Bay prison.
Republicans seem emboldened, too, after Sen.-elect Scott Brown aggressively used the terrorism issue to score points with voters in his stunning Massachusetts upset. He attacked Obama's decision to hold civilian trials for terror suspects
Now even mild-mannered Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), hardly a partisan bomb-thrower, is joining the parade of GOP lawmakers taking Obama and his team to task.
“Less than one hour. That’s right, less than one hour. In fact, just 50 minutes. That’s the amount of time that the FBI spent questioning Abdulmutallab, the foreign terrorist who tried to blow up a plane on Christmas Day,” Collins said dramatically in the Republicans’ weekly radio and Internet address Saturday morning. “How did the Obama administration decide to treat a foreign terrorist, who had tried to murder hundreds of people, as if he were a common criminal?”
The White House is pushing back on the GOP’s attacks against closing Gitmo, with spokesman Ben LaBolt saying it’s a “national security imperative” backed by Gen. David Petraeus and other military leaders who see it as a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda.
“The administration recognizes that it will take the cooperation of Congress and our allies to close the facility and to bring those detainees who have murdered Americans or conspired to do so to justice,” LaBolt said. “While the previous administration successfully prosecuted only three detainees in more than seven years, we will continue to pursue swift and certain justice and to advance a process that finally holds these detainees accountable for their acts.”
In his State of the Union address, Obama complained broadly about GOP fear-mongering, but he did not mention Guantanamo, the reasons for his preference for trying terrorists in civilian courts, or his plans to bring some prisoners to Illinois for military trials or indefinite detention.
“Let’s put aside the schoolyard taunts about who’s tough,” Obama said. “Let’s reject the false choice between protecting our people and upholding our values.” He said he was working to fill “unacceptable gaps” highlighted by the Christmas Day attack and boasted of aggressive campaigns against Al Qaeda across the globe. “In the last year, hundreds of Al Qaeda's fighters and affiliates, including many senior leaders, have been captured or killed — far more than in 2008,” the president said.
Some Democrats want Obama to be even more forceful, including on the importance of civilian trials for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other alleged 9/11 plotters. “Obama and the Department of Justice need to get out there and push back very clearly with the public. ... Frankly, I thought New Yorkers were made of sterner stuff than this — traffic is going to be disrupted?” said Ken Gude of the liberal Center for American Progress.
Behind the scenes, some administration officials are trying to rebut GOP claims. An account of Abdulmutallab’s questioning on Christmas Day, provided by unnamed officials to the Washington Post, said he was given Miranda warnings only after he asked for a lawyer.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he is going to try again next week to win approval of an amendment that would bar a civilian trial for alleged Sept. 11 attack plotters. The measure failed on a 54-45 Senate vote in November, after most Democrats opposed it. However, supporters hope that the attempted Christmas Day attack and Brown's aggressive use of the terrorism issue will persuade more Democrats to oppose civilian terror trials.
“It’s going to be necessary to speak clearly and strongly that having a lawyer for a terror suspect is not being weak on defense,” said Andy Johnson of Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank. However, he added, “This is going to be a tough lift politically.”
The White House takes some solace in polls showing the public generally satisfied with Obama’s handling of the terrorist threat, but the danger for the president lurks below those top-line results, since specifics of his policies are widely unpopular. In a CNN survey taken earlier this month, 65 percent of Americans had at least a moderate amount of confidence in the president’s approach to terrorism and 57 percent endorsed his handling of the Christmas Day attacks. However, 57 percent also said they favored sending Abdulmutallab to a military tribunal, while only 42 percent supported a civilian trial.
Obama’s plan to close Guantanamo also has pretty dismal poll numbers, especially when those surveyed are told of his proposal to bring some suspects to U.S. prisons. A Gallup survey last month found just 30 percent backing that plan, with more than twice as many people, 64 percent, opposed.
Some critics of closing Guantanamo doubt that the administration’s stumbling will do long-term political damage because, they believe, Obama is gradually turning away from his initial approach.
“This president came in a very populist moment taken advantage of by the Democrats who said anything George Bush did was bad. It didn’t matter what it was ... the Obama administration had to change it,” said Kirk Lippold, the commander of the U.S.S. Cole at the time it was bombed.
“Over time, as they have begun to govern vs. campaign, they have realized some of the difficult decisions and policies implemented by the Bush administration had long-term strategic value,” he said. “That’s called the maturing of a chief executive. His administration is just not quite on board yet.”
