GWB: No Winston Churchill

Next myth is Dems will free terrorists
by Tom Blackburn
Palm Beach Post Columnist
Monday, July 10, 2006

After the Supreme Court ruled that he may not be prosecutor, defense counsel, witness, judge, jury, jailor and executioner on his own say-so, President Bush had a curious message for the public: The terrorists at Guantanamo Bay won't walk freely on the streets of America while he's on the job.

But no one ever said they would. Mr. Bush said they won't — twice in seven sentences. The justices hadn't been asked to release the prisoners, and they didn't. No one said the prisoners should be turned loose. Mr. Bush's comment had nothing to do with the court's decision. But it could have plenty to do with what comes next.

No objective observer thought that the Constitution would let the president usurp legislative and judicial power to set up "military tribunals" for the dubious cases, mopes and hard-core bad actors at Guantanamo. The fact that three justices said he can shows how partisan the court is becoming since it took to deciding presidential elections. Justice Clarence Thomas' positively purple dissent shows again that he wasn't the best man for the job.

The question, really, was what to do with the people who are probably hostile and possibly dangerous and who get scooped up in this not-strictly-defined war. Mr. Bush had thought no more deeply about that than he had about the aftermath of the battle of Baghdad. The court majority tossed that decision to Congress, where it always belonged.

There still are 450 detainees at Guantanamo. Fewer than 20 have been charged with anything. This hardly suggests that the administration has a series of slam-dunk cases lined up after four years to prepare.

If the administration is willing to make itself legal, Mr. Bush's gratuitous comment sets the terms for the debate. He will want Congress to authorize him to do what he already claimed he didn't need permission to do. Whatever the Democrats support as an alternative will then become the agenda to "turn terrorists loose" in the mouths of his conservative echo chamber.

Democrats haven't offered a plan. Maybe their focus groups haven't been polled enough. They probably can't do better than to support Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who wants to use a modified version of court-martial procedure, the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That would have such pluses as procedures that are well-understood and a record of producing what can be recognized as justice.

Sen. Graham's approach is sensible but not invented by Karl Rove or Dick Cheney, so there's little hope that Mr. Bush will like it.

Everyone has noticed that, with Mr. Rove embedded in the White House, it's more natural for Mr. Bush to try to wrong-foot Democrats than to fight terrorists. He even reaches for attack slogans before he knows he will need them.

It should be added that this White House puts down Republicans when they don't sing in its Amen chorus. That would include, on the war, Sens. Graham and Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. Sen. John McCain got a law against torture passed. Mr. Bush signed it along with his "finding" that the law doesn't mean what lawmakers who voted for it thought it means.

Mr. Bush's admirers like to say that he is a fan of Winston Churchill and sees himself in a similar position in his war to Mr. Churchill's in World War II. But Mr. Churchill formed a coalition with Labor Party members and worked with Josef Stalin, whose ideology Mr. Churchill abhorred, and President Roosevelt, who didn't share Mr. Churchill's regard for the British empire. As British historian Stuart Ball reminds us, some Conservatives felt that their leader wasn't doing enough for the party, and, indeed, they lost the 1945 elections. But Mr. Churchill, Mr. Ball writes, wanted "most of all to succeed as a war leader, and all else was secondary."

With Mr. Bush, sometimes it seems as if Osama bin Laden is secondary to keeping Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi in outer darkness. He invited us all to a war, but then he told everyone else to keep their noses out of it. Americans who take the right-wing rhetoric seriously must be quaking every time they get on Interstate 95 knowing that the guy in the Lexus behind them might be a liberal plotting their misery and their country's downfall.

But the adult majority ought to take the Supreme Court's decision as a signal to assert itself on how, when and where the battles against terrorists are to be fought. These battles are too important to leave to Mr. Bush and his echo chamber.