Debatable Wisdom

via Powerline (again, and yes, I do read other blogs… but they’re on a Gitmo streak lately):  The Holder hangover (and whence it comes)

Speaking at a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania during the presidential campaign in June 2008, Barack Obama addressed the Supreme Court’s Boumediene decision granting Guantanamo detainees the right to challenge their confinement through habeas corpus proceedings in federal court. Obama asserted that the “principle of habeas corpus, that a state can’t just hold you for any reason without charging you and without giving you any kind of due process — that’s the essence of who we are.” He explained:

I mean, you remember during the Nuremberg trials, part of what made us different was even after these Nazis had performed atrocities that no one had ever seen before, we still gave them a day in court and that taught the entire world about who we are but also the basic principles of rule of law. Now the Supreme Court upheld that principle yesterday.

Obama’s comments derive from what I facetiously call “the higher wisdom” that fueled his campaign and that is now operative in his administration. Attorney General Eric Holder perfectly reflects it. In designating the mastermind of 9/11 and his co-conspirators who are detained in Guantanamo for trial in federal court in Manhattan, cloaking them with the rights of American citizens under the Constitution of the United States, Holder sought to give them their “day in court.” He also sought to “t[each] the entire world about who we are but also the basic principles of rule of law.” The only appropriate response to Obama’s campaign comments on Boumediene is: “Not true.” The higher wisdom is founded on false precepts. The Nuremberg trial was conducted before a military commission composed of representatives of the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union.

I am baffled why anyone would want to extend the benefits of American citizenship to those with whom we’re at war.   As for “teaching the entire world” anything… they’ve had a couple of hundred years to watch us, and if they haven’t caught on yet to our values and principles, they never will.