Defending himself against the charge that he is soft on
terrorism, especially in his handling of detainees/suspects,
President Obama accidentally tells
the truth:
The most important thing for the public to understand is we're
not handling any of these cases any different than the Bush
administration handled them all through 9/11.
Obama evidently thinks this should count in his favor. But for
anyone who believed his professed commitment to due process and the
rule of law, the fact that his anti-terrorist policies are very
similar to Bush's is cause for disappointment. As The New
York Times notes:
Mr. Obama has preserved much of Mr. Bush's counterterrorism
strategy. He not only continued drone missile strikes against
terrorist cells in Pakistan, but he also escalated them. American
troop levels in Afghanistan are tripling on his watch. He kept the
surveillance program, military commissions and rendition authority
he inherited, and he plans to continue holding some detainees
without charges.
Obama did officially eschew waterboarding, but so had the Bush
administration by the time he was running for president. He has
failed to deliver on his promise to close Guantanamo and in any
event plans to continue the detention policies it symbolizes.
Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes sums up the situation
pretty well:
The one thing that’s changed is there’s now a Democratic
president instead of a Republican president.
In a column
last month, I asked, "What's the difference between Obama's
anti-terrorism policies and Bush's?"
