That Rattling Noise You Hear
Is the sound of this news knocking around inside Obama’s tin ear. Two-thirds of Americans want KSM tried in military court. CNN:
Washington (CNN) – Two-thirds of Americans disagree with the Obama administration’s decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a civilian court rather than a military court, according to a new national poll.
But six in 10 people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday say that the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks should be tried in the United States, as the administration plans to do, rather than at a U.S. facility in another country.
The poll indicates that 64 percent believe Mohammed should be tried in military court, with 34 percent suggesting that he face trial in civilian court. Six in 10 people questioned say Mohammed should be tried stateside, with 37 percent calling for the trial to take place at a U.S. facility in another country.
“The decision to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in front of a civilian court is universally unpopular – even a majority of Democrats and liberals say that he should be tried by military authorities,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Despite that, most Americans say that he will get a fair trial in the U.S.”
More than fair. Bend over backwards fair. He, and the 3,000 people whose deaths he arranged, might even get the justice they deserve out of this, if all that fairness doesn’t get in the way. Meanwhile, he gets his big jihadi grandstanding opportunity.
The number is interesting, though. That represents the starting point, right out the gate, for the number of people who are going to have a big problem with the Obama administration if this goes badly.* Fascinating. Obama might pull off something Bush hadn’t managed since 2002 or so … uniting the American public in favor of the conflict formerly known as the GWOT. Looks like they just held a referendum on treating a war as a law enforcement problem, and war won.
In other war business, it remains to be seen what effect the president’s sensitive, thoughtful, considered fine-tuning of what is already a sensitive, thoughtful, considered and fine-tuned war effort will have on the public’s general preference for winning. However, if he may be a little soft on actually fighting the war, he has just arranged a grand showcase for why we are fighting.
There is the separate, but related political calculus. So far, on health care, the economy and now national security, the Obama administration is watching public confidence and support for its banner 2008 campaign issues head south. Add that KSM disapproval number to the number of people who are annoyed with the president for failing to advance their agendas, and the people who are annoyed with him for advancing his agenda, and the people who are annoyed with him for bollixing the advancement of his agenda, plus the people who are annoyed with him for failing to advance at all, also, the people who are annoyed with him for failing to have a cohesive and consistent agenda, and it starts to add up to something … Not a united opposition, by any means, but a broad-based undermining of support for an administration that, less than a year in, has repeatedly shown it is seriously out of touch with the American public and effectively incapable of accomplishing anything. What remains to be seen, this early in, is whether Obama’s great presidential accomplishment might be a Clinton-like loss of Congress coupled with a Carter-like loss of the White House.
(That, of course, requires the Republicans to sort out their own message and line up their own candidate. No mean accomplishment in the current state of disarray. But so far, time, Congress and the Obama administration are on their side.)
* Badly may just mean a big public spectacle and the international shows of support for jihad it will prompt. More of them hating us, compliments of Obama. Worse could mean an al-Qaeda reaction. Worse yet, as John Yoo points out, means the hamstringing of our war effort, or more to the point, an effective end to it. Unimagineable, yet not inconceivable, is some kind an OJ outcome.
Andrew McCarthy at NRO: The KSM defense team’s likely assault on Bush administration GWOT policies and practices is the “reckoning” that candidate Obama promised. As a Democratic victory, I predict a Pyrrhic one.
HotAir, channeling Huckabee: If KSM gets off, the Democratic Party is finished. Oh, he’ll be getting off, all right, even if he isn’t acquitted, and it’s already bad for the Dems.
Legal Insurrection does the dirty work of looking at the terrorist-rights supporters …
Via Surber, here’s an idea: Housing subsidies and living expenses for terrorism suspects! Hey, as a disgruntled right-wing white male gun owner, I’d probably qualify for that.
In other business, not unrelated, news from the Oba Mao Tour, Gateway: Taiwan goes under the bus.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 6:50 am Comments (1) on Tuesday, November 17, 2009
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November 17th, 2009 at 11:13 am
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