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The Associated Press reports the content of a speech given by US Attorney General Eric Holder.
The most disturbing statement in a highly disturbing defense of treating terrorism as a law enforcement issue was this from the AG:
Holder insisted in his speech that civilian courts are “our most effective terror-fighting weapon.”
In a war in which our enemies have made abundantly clear their goal of subjugation or annihilation, we haven’t even the courage to call them what they are, Islamic extremists. We substitute the generic “violent extremists” as if a group of fat Neo-Nazis living in their parents’ basements represents as serious a threat to American citizens as Al Qaeda and its Islamic extremists and cohort radicals around the globe (including on US soil). Wars are seldom won when one side refuses to acknowledge who the enemy is, and even less seldom won when one side cannot come to grips with being at war.
Holder’s words reveal a naive and detached understanding of the world in which we live. Such a statement is both wildly inaccurate and irresponsible in the extreme, and bring into question just how solid a grasp some of the senior decision-makers in our Federal Government have on the reality of our international situation.
Those who vow our destruction, those intransigent enemies whose ideology is mutually exclusive of, and fundamentally hostile to our freedoms and our way of life? They need to be killed when they threaten us, not be arrested and hauled into a civilian courtroom where they are given all of the rights and privileges of US citizens on trial for a capital crime. To think otherwise is to fail to understand that peace, like freedom and justice, must be fought for and defended, by people willing to kill and to die in the effort. Our men and women in uniform are those people. Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Coast Guardsmen, and Marines. They are the greatest weapon this nation has in the War on Terror. Not the lawyers. To assert differently is patently absurd, and an insult to the Armed Forces who have performed so bravely and brilliantly over the last decade.
All along, we assumed Osama bin Laden was living in the cave. It seems that it likely was some other folks living in a cave.
A 22-year-old Alexandria man has been charged with shooting at military buildings in the D.C. region last fall, and federal officials said in court papers that he videotaped himself shouting “Allah Akbar” after he fired shots at the U.S. Marine Corps museum in October.
Yonathan Melaku, a Marine Reservist, was taken into custody Friday under suspicious circumstances at Arlington National Cemetery. He had been carrying a backpack that held plastic baggies with ammonium nitrate, a material that can be used to make a bomb, as well as a notebook that included references to Osama bin Laden and “The Path to Jihad.”
From the General Casey school of softsoaping in order not to offend (other than those being targeted, of course), this from Federal investigators:
But on Thursday, federal officials weren’t so sure. “I can’t suggest to you his motivations or intent,” said James W. McJunkin, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office. “Its not readily apparent yet.”
McJunkin and other officials would not comment on Melaku’s faith.
Neither were Major Hasan’s motivations, apparently.
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If’n you think that the handling of captured illegal combatants could not be any more of a soup sandwich, Admiral McRaven’s words should convince you otherwise. We have no plan. None.