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Recalibrating America’s fight against terrorism

4 min read

Last week’s speech by President Obama attempting to recalibrate the United States’ approach to fighting terrorism has been attacked by those on the right who believe that a bombing campaign can solve any problem, and those on the left who reflexively recoil from any assertion of American power.

It’s a sign in our opinion that Obama is on the right track.

Acknowledging that the country still faces a terrorist threat, the president noted Thursday at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., that the nature of that threat has changed in the decade that has passed since 9/11. The well-financed terror network headed by Osama bin Laden has largely been dismantled, so now the greatest threat of terror comes not from al Qaeda, but from the likes of the Tsarnaev brothers, who allegedly masterminded the Boston Marathon bombings – individuals who become radicalized on these shores and act independently of any larger framework. They can be tougher to detect, but inflict fewer casualties than the perpetrators of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Among the plans Obama put forth are limiting the use of drone strikes only to those instances when a suspect cannot be captured. “And before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured,” the president explained, calling it “the highest standard we can set.” That might well be a standard that’s easier reached in principle than in practice, but it’s an important goal to try to attain. Though unmanned aerial vehicles limit the cost, in both American lives and treasure, of ferreting out terrorists in remote corners of Yemen or Pakistan or anywhere else in the world, we increase the risk of “blowback” when innocents are killed in drone strikes and create a new generation of jihadists, ready to take lethal revenge for the inadvertent loss of their loved ones.

The use of drones also has presented troubling constitutional questions, with the relative lack of oversight that has accompanied their use. Obama said the Defense Department will now oversee the use drones, rather than the CIA, and that drone strikes launched within the United States would not be constitutional. However, the president was disappointingly vague on who could sign off on the use of drones. An article in Tuesday’s New York Times reported that administration officials could not settle on whether a judge should approve of the strikes, either beforehand or afterward, or an independent board set up within the executive branch should be the final arbiter. In the end, Obama punted, asking Congress to offer their input. Given the fractious brawling on Capitol Hill, this virtually guarantees that any potential solution will disappear into the quicksand of partisanship.

The continued detention of 166 inmates at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without charge or legal recourse remains a stain on our standards of due process and fundamental fairness. In his speech, Obama again called for the prison to be closed, arguing that “there is no justification beyond politics for Congress to prevent us from closing a facility that should never have been opened.” He would like to see military tribunals established to determine the guilt or innocence of those being held at the facility, and asked that restrictions on transferring terrorism suspects from Guantanamo Bay be lifted by Congress. On the latter point, we’re not holding our breaths.

Keeping the country safe is important, but so is the maintenance of our basic constitutional precepts. If he can receive a modicum of cooperation from Congress, the road map laid out by President Obama last week offers a way toward achieving both of these goals.

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