After Boston: Don't Get Fooled Again by the 'War on Terror' Hawks
The self-assurance of War on Terror hawks is one of the most peculiar phenomena in our politics. You'd think that the failure to foresee or stop the biggest terrorist attack ever carried out on U.S. soil would've caused guys like Dick Cheney to question their own geopolitical prescience. Instead, they immediately began urging the invasion of Iraq they'd long desired, insisting it was necessary to keep Americans safe. They got their war. As efforts to "keep us safe" go, it was a spectacular failure: Almost 4,500 Americans died in Iraq. More than 30,000 were wounded. Despite deaths and casualties far greater than on 9/11, the hawks insist to this day that Iraq was a prudent war. They're ideologues who can't see or won't admit failures, facts be damned.
Don't forget that.
In the wake of the Boston Marathon, the War on Terror hawks are speaking out with characteristic bluster. An uninformed observer might easily mistake their certainty for wisdom or competence. There is, in fact, no reason to trust their judgment on foreign policy or counterterrorism. Their dearth of self-doubt should be unnerving, not reassuring. And most Americans will recognize as much, so long as they're reminded of the catastrophic policies the hawks unapologetically advocated, the many times their predictions have proven wrong, and the logical flaws in the arguments that they've been making in response to last week's terrorist attack.
One ongoing controversy concerns whether the criminal justice system is capable of grappling with terrorists. Cheney himself warned against a law-enforcement approach to terrorism in a 2009 speech, and much of Congress is averse to trying accused terrorists in the federal court system. You'd think that law enforcement's success apprehending the Tsarnaev brothers, the elder brother's death, and the solid evidence against the younger brother would suggest that the criminal justice system is in fact capable of bringing terrorists, or at least these particular suspects, to justice.
John Yoo thinks this case shows the inadequacy of the law-and-order approach.
"How is this a victory for traditional law enforcement?" he asks in an item at the American Enterprise Institute's blog. "Two young brothers, lightly armed, killed several innocent civilians, wounded 170, killed an officer and wounded another, and shut down one of America's great cities. We had a whole city trapped in its homes and paramilitary forces in its streets. Law enforcement alone means the nation lies vulnerable to attacks on soft targets and must expend enormous resources to catch the killers afterwards. A pre-emptive strategy based on intelligence and the use of force overseas seeks to prevent such attacks further from our shores. That option should be preferred by everyone compared to what we've seen in Boston these last five days."
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http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/04/after-boston-dont-get-fooled-again-by-the-war-on-terror-hawks/275167/
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