Being President Is a Lot Harder Than It Looks

The Obama Presidency Moral Vanity Walkback continues apace. Last week we learned on a Friday night that the Obama administration was thinking well, ya know, maybe we were just a little hasty on scrapping the military commissions for terrorist trials, even though they had spent the previous year berating the Bushies for such things. The report that day from in New York Times had the following Profile in Courage:

“The more they look at it,” said one official, “the more commissions don’t look as bad as they did on Jan. 20.”

Several officials insisted on anonymity because the administration has directed that no one publicly discuss the deliberations.

Well, it looks like they've made a decision. Not that they really want you to know. This week they used to Washington Post to slip a note under the door. While they would like to assert that they are much, much, much, much more fastidious with the rules of evidence than they imagine the evil benighted Bushies were, apparently the structure itself is hunky-dory.

The Obama administration's plan to reinstate the commissions with modifications reflects the fear that some cases would fail in federal courts or in standard military legal settings.

"It looks a lot more difficult now than it did on Jan. 20," said one government official.

I suppose it does. Of course, the erstwhile members of the Moral Vanity Chorus are not amused:

"This is an extraordinary development, and it's going to tarnish the image of American justice again," said Tom Parker, a counterterrorism specialist at
Amnesty International.

And they don't like it much at the ACLU, either:

Civil liberties advocates, who insist that federal courts can handle terrorism cases, vowed to challenge any new process.

"We'll litigate this before they can proceed, absolutely," said Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "Any effort to tinker with military commissions would be an enormous mistake. There is no way to fix a flawed process that has not rendered justice."

Please understand -- Obama and his team are simply facing the reality of the situation. While Amnesty International, the ACLU and the rest of the Moralizing Majority don't want to admit it, the sorts of people who end up at places like Gitmo are hard cases and bad people. Historically, enemy combatants who fight without uniforms and hide among civilians weren't accorded any rights at all. Most were simply shot. A military tribunal is actually a large improvement over summary execution.

It's easy (and fun!) to take shots at the leadership from the outside. It's quite another matter to govern. Obama and his team don't want to acknowledge that maybe some of their criticisms of the Bushies were ill-considered, which is why they keep releasing this information on Friday nights, hoping that the matter will pass quietly. Still, by keeping the commissions going, they are doing the right thing. And if the scolds don't like it, so be it. They aren't going to be happy no matter what Obama does.

I don't know if George W. Bush reads a newspaper on Saturday morning, but I imagine if he does he's enjoying a quiet chuckle over all this.

(H/T: Ed Morrissey)