ON the War on Terror, as with most issues, it can be difficult to understand Barack Obama’s thinking if you listen only to his finely wrought speeches. But if you take the time to watch as Obama meanders toward a position, understanding him is easy.
Case in point: the Supreme Court’s abysmal Boumediene decision in June, extending the constitutional right of habeas corpus (the right to have one’s detention reviewed by a court) to alien enemy combatants held by the military at Guantanamo Bay. Obama was heartened by the ruling. As is his wont upon straying from the TelePrompTer, he dug himself a hole, this time in the form of an impromptu paean to pre-9/11 days, when terrorism was managed as though it were a garden-variety law-enforcement matter. “What we know,” he proclaimed on June 16, “is that, in previous terrorist attacks—for example, the first attack against the World Trade Center-we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated.”
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