Obama’s Difficult Separation from Bush

Defeat for the president: The 9/11-trials will take place in Guantánamo, not in New York. Obama didn’t do enough in Congress. One opinion.

How do you avoid your enemies? That depends on what is acceptable in each free society. Barack Obama sought to differentiate himself from George W. Bush. America’s rule of law is strong and could grant terrorists all the rights of a civilian criminal proceeding.

The poster child for the new direction should have been the prosecution of the planners of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Obama wanted to pass judgment on the perpetrators of 9/11 in Manhattan, in symbolic proximity to Ground Zero and in front of the public.

Two years later, he has completely lost direction. The accused will stand before a military tribunal in Guantánamo — with curtailed rights and limited publicity. Certainly, there were warranted objections: chiefly, the question of how one could protect a trial in New York from new terrorist attacks. And the sad realization is that admissible evidence against terrorists from the Hindu Kush is not as easy to find as evidence at a police-secured murder scene in the United States.

The main reason for Obama’s defeat is that he never fought wholeheartedly for majority support for the issue in Congress. Other goals were more important. Many are now asking: is it justifiable?