« Tales from the Jury Room | Main | Hacking to victory »
September 06, 2006
Misunderestimated again
Pres. Bush gave another speech today; when I saw the headline on Drudge, my heart sank. "BUSH REVERSES: AL QAEDA TO GET GENEVA CONVENTION RIGHTS."
But then the analysis started pouring in, and it seems the president has been misunderestimated again.
Via National Review's Corner comes this from Mario Loyola.
The President just pulled one of the best maneuvers of his entire presidency. By transferring most major Al Qaeda terrorists to Guantanamo, and simultaneously sending Congress a bill to rescue the Military Commissions from the Supreme Court's ruling Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the President spectacularly ambushed the Democrats on terrain they fondly thought their own. Now Democrats who oppose (and who have vociferously opposed) the Military Commissions will in effect be opposing the prosecution of the terrorists who planned and launched the attacks of September 11 for war crimes.
And if that were not enough, the President also frontally attacked the Hamdan ruling's potentially chilling effect on CIA extraordinary interrogation techniques, by arguing that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions is too vague, and asking Congress to define clearly the criminal law limiting the scope of permissible interrogation.
Taken as a whole, the President's maneuver today turned the political tables completely around. He stole the terms of debate from the Democrats, and rewrote them, all in a single speech. It will be delightful to watch in coming days and hours as bewildered Democrats try to understand what just hit them, and then sort through the rubble of their anti-Bush national security strategy to see what, if anything, remains.
It'll be interesting to see how the Bush-hating wing of the Democratic Party reacts to the speech -- and the ju-jitsu-like shift in strategy.
Posted by Mike Lief at September 6, 2006 01:10 PM
| TrackBack
Comments
I agree with the comment by Jonah Goldberg regarding the problems caused by Bush's rhetoric being high-flying and abstract. It looks like someone finally grew a set!
Posted by: Thin Ice at September 6, 2006 04:35 PM