What Obama taught Shahzad

Eyes rolled when Bush described the actions he took around the world after 9/11 as the "long war." Liberals cried that the President was fearmongering. By creating a long-lived boogeyman, he was scaring the electorate into reelecting him and expanding his own power. Some said that 9/11 was a fluke and that there really was no determined effort to hit the US on a regular basis. Whereas a lack of future casualties told conservatives that the President had truly stepped up and put security first, liberals believed that Bush was too stupid to protect anyone so the threat must be imagined.

While conservatives remember the Shoe Bomber and the anthrax scares in D.C. and around the country that occurred shortly after 9/11, liberals lost themselves in a haze of "Bush lied- kids died" and "No Blood for Oil." After Bush created the Department of Homeland Security and passed the Patriot Act the closest repeat we had of those events were the arrests of  the Buffalo Six and the Fort Dix Six.   Although no one would say Bush did a perfect job, in the seven years after 9/11, we were not hit again. 

Subscribing heavily to the belief that terrorism fears were overblown, Obama began dismantling the tools put in place by Bush as soon as he was elected. Interestingly, Obama still did not keep his promises to end warrantless wiretaps, close Guantanamo or pull our troops from overseas but he did reinstate the criminal justice paradigm of the Clinton years over the GWOT (Global War on Terror) paradigm of the Bush years. Khalid Sheik Mohammad would be granted a civilian trial, as would his coconspirators.  The Christmas bomber would not be interrogated but would be offered a plea bargain for his cooperation. 

Clearly not impressed by the toughness of Obama's policies, Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American,  set up a makeshift bomb in a Nissan Pathfinder and attempted to detonate it in Times Square.  Under Bush, he would have been just another news story buried by the New York Times about Bush "claiming" to have caught another terrorist long before the plot unfolded.  Under Obama we are merely lucky that the bomb failed to detonate.  Shahzad has been arrested by authorities and has already been read his Miranda rights though the administration insists he is still cooperating. 

There are serious legal, moral and practical questions surrounding how we should deal with terrorists who plan to attack the homeland.  While Bush erred on the side of keeping us safe, Obama errs on the side of civil liberties, even when it comes to non-citizens.  As a libertarian, I often look at things in terms of incentives.  For example, if the government subsidizes home loans for people who can't afford them, you will get a bubble followed by a crash.  In this case, if you take a shot at an American soldier on a battlefield in Iraq or Afghanistan you will either be killed or captured and tried by a military tribunal, however if you try to bomb American civilians you will be arrested and be given a civilian trial.  Hmm, what is the incentive we are creating here?