Reality starts hitting the Democrats

For years the Democrats and leftist activists have been slamming the Bush administration's actions in fighting the war on terror. But now that they're in control, they're starting to find out that it isn't as easy as they thought to find other methods to keep America safe. Just look at the problems Obama is facing in trying to keep his promise to shut down the prisoner facility at Guantanamo. Lacking some other dimension such as Superman would send the bad guys too, there are only two alternatives to Gitmo for housing these guys: some other country or the United States. Other countries don't want these guys and so we're reduced to looking to American soil. And suddenly politicians of all stripes are discovering that they don't want a prison facility for terrorists in their districts. As Kimberley Strassel writes,

Public outrage has already inspired officials in Louisiana, California, Mississippi, Missouri and Virginia (for starters) to introduce or pass resolutions to stop terrorists from being sent to their communities. Playing off this, the House GOP introduced legislation that would prohibit the administration from transferring Gitmo detainees to a state without permission from that state's governor and legislature. They then dared Democrats to vote against this "Keep Terrorists Out of America Act."

Democrats don't dare. The House instead last week yanked from an appropriations bill the $81 million Mr. Obama wants as a down payment to begin the process of shuttering the prison. Worried that even this didn't provide enough cover, they also inserted language barring detainee transfers to the U.S. until at least October.

Appropriations chief David Obey explained that the only reason Congress didn't provide the money is that it first wants to see the administration's "plan." In truth, Democrats don't want to touch this debate -- certainly not now, in the middle of the what-Nancy-knew-and-when discussion. So they're kicking the can back to Mr. Obama.

The Senate is also set to deal with an appropriations bill, and Democrats are growing very wary that Republicans will introduce some awkward amendments that will force them to actually vote to bring terrorists to the U.S. Not surprisingly, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is now saying he, too, would first like to see some "specifics" from the administration.

This was not part of the Obama team's calculation. It figured it would get its bucks and make its calls. Releasing specific plans for where it intends to land these detainees will cause geographic uproars. But six weeks ago, Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions sent the first of two letters to Mr. Holder demanding to know the administration's legal authority for transfers, given that the federal Real ID Act prohibits admission to the U.S. of any alien who has engaged in a terrorist activity. The ranking member of the Judiciary Committee has yet to receive a response.

Except for Representative Moran of Northern Virginia, who wrote an op ed saying that his constituents should be willing to house Gitmo detainees, all other politicians are saying Not in My Backyard. But Moran's brother who is running for governor of Virginia isn't so thrilled with his brother's position.

And now we hear that Obama wants to continue military tribunals. And we can ponder Diane Feinstein's defense of Nancy Pelosi.

Asked this week about Mrs. Pelosi's variable recollections, Senator Feinstein, who chairs the Intelligence Committee, responded: "I think it's a tempest in a teapot really to say, Well, Speaker Pelosi should have known all of this, she should have stopped this, she should have done this or done that. I don't want to make an apology for anybody, but in 2002, it wasn't 2006, '07, '08 or '09. It was right after 9/11, and there were in fact discussions about a second wave of attacks."

Indeed there were discussions about a second wave of attacks in 2002. In an interview two years ago, former CIA Director George Tenet said of that post-attack period: "I've got reports of nuclear weapons in New York City, apartment buildings that are going to be blown up, planes that are going to fly into airports all over again."

So in that atmosphere, are Democrats arguing that it was fine for Nancy Pelosi not to be worried about waterboarding high-ranking members of Al Qaeda, but it was totally reprehensible for the Bush administration to do so?

Charles Krauthammer weighs in on this topic today.

The fact that Pelosi (and her intelligence aide) and then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss and dozens of other members of Congress knew about the enhanced interrogation and said nothing, and did nothing to cut off the funding, tells us something very important.

Our jurisprudence has the "reasonable man" standard. A jury is asked to consider what a reasonable person would do under certain urgent circumstances.

On the morality of waterboarding and other "torture," Pelosi and other senior and expert members of Congress represented their colleagues, and indeed the entire American people, in rendering the reasonable person verdict. What did they do? They gave tacit approval. In fact, according to Goss, they offered encouragement. Given the circumstances, they clearly deemed the interrogations warranted.

Why have Pelosi and the Democrats changed their positions since 2002? Do you think that politics might be the explanatory factor?

The reason Pelosi raised no objection to waterboarding at the time, the reason the American people (who by 2004 knew what was going on) strongly reelected the man who ordered these interrogations, is not because she and the rest of the American people suffered a years-long moral psychosis from which they have just now awoken. It is because at that time they were aware of the existing conditions -- our blindness to al-Qaeda's plans, the urgency of the threat, the magnitude of the suffering that might be caused by a second 9/11, the likelihood that the interrogation would extract intelligence that President Obama's own director of national intelligence now tells us was indeed "high-value information" -- and concluded that on balance it was a reasonable response to a terrible threat.

And they were right.

You can believe that Pelosi and the American public underwent a radical transformation from moral normality to complicity with war criminality back to normality. Or you can believe that their personalities and moral compasses have remained steady throughout the years, but changes in circumstances (threat, knowledge, imminence) alter the moral calculus attached to any interrogation technique.

You don't need a psychiatrist to tell you which of these theories is utterly fantastical.

And now that the Democrats have the entire responsibility for our government's actions to protect Americans, they're starting to find out that it isn't quite as easy to maintain their stance of moral superiority and keep the country safe.