After The Speeches ...

Written by David Frum on Thursday May 21, 2009

... I am left with this question: What exactly is new in the Obama administration's counter-terrorism policy?

Enhanced interrogation techniques so-called were discontinued five years ago. Military commissions with greater safeguards for the accused had already been ordered up by the US courts. 

Meanwhile, Guantanamo continues to operate, renditions will occur as needed, habeas will not be granted to enemy combatants, the US will invoke the state secrets privilege to shut down civil lawsuits by detainees against individual US government agents and employees, and the most dangerous non-citizen terrorists will remain in US custody forever. 

Jack Goldsmith writes:

The new administration has copied most of the Bush program, has expanded some of it, and has narrowed only a bit. Almost all of the Obama changes have been at the level of packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric. This does not mean that the Obama changes are unimportant. Packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric, it turns out, are vitally important to the legitimacy of terrorism policies. 

If that's correct, what we have in Obama in other words is not so much a change of direction, but a reset and rebranding of existing policies that received their real modification in 2004 and 2005. So back to the original question: which if any of the counter-terrorism policies actually in place a year ago have in practice been cancelled over the past 4 months? 

 

 

Category: News