The 9/10 candidate

BARACK OBAMA says, "I have confidence that our system of justice is strong enough to deal with terrorists." Nobody else should.

Our justice system, though weakened by many misguided court decisions on criminal procedure, works tolerably well in dealing with ordinary crime. It was not designed to address terrorism and does not do so effectively. Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, we should remember, were under indictment while they plotted against us.

In the eight years between the first World Trade Center attack and the destruction of the Twin Towers, fewer than three dozen terrorists could be prosecuted. Our military routinely kills or captures more enemy operatives than that in Afghanistan and Iraq in a single day--and without freely handing over intelligence to our enemies, as our trial procedures compelled us to do.

Our law-enforcement approach in the 1990s communicated a powerful message to the jihad: We would respond to atrocities with indictments. Our enemies, many of them willing to sacrifice their own lives in order to take ours, were not deterred by the threat of subpoenas. Obama communicates the same message today.

As do our courts. Obama's comments came in response to the Supreme Court's outrageous decision to extend to captured foreign terrorists in Guantanamo the same right to challenge their detention in federal court that ordinary American defendants enjoy.

John McCain, by contrast, condemned the Court's decision. He wants to stay on offense in the war on radical Islam. He favors a real war footing, including military and covert operations, aggressive collection of intelligence, and Treasury Department tracking of terrorists' finances. The justice system would continue to play an important but subordinate role: breaking up terrorist cells before they can attack, instead of prosecuting terrorists after they have killed Americans, as in the 1990s. Liberals sometimes talk as though this approach were less civilized than the courtroom-centered one to which they want to return. An Obama spokeswoman called it "stupid." But for seven years, it has helped prevent another attack on our soil.

Obama's confidence in an anti-terrorism strategy that has already failed should reduce Americans' confidence in him.

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COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning