Diane Ravitch on Obama's Policy Towards Terrorism

Diane Ravitch, from NYU and Brookings, has some scathing criticism for our ever golfing but somehow never resting President:

The Obama administration is, in my view, on the wrong track in dealing with terrorism. Perhaps because the president is so eloquent, he seems to think that every problem can be dealt with by talk. Talk doesn't help in responding to terrorism. Probably he thought that his "address to the Muslim world," wherein he expressed his understanding, sympathy, compassion, concern, empathy, etc., would somehow build bridges, engage, and open a new era in which Islamic terrorism would no longer be directed at the United States. Events to date have proven him wrong, as there seems to be no let-up in the hatred of Islamic extremists for the United States, as witnessed by the Fort Hood massacre and the recent failed attempt to blow up an airline.

So, talk doesn't work. The Obama administration's other gambit is to de-escalate the "war on terror," to treat it as a matter of crimes and misdemeanors that can best be handled by our judicial system. No more rhetoric about a "war on terror," but instead a concerted effort to bring "criminals" to justice, to "hold them accountable" in our courts, as the president suggested in his statement from Hawaii yesterday.

So the crotch-bomber will be tried for a felony in a federal court, with all the rights and privileges of American citizens. So Khalid Sheik-Mohammed and his associates will be able to enlist an army of pro bono lawyers to defend their "constitutional rights," the same ones they tried to destroy, along with some 3,000 lives. So KSM and pals will get discovery proceedings, will demand a new venue, will insist that the U.S. produce witnesses to their alleged crimes, will inflict millions of dollars of unnecessary security costs on NYC (or any other host city) that might better be spent on schools.

In short, the Obama administration has woven a web of confusion, rhetoric, and illogic that will entangle it for years to come, as it attempts to defuse, de-escalate and minimize the terrorist threat. The reason this strategy is politically foolish is that the terrorist threat is real. It can't be assuaged by words or dissipated by turning the other cheek. No matter what the president says, no matter how many civilian trials he promotes, the terrorists are not going away. Sooner or later, they will get lucky, they will bring down a jetliner or blow up a rail terminal, and the American people will be very angry. They will see the strategy of de-escalation not as wise but as dangerous. Appeasement didn't work in the 1930s. It won't work now.