Eric Holder vs. the Country
by Adam | Thursday 11 February 2010
Take half an hour or however long it takes you to read one of those sprawling New Yorker articles (it actually takes me weeks to finish one issue) and settle yourself into Jane Mayer's excellent piece about U.S. General Attorney Eric Holder's battle to try terrorists in civilian courts.
In it, she essentially frames how this political melee--despite being a continuation of Bush 43's policy viz. captured combatants--has played a massive role in delivering Scott Brown to the Senate, the Republicans to their base, and Obama deeper into the political doghouse.
Holder told me that he was frustrated by much of the criticism over the handling of Abdulmutallab [underpants bomber guy]. “What we did is totally consistent with what has happened in every similar case” since 9/11, he said. “There’s a desire to ignore the facts to try to score political points. It’s a little shocking.” Without exception, he noted, every previous terrorist suspect apprehended inside the country had been handled as a civilian criminal. Even so, critics such as Krauthammer were denouncing Holder for failing to send Abdulmutallab directly to Guantánamo. As a senior national-security official in the White House put it, “It’s a fantasy! Under what alternative legal system can Special Operations Forces fly into Detroit, and take someone away without court oversight?”
The article also shows how this policy has been more effective in turning out actual convictions in these trials as well as helping with the information gathering process than military courts or Gitmo lockaways. The writing and the reporting are stellar (obviously) and Rudy Giuliani, as expected, comes out looking like a complete asshole.
If you're less inclined to read this awesome piece of writing (thanks for being you), check out the conversation between Jon Stewart and Newt Gingrich on the topic. In it, Gingrich asks Stewart if he'd want the trials in Lower Manhattan to which Stewart replies (paraphrasing): I lived through 9/11...in New York...blocks from the World Trade Center. I would be proud to show the world our values and our fearlessness.
If you didn't already know it, Jon Stewart is not only funny, but insanely smart and strangely attractive to me.