Indeed, Where's the Outrage?

Since November 2008, when then-President-elect Obama announced he was keeping President Bush's Secretary of Defense (you know, the senior advisor most responsible for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan), I've been mocking the liberal extremists with each significant Obama reassertion of Bush. Every day seems to bring another reason why a liberal with any core principles should direct their hate at Obama (or, I guess, feel some remorse for the feigned outrage directed at Bush). Here's yesterday's Wall Street Journal's editorial picking up on my 27-month-old theme:

The Trials of Gitmo
Where's the outrage?
The Wall Street Journal
January 27, 2011

So maybe we aren't reading our friends in the liberal media as carefully as we should. Earlier this month several media sources reported that the Obama Administration will soon resume trying Guantanamo detainees in military tribunals, almost a year to the day after the prison was supposed to have been closed for good. Yet somehow we missed the avalanche of commentary denouncing "kangaroo courts," "legal black holes" and all the other epithets once reserved for the Bush Administration when it was doing precisely the same thing. Critics in Europe are also notably silent.

That said, we welcome evidence of liberal maturity in the war on terror, and in the last two years the Administration has been growing up faster than expected. The decision to resume the tribunals was forced by the Democratic Congress's decision in December to forbid the Pentagon from spending money to transfer Gitmo's remaining detainees to the U.S. mainland.

Barring that option, the Administration's only choices were to re-open the tribunals, hold the prisoners indefinitely without trial, or otherwise let them go. Given that the recidivism rate of released Gitmo detainees is estimated at 25%, we'd say the Administration is choosing wisely.

And justly. Among the first detainees likely to be tried in the tribunals is Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the Saudi mastermind of the 2000 USS Cole bombing in which 17 U.S. sailors were killed. The relatives of Nashiri's victims deserve a verdict.

And the American people deserve a trial that won't be turned into a legal farce, which is what nearly happened last year in New York when terrorist Ahmed Ghailani was acquitted of 284 of the 285 counts held against him. This week Ghailani received a life sentence on that charge, saving the Administration from what might have been a major embarrassment.

Still, it's worth noting that even as the Administration prepares to try some 30 detainees, it also plans to hold another 50 without trial. We won't hold our breath awaiting the outpouring of liberal outrage. But we do breathe a sigh of relief that President Obama has seen the wisdom of his predecessor's ways. (End of WSJ editorial.)