The left's hand wringing over 'preventive detention'

Marc Ambinder:

Has the Obama administration really endorsed the reality of preventative detention -- an American gulag, indefinite imprisonment without trial for battlefield enemies? It depends on who you ask. Administration officials acknowledge that the question is tricky; even as they insist that the decisions they're making about Guantanamo Bay prisoners will only apply to Guantanamo Bay prisoners, they concede that those dispositions will set a precedent that will likely result in some sort of ... well, indefinite detention system for future detainees. That Rubicon has been crossed; there exist human beings in this world who could be indefinitely held without trial under the authority of the president of the United States.

When Obama met Wednesday with leading human rights activists, he was pressed about this very issue as regards to the precedents that his actions would set and what they would say about American justice. (Participants were armed with good questions and some of them, knowing Obama personally, knew that he always pays attention to the larger narrative his decisions will create.)

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Perhaps they would not be so confused on this issue if the detainees were called POWs. The concept that prisoners of war are held to the end of the conflict is fairly easy to grasp. But, these detainees are not entitled to POW status because they are do not obey the rules of war. For some reason the left thinks that gives them more status and they should be entitled to constitutional rights. That is totally wacky thinking that comes from a lawfare mindset rather than a warfare mindset.