Offering comfort to the terrorist

Donald Lambro:

President Obama recently told the United Nations that the era of George W. Bush's foreign policy was over and that he is taking a bold new approach to international diplomacy and dealing with the world's troublemakers.

He declared that he has ended Bush's policy of conducting aggressive interrogation techniques against some of the most dangerous terrorists in the world; that he was closing down the Guantanamo Bay detention facility; that he ended the war in Iraq; and that he's determined to defeat the Taliban offensive in Afghanistan.

But much of the president's speech was filled with pomp, exaggeration, political posturing and over-the-top promises that he is going to have a hard time fulfilling -- from climate change to persuading the world's thugs and despots to abandon their nuclear threats and be nice to their neighbors.

Ending "enhanced interrogation" methods, which intelligence reports tell us have yielded critical information about Al Qaeda's operations and foiled terrorist plots against us, certainly isn't going to make the United States or the world safer. To the contrary, the terrorists couldn't be happier to hear this, and no doubt some of the U.N. member nations who harbor terrorists or support them were applauding Obama the loudest.

Other changes on the terrorist front would move a number of detainees through the U.S. court system, where, presumably, their rights can be better protected, resulting in prolonged, if not endless, litigation -- but to what end?

As for closing the Guantanamo Bay prison, eight months into his presidency, it is still open and operating and detaining some very dangerous people who should never be let out -- which was Bush's policy and that we now learn Obama has apparently embraced.

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When the war in Iraq was going badly, Bush gave Gen. David Petraeus the funds and forces he needed to defeat Al Qaeda. Now Obama faces the same decision in Afghanistan that Bush faced in Iraq: whether to agree to Gen. Stanley McChrystal's request for up to 40,000 more troops or else lose the war.

Petraeus and the rest of the Pentagon's top brass have endorsed the request, but Obama has publicly expressed his doubts about a wider war and has delayed a decision until he can complete a further review.

Earlier this year, Obama said that his Afghan war strategy would be "stronger and smarter." Last week, doubts were beginning to creep into his mind. "Are we pursuing the right strategy?" he asked on NBC's "Meet the Press."

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All that comfort has not halted the terrorist, it has emboldened them. We are now in the middle of three separate terrorist investigations of plots to commit mass murder in the US for Allah. I don't think they are doing it because they hate George Bush. They maybe empathy challenged, but they think that killing us will make us surrender to their objectives. They see in Obama someone who will surrender and his dithering on Afghanistan must be encouraging to them.