Does the killing of Dr. George Tiller change the dynamics of the abortion debate?

The abortion debate is one conflict on a continuum of difficult cultural and national dilemmas. The political crime against Dr. Tiller will likely do little to altar the parameters of that continuum which covers multiple points of debate about sexuality, sex education, contraception, the sanctification of motherhood, the shifting role of fatherhood, pregnancy, prenatal care, reproduction, abortion, adoption, immunization, and infant care.

The terms “pro-choice” and “pro-life” so reduce the public dialogue to the level of a advertising brand that violence gets construed as a viable means of political action. It isn’t, of course. In the case of Dr. Tiller, it’s not political, it’s murder. But the debate itself is fairly static and will likely remain so.

The majority of the electorate favors legal abortion with reasonable restrictions. Depending on whether conservatives or liberals are in power in Washington, DC, the restrictions are either lessened or tightened. And, then, only a little. It’s a form of trench warfare. A foot or two gained at one point on the line is matched by a foot or two lost on the other point of the line. The line is the precedent of Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right of abortion. What’s needed to resolve the debate is not political crimes like the killing of Dr. Tiller but a national dialogue that includes all the difficult cultural, religious, medical, political, and legal complexities surrounding the delicate issues of human sex, reproduction, and child-rearing. Dialogue is needed, not debate.

On another topic: Yesterday I wrote on this page that “that most nations do not see a dime’s worth of difference between a Republican president or a Democratic president–despite our great, private, national narrative and debates. Between Bush and Obama, I mean, it’s six to one, half a dozen to the other as far as many people throughout the world, including the Middle East, are concerned.” Today’s recorded message, allegedly from Osama bin Laden, saying, according to The Washington Post, that President Obama “was planting seeds for ‘revenge and hatred’ toward the United States in the Muslim world” and that “Obama was following Bush’s policy of ‘antagonizing Muslims’ and warned Americans to be prepared for the ‘consequences’” is a case in point. The producers of political entertainment shows for FOX and MSNBC may be surprised to see it, but for many people in the world, and for al-Qaeda at least, for sure, Bush and Obama are one and the same.

Too often our domestic debate about security turns on what the terrorists feel about our debate, or how decision A bolsters the terrorists and decision B frightens them. Time and time again, this debating points concern of ours has no basis in reality and no affect on what terrorists do or don’t do. Whether it’s Islamic terrorists or reproductive rights terrorists, they don’t care about the public debate. They don’t care about the Guantanomo post-9/11 political prison or our discussion about the relationship between our national security and our constitutional values or what the constitutional precedent about individual rights exists for pregnant women. Whether they’re bombing the World Trade Center or a private health clinic, the polite parameters of debate don’t seem, in the end, to be much concern to people who use violence to advocate a political status.

This post previously appeared on Politico

On a separate issue, denying funding to close Guantanamo

This left-over Bush administration problem needs to be resolved. 

First, we should stop holding enemy combatants indefinitely and get on with charging them with a crime. In general, we should imprison enemy combatants in federal corrections institutions where today we have already some 200,000 offenders behind bars. 

The “Escape of the Giant Jihadist” hysteria is absurd. Anyone who knows anything about the real life of federal prisons knows that there is more than an adequate amount of prisoner-led self-policing going on inside those walls, in addition to professional guards. In fact, given how many prisons we have in this country of all kinds, it’s shocking how little the American public knows about the actual experiences of those whom we incarcerate. Gitmo has been a failure. I know it can’t be done by lunch, but we need to put that unfortunate chapter in American “justice” behind us.

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Rory Cooper of the Heritage Foundation responds

David, excuse me if it feels like I’m targeting you this week, but I would like to address a couple of your points. First, you have correctly identified a major difference between conservatives and liberals, and the liberal belief that the enemy combatants at Gitmo are part of the “justice” system. They are not. They are terrorists who declared war on the United States who do not represent a flag nation, as we became accustomed to in previous wars.

It is absurd to think that the only concern is that the terrorist might break out, which trivializes the issue. The question is, if you put them in Colorado’s SuperMax, is Colorado now a target for terrorism by men we have not caught yet? Or are they automatically entered into the U.S. judicial system? Since that would be highly inappropriate given that evidence against them was gathered in classified military processes, where would you prosecute them? In a military tribunal as Presidents Bush and Obama both supported.

So if they’re being tried in a military tribunal, why not keep them imprisoned on a military base. Where is the most secure facility for this? Guantanamo Bay. The men and women who serve our country at Gitmo are amazing soldiers who watch over these murderous thugs with integrity and responsibility and to move them out of that facility to improve the window dressing of this issue is naïve. I recommend you watch the National Geographic Channel’s (super non-partisan) documentary “Inside Gitmo” for a look at this facility that is hailed as exemplary from both sides of the aisle. Most agree it was unfortunate that President Obama chose to sign an executive order closing Gitmo on his second day in office before knowing the facts, or having a plan. And as America regains its senses, I hope we can now all agree that fighting terrorism is priority #1, not fighting a public relations battle from 2003.

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Fred Barbash, Politico’s Arena moderator responds

Pardon my interruption…but if they were all terrorists we wouldn’t be having this problem, which is the more-than-semantic problem with the discussion of this issue generally. The Bush and Obama administrations have been struggling to come up with a process-acceptable to the Supreme Court–precisely to determine which of those in custody are, in fact, terrorists.

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My response

Rory, no offense taken. Call me a liberal or, hey, like yesterday, call me poetic, but I do in fact support due process for Guantanamo prisoners, as well as closing the prison camp there. If recent polling is to be believed, so too does a majority of the American public.

For some time now military, diplomatic, and intelligence officials have been investigating public, private, or military prisons to take Guantanomo prisoners (and struggling in the effort because of a U.S. law preventing mixing Guantanomo detainees with domestic inmates). This process, of course, was begun during the Bush administration. There is a precedent, meanwhile, for terrorist detentions in American jails: The shoe bomber, Richard Reid, is in the SuperMax in Colorado; Zarcarias Moussaoui is incarcerated there also.

As of February of this year, 500 enemy combatants, including some alleged to be the so-called “worst of the worst,” have actually been released already from Guantanomo. So it’s unclear who is a terrorist thug and who isn’t–that’s why we should be charging them and trying them. And, then, we can call them murderous thugs if that’s, in fact, what they are. Also, it’s from this lot (of the 500, I mean) that the allegations that several dozen of them are back in the field come from–including Abdullah Zakir, a militant whom the Bush administration released from Guantanamo two years ago and who is now a leader among the Afghan Taliban.

About 200-some prisoners remain. A third of these have been cleared some time ago to be sent home without charges. Another third are being kept because the military believes there is evidence to try them–whether in military or in federal courts, where, by the way, there is precedent for shielding the public from classified evidence–though only two dozen have actually been charged and of these only three have been brought to trial. Finally, of the other third, there lacks evidence to charge these individuals with anything–although intelligence officials insist these prisoners are too risky to set free. They’re the ones who have to be dealt with, and they were going to have to be dealt with whether Guantanomo is kept open or not.

Re: Colorado SuperMax as a potential site of terrorist attacks. Rory, we might be able to agree on this point: It makes no difference who is president or who controls the U.S. Congress or how well or poorly we treat enemy combatants, or even what policies of defense, what uses of hard or soft power get employed for us to be realists about the following fact. Jihadists don’t need motivation to attack civilians. So let’s not ascribe to them any special care for the our national drama about domestic security.

I’ll check out your movie. Re: yesterday’s debate. By now you surely know that “excessivement sensible” means overly sensitive.

This post originally appeared on Politico’s Arena.

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If you were the decider, how would you decide the fate of a Guantanamo detainee?

…Unlike the Bush administration, the Obama administration is not tagged with seven years of legal disarray and perhaps illegal conduct

This detainee decision is flawed and troublesome. Our courts are well-equipped to try the 200-plus detainees we have in Cuba and others who are arrested in the future. Our super-max prisons are well-equipped to hold any prisoner, foreign or domestic.

By arguing that we can try some detainees in U.S. courts but not others, the decision is an admission that there are in fact a few dozen detainees, long considered extraordinarily dangerous, for whom we lack sufficient evidence to try or even convict. Thus, the government continues to trap itself into a quasi-legal vice. But creating a layered system of trying detainees in military tribunals and also in American courts, as well as expanding their legal rights, is significantly different from the Bush administration’s policy of holding combatants without charge or trial indefinitely. Or claiming a legal right to do so.

Some, especially on the right, are chastising President Obama for reversing his campaign pledge–he has–or that this new policy resembles the Bush administration’s policy–it does, though it differs significantly in affording combatants more legal rights of defense. But the complaint that Obama is now doing what Bush did is utterly hollow because context matters. The Bush and Obama decisions about detainees may resemble each other–and the do–but the two administrations are not developing tribunal and court policies from the same place of public faith and trust.

This post originally appeared on Politico’s Arena.

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