Waterboard or Death

When President Obama was running for the office, he said Gitmo was bad.  It was unAmerican to treat people - terrorist or otherwise - to permanent incarceration.  Likewise, military tribunals were bad.  Everyone should get a trial by jury, even a foreign terrorist.  Such a policy would have been tough to implement in World War II.  A trial for every captured German?  Worst of all, it was wrong to waterboard captives.  Torture is wrong and even spelled out in the Bill of Rights.  Clearly President Obama felt we were being too harsh toward the enemy.  We weren't living up to American ideals.  How are we doing now?

Well, instead of capturing terrorists and interrogating them, we just blow them up.  Drone strikes are way up under Obama.  They don't even get the benefit of a military tribunal.  The star chamber at the White House has found you sufficiently guilty so here's your missile.  BOOM!  Sorry about killing your son but he was probably going to be radicalized in a few years.  Ditto for the wife.  Collateral damage, don't you know.

I don't have a lot of sympathy for terrorists but there does seem to be a contradiction here.  Typically, a person who opposed indefinite detention and waterboarding would really be opposed to execution without trial, especially if there were collateral deaths.  But instead, that seems to be perfectly fine, even commendable.  It was the Obama Administration that announced its weekly star chamber about which terrorist should be blown to bits.

It is peculiar since I predicted this when Obama first stated his opposition to Gitmo.  If the terrorist is just going to be remanded to the custody of a Middle Eastern country which will likely release him to return to terror, the calculus suddenly changes to a desire to have fewer captives.  Of course, I was expecting the soldiers in the field to more often kill enemy combatants.  Really hadn't expected Obama to embrace the kill don't capture policy.  However, if you oppose putting terrorist in Gitmo and can't try them in American courts (remember the KSM NYC trial fiasco), it does become easier to just kill them.  No messy legal entanglements that way.

Under Bush, the terrorist was more likely to be captured, interrogated, and then spend an indefinite time at Gitmo, where he was fed (typically putting on weight) and provided a Koran.  Under Obama, the terrorist blows up.  Which is more humane?