Ilimitada disposição para acreditar IV

Vamos a um exemplo da "Canção do bandido, a três tempos", pela pena de Andrew C. McCarthy, na NRO:

«International terrorists waging war against the United States cannot be treated as if they were ordinary defendants. Those who say otherwise, and who would treat terrorist operatives as if they were mere civilians, are trying to impose on the United States the standards of foolhardy treaties that the United States has never ratified — precisely because accepting such standards “would improperly reward an enemy that violates the laws of war by operating as a loose network and camouflaging its forces as civilians.”

To protect national security, the president must have the authority to detain anyone who, in his judgment, is helping the enemy. And anyone means anyone: It matters not if such suspects “have not actually committed or attempted to commit any act of depredation or entered the theatre or zone of active military operations.” If the president’s unilateral authority to detain were “limited to persons captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan,” this would “unduly hinder both the President’s ability to protect our country from future acts of terrorism and his ability to gather vital intelligence regarding the capability, operations, and intentions of this elusive and cunning adversary.”

You’re probably thinking the quotes above reflect the world according to Dick Cheney, David Addington, John Yoo, or some similar Bush-era incubus. In fact, they describe — with words drawn directly from Eric Holder’s Justice Department — the Obama administration’s official guidance on enemy combatants. The Obama administration won’t lower itself to call these terrorist captives “enemy combatants,” notwithstanding that they are part of the “enemy” the administration concedes is conducting “battle” against us in the “war” he admits we are in.

The guidance, made public last Friday in a DOJ submission in federal district court, marks quite a turnabout for the president and his attorney general. During last year’s campaign, Obama was sharply dismissive of the Bush policy of detaining enemy com — er, whatever you call ’em, without trial. (...)

(...) Say this much about Messrs. Cheney, Addington, and Yoo: Whether you agree with their muscular take on executive power (I happen to agree with it), it was at least a cogent view, no matter how frightening it may have seemed to international-law professors. They were saying that the Constitution gives the president power to protect the nation from external threats to national security, and that the courts have no power to second-guess the president in this realm.

By contrast, Obama says he doesn’t need Article II; he can live within the AUMF and international law, which, he says, limit him to detaining only those who have provided substantial support to al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated forces. Fine, but what does “substantial” mean, and who are these “associated forces”? Obama won’t tell you. Those definitions may vary from “case to case,” says the guidance, such that “the contours of ‘substantial support’ and ‘associated forces’ bases of detention will need to be further developed in their application to concrete facts in individual cases.” (...)

(...) But when it comes to explaining whom he might detain, Obama is reserving to himself the right to make it up as he goes along. »