Obama Has The Left Going Nauseous

This is hilarious. From a reading of the lead article in the NYT today, it is obvious that the left is having severe trouble coming to grips with the reality that the moralizing of the One was deception on steroids and that the One is actually adopting most of the Bush blueprint for the War on Terror. One could well imagine that Pepto, Immodium and Depends have been flying off shelves since Thursday in all areas where the far left congregates.
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Ah, but it is so much fun watching the left try to come to grips with Obama's decision to adopt most of the programs from the Bush War on Terror. The cognitive dissonance arising out of the gulf between Obama's moral preening and his actions is going to have leftie heads exploding soon. And it may already be happening over at the NYT, where they are wrestling today with Obama's embrace of "indefinite detention."

"Indefinite detention" is actually the clearest issue in the entire War on Terror. We are operating pursuant to a formal declaration of war - the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), 115 Stat. 224. Thus, the law of war applies. Under that law, taking prisoners in war and holding them until hostilities cease is, to quote the activist left wing of the Supreme Court in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, "so fundamental and accepted an incident to war as to be an exercise of ‘necessary and appropriate force.'" That is the alpha and omega of "indefinite detention." The fact that hostilities might not end for decades is simply not a consideration.

The left's nausea, as the NYT makes crystal clear, comes from their desire to treat the war we are involved in as a purely criminal matter. Indeed, that would be completely in tune with all of the high moral rhetoric on the topic that Obama repeated near daily on the campaign trail. And thus it is just hilarious to watch the NYT adopt, without attribution, some of the One's own campaign rhetoric in their article as they try to reconcile themselves to Obama's embrace of "indefinite detention." This from the NYT:

President Obama’s proposal for a new legal system in which terrorism suspects could be held in “prolonged detention” inside the United States without trial would be a departure from the way this country sees itself, as a place where people in the grip of the government either face criminal charges or walk free.

Lollll . . . Apparently the author actually bought hook, line and sinker into the Obama campaign rhetoric. I am actually amazed that the author didn't weave the words "hope" and "change" into the first paragraph. To continue with the article:

. . . the question of [the] constitutionality [of indefinite detention] would involve a national look in the mirror: Is this what America does?

Roflllll . . . well, no, it would involve a look at the Constitution and applicable laws of war - and where the plain language of the Constitution is actually the baseline for interpretation, then sure, indefinite detention is what we do. We've done it in every war we've been involved in since 1776. All nine Supreme Court Justices agree on that one. The disconnect here occurs because the author substitutes "empathy" for the plain language of our founding document and he substitutes Obama's rhetoric for the Bill of Rights. I am sure you can see the problem. To continue:

. . . Mr. Obama chose to call his proposal “prolonged detention,” which made it sound more reassuring than some of its more familiar names. . . .

Oh, my sides are splitting. More reassuring? Good God, the author sees the purely superficial and cynical device Obama is using, and is still comforted by it? Lolllllllll . . . . Apparently they are consciously grasping for straws over at the NYT in an effort to make this horrible turn of events somehow acceptable. I wonder how Dr. Sanity would categorize this particular defense mechanism - willing self-delusion?

At any rate, do read the whole article. It is a howler.