Oprahfication of American Foreign Policy

Lawyer Bill Clinton and his lawyer spouse Hillary presided over the most hyper-lawyered administration/regime in US/world history, with Jamie Gorelick the Cerberus at the Firewall keeping the CIA and FBI at arms-length from each other and impeding their effectiveness in preventing a terrorist attack on US soil. One might recall that Bill was dissuaded from Sudan's offer to hand over Osama bin Laden to the US because his legal team didn't think he had authority to protect the nation from a budding terrorist.

Smug and barmy Bill doesn't have the historical accountability problems GWB has because over 90% of MSM journalists voted for him. The famous Carlos the Jackal in even more ossified France had to pay a fine recently. At least the famous Venezuelan terrorist, who killed several French flics and now lives comfortably in Paris, has the foresight to have as a "life partner" a lawyer named Isabelle. Bill and Carlos should compare notes on how to dodge accountability.

Mark Steyn says it better in the Chicago Sun-Times, pointing out just how absurd the American obsession with "Law and Order: CSI in WTC" turned out in the Moussaoui trial:

...the notion, peddled by some sappy member of the ghastly 9/11 Commission on one of the cable yakfests last week, that jihadists around the world are marveling at the fairness of the U.S. justice system, is preposterous. The leisurely legal process Moussaoui enjoyed lasted longer than America's participation in the Second World War. Around the world, everybody's enjoying a grand old laugh at the U.S. justice system.

Only a lawyer could have made such an absurd comment, and the "ghastly" 9/11 Commission was packed with lawyers, including chief perp Gorelick, who more than any other US official, made it possible and in some ways easy for UbL to stay away from justice [in '96 when he flew from Khartoum to Afganistan, thanks to Gorelick in the DoJ pulling strings]. After a riff noting that Saddam Hussein wishes he had access to an O.J./Oprah jury in the US to flimflam and whine in front of, Steyn continues:

On the afternoon of Sept. 11, as the Pentagon still burned, Donald Rumsfeld told the president, "This is not a criminal action. This is war."

That's still the distinction that matters. By contrast, after the 2005 London bombings, Boris Johnson, the Conservative member of Parliament, wrote a piece headlined "Just Don't Call It War." Johnson objected to the language of "war, whether military or cultural . . . Last week's bombs were placed not by martyrs nor by soldiers, but by criminals."

Yes, and criminals are subject to limp-wristed pansy judicial systems notoriously weak-minded in the application of the real world to their cloud-cuckoo trial chambers.

A "criminal" approach gives terrorists all the rights of criminals, including the "Gee, Officer Krupke" defense: I'm depraved on account of I'm deprived. If you fight this thing as a law enforcement matter, Islamist welfare queens around the world will figure there's no downside to jihad: After all, you're living on public welfare in London plotting the downfall of the infidel. If it all goes horribly wrong, you'll be living on public welfare in Virginia, grandstanding through U.S. courtrooms for half a decade. What's to lose?

Yes, and the weird female judge in Virginia was fearful that the graphic violence of the tapes and videos of what actually happened in the real world on 9/11 might unduly influence the jury toward a more severe standard of justice! Tut tut...
Wouldn't want the real world to intrude. She got her wish. The defense lawyers pulled out the stories of the terrible childhood this wannabe-murderer endured and the soft minds of the jurors turned into mush:

It's a very worn cliche to say that America is over-lawyered, but the extent of that truism only becomes clear when you realize how overwhelming is our culture's reflex to cover war as just another potential miscarriage-of-justice story. I was interested to see that the first instinct of the news shows to the verdict was to book some relative of the 9/11 families and ask whether they were satisfied with the result. That's not what happened that Tuesday morning. The thousands who were killed were not targeted as individuals. They died because they were American, not because somebody in a cave far away decided to kill Mrs. Smith. Their families have a unique claim to our sympathy and a grief we can never truly share, but they're not plaintiffs and war isn't a suit. It's not about "closure" for the victims; it's about victory for the nation. Try to imagine the bereaved in the London blitz demanding that the Germans responsible be brought before a British court.

Agreeing to fight the jihad with subpoenas is, in effect, a declaration that you're willing to plea bargain. Instead of a Churchillian "we will never surrender!", it's more of a "Well, the judge has thrown out the mass murder charges, but the DA says we can still nail him on mail fraud."

And, even if the defendant loses the case, does that mean the state wins? Here's an Associated Press story from a few weeks ago recounting yet another tremendous victory for the good guys in the war on terror:

"A Paris court fined the terrorist known as 'Carlos the Jackal' more than $6,000 Tuesday for saying in a French television interview that terror attacks sometimes were 'necessary.' The 56-year-old Venezuelan, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, was convicted of defending terrorism. The court did not convict him for expressing pleasure that 'the Great Satan' -- the United States -- suffered the Sept. 11 attacks, saying those comments were his personal reaction."

That's right, folks. The French state brought a successful hate-speech prosecution against Carlos the Jackal, albeit not as successful as they wanted:

"Prosecutors asked for a fine four times larger than the $6,110 penalty imposed. But the judges said they did not see the need for a higher fine because Ramirez's comments referred to the past and aimed to justify his own actions. Ramirez, dressed in a red shirt and blue blazer, kissed the hand of his partner and lawyer, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, during the judgment."

Coming soon to a theater near you: The Day of the Jackal's Hate-Speech Appeal Hearing.

Mark Steyn left out the most ridiculous subtext of the entire collective psychosis---the French government plans to ask that Moussaoui be repatriated so that he can be near his mother, who can then visit him more easily.

Guess how many years [months] Moussaoui would serve in the collective-suicide capital of the Western World before he would be released on some pretext or another, perhaps availing himself of the services of Carlos' live-in counsel to spring him? Then he could live down the street from cop-killer Carlos in a nice Paris neighborhood, far from the banlieues full of smoldering unemployed riffraff like he used to be before he became a celebrity. I'm sure the ACLU is on Moussaoui's side on the repatriation request.

And Jamie Gorelick would make a suitable and appropriate character witness for Moussaoui, if that ever came to pass.