The Times Square act of war is indeed a game changer. Over at Jihad Watch: Rep. Hoekstra: Connection between
Times Square bomber and Pakistani Taliban would be a "game-changer."
Can President Obama continue to insist on prosecuting those who commit acts of war to overthrow the US government and institute Islamic (sharia) law after he took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution?
Note, however, that in both Quirin and Hamdi, there was convincing evidence that the American citizen in question had been captured fighting on behalf of the specific enemy against whom Congress had authorized the use of military force. At the moment, we don’t have that with respect to Shahzad.
Andy McCarthy, author of the soon to be released book The Grand Jihad, explains all: Willful Blindness: Memoir of the Jihad.
Getting the Times Square Bomber’s Confession Andy McCarthy, NRO
The tricky business of defending the nation while building a court case.
The Obama administration strongly prefers the law-enforcement model, and that is how the Times Square case is being handled. Though I believe the military process should be our default choice during wartime, the administration should be cut some slack in this case. There are things to criticize, and the case bears close watching. Knee-jerk derision, though, would be a mistake.
AMERICAN CITIZEN ENEMIES
In two critical ways, this case is different from the attempted Christmas bombing. First, the man who has been apprehended, Faisal Shahzad, is an American citizen. Christmas terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was not. Second, there was very strong evidence that Abdulmutallab was an al-Qaeda operative. We don’t have that sort of intelligence on Shahzad at this point.
The citizenship complication is a big deal. About a year ago, Shahzad became a naturalized American. National-security conservatives are thus pointing to Ex Parte Quirin (1942), the World War II saboteurs case in which the Supreme Court upheld the military detention, trial, and execution of an American citizen. Like his seven German confederates, Herbert Hans Haupt was clearly a Nazi operative sent to the United States to commit acts of terrorism. Further, in the 2004 Hamdi case, the justices reaffirmed the validity of military detention for Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American citizen captured on a foreign battlefield fighting for al-Qaeda.
Read it all.
UPDATE: Shahzad's father questioned in Times Square inquiry
