By Mr. Curmudgeon
Health problems may have temporarily sidelined former Vice President Dick Cheney from continuing his attacks on the Obama administration’s trivialization of the war on terror, but Cheney certainly has had a profound effect. According to the New York Daily News, “Feds involved in security preparations for lower Manhattan’s Foley Square courthouse have been quietly ordered to cease all preparations for a 9/11 trial blocks from where the twin towers fell. Senior aids will soon urge President Obama to reverse Attorney General Eric Holder and prosecute the terrorists in a military courtroom.” Granting foreign fighters civilian criminal trials and Constitutional rights was a tough sell for Eric Holder, but when it was discovered that at least nine Justice Department lawyers who helped him devise the aforementioned policy previously represented jihadist detainees in court, that’s when the feathers hit the fan. And the administration’s contrite reversal isn’t sitting well with the lunatic fringe of Obama’s personality cult.
Besides Cheney, another lightning rod for the lunatic left is former U.S. Attorney and National Review contributor Andrew McCarthy. Famous for successfully prosecuting the 1993 bombers of the World Trade Center, McCarthy is relentless in railing against the Justice Department’s decision to treat enemy combatants as common criminals. New York Time reporter Tobin Harshaw wrote, “McCarthy… blamed the ‘al-Qaeda bar’ — the attorneys who secured due process rights for detainees — for Bush-era setbacks… McCarthy wields a great deal of influence in conservative circles on national-security matters. When Attorney General Eric Holder testified in front of the Senate regarding his decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed and the other alleged 9/11 conspirators in civilian courts, Sen. John Kyl read aloud from an op-ed McCarthy had published just the day before, in which McCarthy alleges that 'leftist lawyers' actively sought to aid 'America’s enemies.'"
The outing of Justice Department jihadist sympathizers drove Ken Gude at the Center for American Progress to conclude, “This is exactly what Joe McCarthy did…Not kind of like McCarthyism; this is exactly McCarthyism.” Then Harshaw plays the tired leftist trump card. “Andrew McCarthy’s last name no doubt makes that comparison all too tempting…”
That’s an interesting comparison that Gude and Harshaw insist upon. Sen. Joseph McCarthy was dismissed as a lunatic for insisting Soviet sympathizers had infiltrated the U.S. State Department. When the Soviet KGB files were opened to historians after the collapse of the evil empire, Joe McCarthy and other Cold Warriors were proved right.
By declaring Dick Cheney, Andrew McCarthy and others McCarthyites for warning the country of pro jihadists elements within the Justice Department, Gude pays them the highest of compliments. In his famous Wheeling, West Virginia, speech of 1950, Joseph McCarthy condemned “those who have had all the benefits that the wealthiest nation on earth has had to offer . . . the finest homes, the finest college education and the finest jobs in government we can give.” Ouch! No wonder Gude sees shades of McCarthy in the former vice president and Andrew McCarthy – They’re hitting a little too close to the mark.
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