“Politics should stop at the water’s edge.”
So said Arthur Vandenberg, a respected senator from Michigan, when some fellow Republicans attacked President Harry Truman’s creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Defeating the Soviet threat to Europe meant crossing party lines at home.
President Barack Obama faces much the same issue today as his administration confronts the continuing reality of global terrorism, both overseas and close to home. This includes an alleged al-Qaeda plot by Aurora resident Najibullah Zazi and his father, according to a recent federal grand jury indictment, to use weapons of mass destruction in New York.
The Denver office of the FBI and its Joint Terrorism Task Force deserve our thanks for disrupting this attack. So does President Obama for defying critics in his own party in the fight against terrorism.
Some fellow Democrats have accused Obama of endorsing a “third Bush term” because he’s endorsed so many of his predecessor’s anti-terrorism policies. Instead, Obama is being true to the Vandenberg tradition. Democrats and Republicans should unite behind our president.
The Obama team quietly agreed to the reauthorization of the Patriot Act passed by President George W. Bush and the Republican Congress in response to the 9/11 attacks. The administration’s support for a law then-Sen. Obama called “shabby” reflects the need for anti-terrorism surveillance tools that were invaluable in averting the alleged al-Qaeda attack by the Zazi conspirators.
Then there are the “enemy combatants” currently being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.
After campaigning to close Guantanamo, President Obama has revived the use in terrorism cases of military tribunals, a signature Bush program. Obama has also continued the indefinite detention of about 200 “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo not charged with crimes under either military or civilian law.
Now as with Bush, enemy combatants are detained because they pose a continuing threat to U.S. security. Earlier releases of enemy combatants from Guantanamo resulted in some reappearing on the battlefield in Iraq. This also explains why our president’s lawyers, echoing Bush, are trying to prevent some 600 Bagram detainees captured on the Afghan battlefield from getting access to the federal courts.
As a member of the U.S. Attorney General’s advisory subcommittee on terrorism while serving as the U.S. attorney for Colorado, I learned about the continuing challenges our country faces from terrorist organizations. This includes threats that still keep me awake at night.
I can only imagine what our president hears each day to rethink his own positions on so many anti-terrorism issues.
At the same time, fighting terrorism must never come at the expense of our most precious civil rights. There are legitimate differences about how best to do this; President Obama is absolutely right to demand this balance.
As the first Arab-American ever to be presidentially appointed as a U.S. attorney, I heard from fellow Arab-Americans across our country, many serving in the U.S. armed forces. I visited community centers and places of worship. Without a doubt, racism and bigotry, like terrorism, stubbornly persist — much as they did when my own father immigrated to America from Egypt in 1957 with just $100.
Here again, we need to put partisan politics aside. Liberals need to quit minimizing or denying the terrorist threat to our country. Conservatives must stop acting like the civil rights movement and President Obama’s election have somehow “fixed” racial, ethnic and gender equality.
Whatever our partisan differences, let’s hope the emerging Obama- Bush consensus on anti-terrorism continues.
Troy A. Eid (eidt@gtlaw.com) lives in Morrison and served as the U.S. attorney for the district of Colorado from 2006 until January.
