THE GOOD McCARTHYISM

Posted at 7:51 a.m. ET

Andrew C. McCarthy spoke at Hudson New York last night.  That is the New York branch of the Hudson Institute. 

Many of you know Andrew McCarthy from his work at National Review.  He was a major federal prosecutor who led the prosecution of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (the blind sheikh) and others for terrorism against the United States.  That terrorism included the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. 

Let me just review the points Mr. McCarthy made, because I think they're important, especially as a new administration takes office:

McCarthy is contemptuous of defining terrorism as a criminal-justice problem.  His best quote of the night:  "Want to know if the criminal-justice system is effective against terrorism?  Ask Osama bin Laden."

Other points:

- There is no such thing as "Islam."  It is not monolithic.  It has no worldwide hierarchy.

- Radical Islam does not distinguish between Democrats and Republicans in the United States.  It sees only Americans, so will not see the incoming administration as very different from the last.

- You can't treat a national-security problem as a legal problem.  The threat is too large and the legalities too undecided.

- One of our problems is how we define the enemy.  For example, if a radical Islamist suddenly decides to work through politics, he's immediately labeled a "moderate," even though he is nothing of the kind.

- Hatred of George W. Bush has blinded some people to the serious threat of terrorism.  Many did not want to give the government the power that it needs to suppress terrorism simply because they didn't want Bush to have this power. 

- For a time, during the Clinton years, the criminal-justice system was essentially the entire war on terror.  Clearly, it didn't work.

- The Guantanamo situation has been twisted entirely out of shape.  We've gone from 800 detainees at Guantanamo to 250 today.

- Much of the information the United States has about terrorists we apprehend is reliable and true, but does not meet the standards of evidence of American courts.

- The new president must decide, if he closes Guantanamo, what to do with the dangerous prisoners who are there.  That is the key question, and it hasn't been addressed.  Eighty percent of the prisoners probably cannot be tried in courts because of evidence problems.

- The "civil-liberties community" believes that only it is capable of learning.

- The concern over federal inspection of library records as a result of the Patriot Act is a red herring.  It was actually easier before the Act for the feds to look into library records when there was probable cause.

- We worry far too much about our "reputation" abroad.  McCarthy asks, "Reputation in the eyes of whom?"  He cites the image of someone in a radical Muslim country coming home from the weekly beheadings and saying, "Boy, that Guantanamo Bay really affects me."

- So-called "civil libertarians" should be more realistic about our situation.  If we have another terrorist attack, McCarthy said, today's legal procedures will look like a day at the beach.

- Our current ethic seems to be, "Let's try to win and make them like us."  Not adequate.

It was a great briefing, and I highly commend Andrew McCarthy's book, "Willful Blindness - A Memoir of the Jihad."  You can conveniently order it by clicking on our Amazon.com link at the top of our right-hand column.

McCarthy brings us back to reality.  We hope the new president is listening.

December 3, 2008.