SOWELL ON "WORLD OPINION" - AT 8:47 A.M. ET:  Tom Sowell, one of the best writers writing today, tears into President Obama's deep bowing to something called "world opinion":

In the string of amazing decisions made during the first year of the Obama administration, nothing seems more like sheer insanity than the decision to try foreign terrorists, who have committed acts of war against the United States, in federal court, as if they were American citizens accused of crimes.

Terrorists are not even entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention, much less the Constitution of the United States. Terrorists have never observed, nor even claimed to have observed, the Geneva Convention, nor are they among those covered by it.

But over and above the utter inconsistency of what is being done is the utter recklessness it represents. The last time an attack on the World Trade Center was treated as a matter of domestic criminal justice was after a bomb was exploded there in 1993. Under the rules of American criminal law, the prosecution had to turn over all sorts of information to the defense-- information that told the Al Qaeda international terrorist network what we knew about them and how we knew it.

As I said, one of the best writers writing today.

Tragically, this administration seems hell-bent to avoid seeing acts of terrorism against the United States as acts of war. The very phrase "war on terrorism" is avoided, as if that will stop the terrorists' war on us.

Wonderful way to put it.

The mindset of the left behind such thinking was spelled out in an editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle, which said that "Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the professed mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, will be tried the right way-- the American way, in a federal courtroom where the world will see both his guilt and the nation's adherence to the rule of law."

This is not the rule of law but the application of laws to situations for which they were not designed.

The San Fran Chronicle speaks very well for the crowd that is now running the country.  And running it into the ground.

Behind this decision and others is the notion that we have to demonstrate our good faith to other nations, sometimes called "world opinion." Just who are these saintly nations whose favor we must curry, at the risk of American lives and the national security of the United States?

Internationally, the law of the jungle ultimately prevails, despite pious talk about "the international community" and "world opinion," or the pompous and corrupt farce of the United Nations. Yet this is the gallery to which Barack Obama has been playing, both before and after becoming President of the United States.

But he sounds so good.  And his, oh so compelling story.  And his nice family.  And his breaking down of racial barriers to counter our 1) racist 2) imperialist 3) sexist 4) militarist 5) colonialist past.  What's a little knocking down of buildings compared to that?

As a private citizen, Barack Obama has a right to make as big a jackass of himself as he wants to. But, as President of the United States, his actions not only denigrate a nation that other nations rely on for survival, but raise questions about how reliable our judgment and resolve are-- which in turn raises questions about whether those nations will consider themselves better off to make the best deal they can with our enemies.

Enemies?  Enemies?  Why, isn't an enemy just a friend you haven't made yet?  That is actually a line circulated on the left.

As usual, Tom Sowell has it correct.  My fear is that the American people, or at least a chunk of it, will get used to these nutty policies. 

Daniel Patrick Moynihan once wrote a brilliant essay on "defining deviancy down" - meaning that society starts to accept its decline as normal.  With the media and the intellectual classes in the president's corner, that could happen to our nation.  If it does, we are cooked.

November 17, 2009