America Safer?

So now John McCain is trying to nail Barack Obama with the old September 10th trick. This was first tried against Democrats by none other than Karl Rove. You may remember that in early '06 Rove said the GOP has a post 9/11 view of the world, while the Democrats had a pre-9/11 view. Yeah, that worked. Eleven months later the Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress. McCain won't fare much better using the argument on Obama.

His people argue Obama has a naive view of the enemies America faces. The rationale? Obama had the nerve to argue the nation can crack down on terrorists using (believe it or not) the American legal system. He contrasted the indefinite detention of detainees at Guantanamo Bay with the successful prosecution of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers.

The Illinois senator also favored the Supreme Court ruling that allowed detainees to challenge their imprisonment in US courts. McCain called it one of the worst decisions in the history of this country. Yet here is where Obama wins the argument. Detaining those folks at GITMO hasn't brought the US one step closer to apprehending the one person everyone acknowledges is responsible for the 9/11 terror attacks. That would be Osama bin Laden. In fact, he may die of old age if current efforts under this administration to find him continue unchanged.

That doesn't even take into account the human cost of the Iraq war, which was initially justified as an extension of the effort to smash al-Qaeda. That, by the way, is a war McCain continues to support.

So exactly who doesn't understand the threat to America?