Counterterrorism, Obama Style by Andrew C. McCarthy on National Review Online

Counterterrorism, Obama Style by Andrew C. McCarthy on National Review Online: "Five months ago, when al-Qaeda jihadist Ali Saleh Kallah al-Marri pleaded guilty, it was obvious that the Justice Department had given him a sweetheart deal. On Thursday, a federal judge in Illinois dutifully finished the job. Al-Marri, a committed sleeper operative sent by our enemies to carry out a post-9/11 second wave of mass-murder attacks inside the United States, was given an appalling sentence: He’ll be eligible for release in about six years.

When al-Marri entered his plea back in May, Attorney General Eric Holder crowed that the case demonstrated the criminal-justice system’s capacity to confront and quell international terrorism. As I observed at the time, though, the plea bargain was a travesty. It marked a dramatic step backwards even from the wayward 1990s philosophy that saw international terrorism as strictly a law-enforcement issue, not a national-defense matter.

Prior Justice Department practice required prosecutors to charge the most severe, readily provable offense. And in 1996, to ensure that this practice would result in sentences of death or life imprisonment for terrorists, Congress — with significant encouragement from the Clinton Justice Department (in its pre-Holder days) — overhauled federal counterterrorism law. These new laws did not solve the underlying problems: that terrorism is not a mere crime, and that regarding it as such badly compromises national security. But they did at least mean that terrorists who were successfully prosecuted would never again be able to harm Americans or anyone else. The new laws were tailor-made for terrorists like al-Marri, who joined al-Qaeda in 1998, reported directly to the network’s top echelon, and was sent to the United States by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Qaeda’s operations chief and 9/11 master planner, to carry out mass-murder attacks using chemical and biological weapons."