Seek Battle After the Victory Has Been Won

Crossposted at RedState.

The victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.
- Sun Tzu

Patrick’s post today on de-gimmicking the conservative movement makes an excellent point. We need to choose our battles, find conservative policies with overwhelming public support, and vigorously advance them in non-ideological terms. The approach worked with the Contract for America in 1994, and it worked with Drill Here Drill Now last year. When we find conservative policies with overwhelming support and draw upon the American people to create change, it works very well.
 
President Obama's January 22nd executive order, which ordered the closing of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, opened the door to such a winning 80/20 American issue. President Obama’s order will close the Guantanamo facility within one year of its signing and ordered an extensive revision of terrorist detainee policy which would determine where the Guantanamo detainees will go and what will happen to the detainees of the future. The executive order was a controversial document that has been assaulted from both the left and the right. However, most Americans overwhelmingly agree with conservatives on the key issue at hand and we should use this opportunity to advance sound national security policy, not gimmickry.
 
The Combatant vs. Criminal Battle and the Features of the Field
 
At its core, this is a struggle over whether terrorist detainees should be treated as civilian criminals or as combatant prisoners of war. Conservatives typically believe that terrorists should be treated as combatants, and liberals believe they should be treated as criminals.
 
This is a complex issue, and the major polls investigating the question can sometimes be misleading. For example, a recent ABC poll claimed that Americans supported trying detainees in civilian courts over releasing them to their home countries by a 2-1 margin. This may seem to demonstrate support for the terrorist-as-criminal position, but the question did not include the option of military tribunals.
 
Fortunately, when presented with the choice of providing detainees with civilian trials or using the military tribunal system, Americans strongly believe terrorist detainees should be treated as combatants, not criminals. In a January 27th Rasmussen poll, 69% said that terrorists should not be given all the rights of citizens, and 59% supported using military tribunals vs. 26% who supported using civilian trials to process detainee cases.
 
Furthermore, Americans do not want Guantanamo detainees (and presumably future detainees) transferred to the US, and certainly not in their own communities. A recent Opinion Dynamics poll reveals that 63% of all Americans, including majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and independents, do not want prisoners from Guantanamo Bay moved to prisons in their community, and a 52-47% majority do not want them in the US at all.
 
It is important to note that Guantanamo Bay itself has a negative connotation in the minds of the public that puts downward pressure on polling regarding the central criminal vs. combatant debate. The Rasmussen poll did not mention Guantanamo Bay in its questions about military tribunals and measured a large 33-point terrorist-as-combatant majority, while the ABC poll measured support for ‘continuing to hold [detainees] at Guantanamo’ rather than military tribunals and returned a relatively small 53-42 majority in favor of the terrorist-as-criminal approach.
 
With this knowledge and the work of Frank Luntz in mind, it would be wise for those of us who hold the terrorist-as-combatant view to let the Guantanamo Bay facility close. We should instead focus on the future by pushing the Administration to adopt a forward-looking counterterrorism detainee policy that is based on the terrorist-as-combatant view held by most Americans when Guantanamo is out of the picture. Sixty-eight percent of Americans, including majorities of Republicans, independents and Democrats, right-of-center terrorism experts Charles Stimson and James Jay Carafano, and even Newt Gingrich support the creation of a new set of clear international rules to set transparent guidelines for how countries can fight the War on Terror. If the process of creating these rules is transparent, the American people have the ability to provide their input into the process, and we have experts to publicly articulate the terrorist-as-combatant approach, the result would be a clearer, more stable system than what we have now which would ensure that dangerous combatants are not treated like fish in some catch-and-release system and allowed to return to the battlefield and kill again.  
 

 
Advancing a Transparency Agenda
 
Even if the American people overwhelmingly hold the terrorist-as-combatant position, the Administration and DC insiders will be able to ignore the wishes of the majority if they can develop their new policy in secret. President Obama ran his campaign last year with a major commitment to increasing transparency in government, and this is an excellent opportunity for conservatives to work with President Obama to accomplish this common goal.
 
National security often requires that certain aspects of counterterrorism policy are kept out of the eyes of the public. However, this does not mean that the legal framework for handling detainees should be shrouded in secrecy. As the Obama Administration develops post-Guantanamo detainee policy, it should take steps to open the process to the public and we should push them on this.
 
For starters, there should be a one-stop website that posts the latest developments by the Administration in crafting the new policy along with legal memos and other documentation relevant to the process. The Middle Class Task Force website provides a good starting point which should be expanded upon. This website should post these legal decisions in plain speech for full public review and comment, making sure that the original memos are easily available for expert scrutiny. Finally, the Obama Administration should expand on its policy of soliciting feedback and include that as well.
 
The American people have the right to know how their government plans on treating dangerous enemy combatants, and conservatives should work to hold President Obama to his promises of greater transparency.
 
Americans Should Come Before Bureaucrats
 
As discussed before, by a two-to-one margin, Americans do not want Guantanamo detainees living in their communities, be they Democrats, Republicans or independents. Nevertheless, politicians including Rep. Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania and Gov. Bill Ritter of Colorado have welcomed these dangerous individuals to their districts (which is ironic given that Murtha spends most of his time in Washington). Though many officeholders have stood up in favor of their constituents’ interests, it is still likely that Washington bureaucrats will attempt to place detainees in communities against the wishes of the people.
 
The Administration should listen to the overwhelming majority of the American people and refrain from housing detainees in American communities. These enemy combatants should be put in military facilities outside of the 50 states and treated as combatants, not prisoners.
 
If Obama Administration officials decide to buck the desires of the American people and put the Guantanamo prisoners in domestic facilities anyway, it should be done with heavy consultation with the communities involved. Residents of the communities in question should have multiple opportunities to talk face-to-face with senior level officials responsible for the policy and have their questions answered directly. Most importantly, a community should have the right to vote on the decision to bring Guantanamo prisoners to their area and prevent a transfer with a no vote.
 
Every American should have the right to evaluate the facts for themselves before Washington insiders decide for them if terrorists will move in down the road.
 
Moving Beyond Gitmo to the Counterterrorism Policy of the Future
 
A great deal of the energy of conservatives unhappy with the closing of Guantanamo has gone into the fight to keep the facility open. It is important to keep in mind that Guantanamo Bay is simply one place where terrorists can be held, and fighting to keep terrorists in a certain place is a drain on fighting to win the larger issue.
 
Unfortunately, the left has largely won the battle over Guantanamo Bay. As discussed before, Americans and foreigners alike have a negative view of the facility, and fair or not, connecting it to the terrorist-as-combatant argument harms our side of the issue. We would all be better off to let them win a pyrrhic victory at Guantanamo and press our considerable advantages in the larger war over American counterterrorism policy.
 
We can achieve a significant victory for national security by drawing on the overwhelming public support for the terrorist-as-combatant approach and proposing a new set of forward-thinking and clear rules for how countries can fight the war on terror. We can draw on the across the board support for such a set of rules as well as the support for our approach, put an ideas-based, proposal forward and gain a first mover advantage.
 
If we work together to popularize the matter in the vein of Drill Here Drill Now, and accomplish the transparency agenda laid out earlier, the result will be considerable public pressure on the Administration to solicit (and likely obtain) support from our allies for a clear, permanent and accepted set of rules for handling terrorism according to the terrorist-as-combatant approach. This will bring much greater stability to our counterterrorism operations and help ease tensions between our allies in the war on terror.
 
No Catch and Release for Dangerous Detainees
 
The issue of counterterrorism detainee policy is a tremendous opportunity for conservatives to act on a number of nearly ‘80/20’ issues and advance good policy in a non-ideological manner with overwhelming public support. By a two-to-one margin, Americans believe that terrorists should be processed in military tribunals rather than civilian courts, that Guantanamo detainees should not live in prisons in their communities, and that we should create a new set of rules for how countries should fight the War on Terror. On these issues, we must merely organize ourselves and press our case to advance sound national security policy.
 
The recently-launched No Catch and Release for Dangerous Detainees campaign is doing just that. No Catch and Release is focused on a short petition including each of these three points, and activists involved with the campaign arefired up and working to advance the three No Catch and Release principles in their communities and on the Web.
 
You can visit the No Catch and Release website and check out the petition at www.studentsforvictory.com/savelives.
 
The movement cannot be a success without the participation of Americans who believe that terrorists are not merely criminals, but dangerous enemy combatants. We can’t afford to look the other way and confront terrorism as a criminal matter.
 
No Catch and Release is just a starting point for what has to be a larger effort on this key issue by conservative activists and the American people. Whether it comes from us, independent bloggers, the RNC or #dontgo is not important. What is important is that we absorb Patrick’s point, that we follow Newt’s 80/20 approach, and that we heed Sun-Tzu’s adage that we should seek battle when the victory has been won.