As the midterm elections in November inch closer with each passing day, political maneuverings and rhetoric are starting to make their way into the news. Recently, Republicans have called Democrats and the Obama administration ‘soft on terror.’ They have also called attention to the Obama administration’s decision to let the FBI arrest and interrogate the Christmas Day bomber and file federal terrorism charges against him. Apparently, they would rather throw him in some military prison, give him no rights and hold him without charges like the previous administration.

During the Bush administration, many suspected terrorists were detained illegally, interrogated harshly, never given a trial and never told what charges were being brought against them. The theory was that this was the best policy to gather as much information as possible. Well, theories are theories because they aren’t true in all cases. In reality, what these policies did was anger the Muslim community and support the belief that America was in a war against Islam. While many terrorists were caught and detained, many more Muslims were angered and radicalized, creating more terrorists than those being caught.

Nicholas Armstrong, an Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran and a research fellow at the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism at Syracuse University, explained the results of the Bush administration’s policies.

‘I think it probably fueled hate, anti-U.S. sentiment, within the broader region,’ Armstrong said. ‘It maybe fueled recruitment from other nations, and it definitely fueled recruitment to al Qaida …’

By granting trials to suspected terrorists, Republicans have claimed that Barack Obama is giving new rights to terrorists. But, as Attorney General Eric Holder pointed out, the Bush administration tried more than 300 suspected terrorists on terrorism-related charges in federal courts without any complaints from Republicans then.

Armstrong, comparing the two administrations’ terrorism policies, couldn’t find much disparity.

‘The policies on terrorism between the Obama administration and the Bush administration, with the exception of the ban on torture, aren’t a whole lot different from each other,’ Armstrong said. ‘It’s all a matter of political framing of their argument.’

Michael Barkun, a professor of political science at SU and an expert in the field of terrorism, recognizes these attempts at framing from Republicans and remembers a similar argument from earlier in American history.

‘The Republican charge that the Obama administration is ‘soft on terrorism’ is a variation on older charges, all of which deal with national security issues, such as the accusation during the Cold War that Democrats were ‘soft on Communism,” Barkun said. ‘This rhetoric has reappeared because of the belief that it may have some political utility.’

So, while Republicans push the idea that Obama’s polices are soft on terror, the Obama administration has to try and clean up the mess that was left from the previous administration. One of the first steps is showing the Muslim world that America is not at war with its religion. Giving terrorists the same rights and due process that everyone else receives is a giant step in the right direction.

‘I think history will show that the Bush administration detention policy was not only illegal, it was counterproductive,’ Barkun explained. ‘That is, it was conducted in a manner that generated far more resentment in the Islamic world than was necessary and produced far less intelligence from among the detainees than was possible. It has left a political and legal legacy that our institutions will be working through for years to come.’

Samuel Blackstone is a sophomore magazine journalism and political science major. His column appears weekly and he can be reached at [email protected].

Published on March 1, 2010 at 12:00 pm