The executive orders halted the military commissions (Mr. Obama has since ordered them to resume proceeding in mid-May) that were trying several of the most egregious terrorists held at Guantanamo, including September 11th “mastermind” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Obama also ordered the facility closed within a year. The individuals held there were to be released, transferred to other countries willing to take them, or detained further in other US detention facilities. (It was unspecified whether these were to be on American soil or not.) Commissions to review the process were set up immediately.

To the discontent of some in the Republican Party, former Vice President Dick Cheney, known for his reclusive nature while in office, went on an all-out spring campaign in the media to portray Mr. Obama’s policies on detainees as ones that “raise the risk to the American people of another attack.” While many thought the criticism would not have much of an impact due to Mr. Cheney’s unpopularity, bipartisan opposition to transferring the prisoners to the United States mounted.

“Detainees who have violated the rules of war…need to be kept elsewhere, wherever that is,” said Sen. Ben Nelson, a moderate Democrat from Nebraska. “I don’t want to see them come on American soil.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was one of many Senate Democrats who agreed, removing $80 million intended to pay for the closure of Guantanamo from an appropriations bill. While some Democrats were unequivocal about their opposition to transferring detainees to American soil, others demanded, in what was eventually codified into law, a plan from the White House on how specifically they intended to close the facility.

The Detention Policy Task Force, instituted by Mr. Obama in one of his initial executive orders, was to present a report by July 21st, which could have satisfied, at least in part, the demands of congressional Democrats for a concrete plan. However, it was granted a six month extension; the conclusion of this window will coincide with the deadline established by the Obama administration to close the detention center.
The five-page preliminary report it did issue said little of substance, arguing that both the federal court system as well as military commissions, which have looser evidentiary standards than civilian courts, should be used to prosecute detainees, depending on context-dependent factors such as the nature of their crimes. It defended the legitimacy of military commissions, as presently constituted.

The Obama administration’s diplomatic efforts and popularity overseas has granted it some limited success in one of its key goals of its Guantanamo policy. A Bloomberg News report states that the administration has said that numerous EU countries, as well less obvious states like Chad, have either already accepted transferred detainees from Guantanamo or have committed to do so. A recent story in The New York Times showed several seemingly happy Uighers, previously held at Guantanamo, eating ice cream and swimming in the Atlantic off the island of Bermuda.

While transferring some of the detainees to other countries remains a viable option, many countries do not want to deal with the most dangerous detainees. The administration is unlikely to transfer them to allied countries like Egypt or Saudi Arabia where they stand a high risk of being tortured. Further, the United States wishes to try many of them and this process will not be completed before the January deadline; indeed, it is likely to stretch on for years.

One option that will be pursued carefully will be simply releasing some of the prisoners, when this is logistically viable. The Bush administration has done so over the course of the center’s existence. However, a Pentagon study reported by The New York Times has found that one in 20 of freed detainees are confirmed to have engaged in terrorism since their release, and one in seven is either suspected or confirmed terrorists. The Obama administration is likely to tread carefully on releases of detainees, as it does not want to be open to Republican criticism that it freed terrorists who later mounted attacks on American interests.

The language of the administration’s senior officials seems to indicate they are open to indefinite detention of detainees who can neither be tried by military commissions, nor by civilian courts. For example, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed the administration’s commitment to “proceeding with the transfer of those who can be transferred, the trial of those who can be tried, and the continuing detention of those who pose a grave threat.”

Mr. Obama himself alluded to this prospect of indefinite detentions at his May 21st speech and a Times report released around the same time said he told others he was considering setting up a permanent system for holding those who cannot be tried. However, the legal justification for detaining these alleged terrorists indefinitely on US soil is much more complicated than holding them extraterritorially at a facility such as Guantanamo. Indeed, many on the left have responded with renewed concerns over the ability of the president to detain anyone as an enemy combatant without trial.

The issue of Guantanamo is no clearer than it was when Mr. Obama was inaugurated. On the contrary, the heady optimism of the early executive orders which seemed to guarantee the closure of the detention facility has been replaced with a cautious approach, as the outlines of the political costs involved have been seen. As time passes with no solution designed and the political elite’s attention having shifted to healthcare reform, the probability of Guantanamo closing by the January 22nd, 2010 is getting smaller and smaller.

A president of the United States should not expect to be spared from media criticism on account that something which had happened wasn’t really his fault. If he is a Republican, he should be especially sure of this. So if White House staffers made an honest mistake in not overly qualifying a banner meant to express admiration for the success of an aircraft carrier crew back from the longest tour of duty since the Vietnam era, President Bush had no right to complain when he was accused of prematurely declaring victory in Iraq, even as he warned on that infamous May Day, “Our mission continues. Al-Qaida is wounded, not destroyed.”

He was wrong in stating that the end of ‘major combat operations’ had come. Yet, quietly, almost unnoticed by the vast majority of Americans preoccupied with an economy that is tanking, the brave men and women of our armed forces, led by General Petraeus, a brilliant soldier-scholar in the mold of the legendary Xenophon, and by the resolve of a president who refused to accept defeat when it was supposed to be the only option, have created facts on the ground in Iraq such that it would be completely apt to bring that ill-fated banner out of retirement, six years later.

There were three primary goals that American policymakers had, but failed to clearly elucidate, when we opened up the Iraqi front in the war against Islamic radicalism: 1) to remove an aggressive, violent dictator as a threat to order in the Middle East, 2) to remake Iraq into a model of democracy for the rest of the Islamic world, and 3) to move the battleground away from Manhattan. The first was accomplished within weeks. Yet, the latter two took longer, and may have even seemed like pipe dreams for a time. However, today, six years later, we see that all three have been accomplished.

There is a line of thought, popular among both those on the left who sympathize with the grievances of our enemies and those who self-righteously proclaim themselves to be “realists,” that terrorism is impossible to defeat; rather, its “root causes” must be dealt with. In other words, we must appease the demands of our enemies, for then they will no longer hate us. Such is wishful thinking and empirically false. Israel’s Ariel Sharon was called a warmonger when he rejected such beliefs, but bus and pizzeria bombings virtually disappeared due to measures like targeted assassinations and a security fence widely criticized by the left. Terrorism went from an existential threat to a nuisance for the Jewish State.

The war we wage against terrorism is similar. Many have argued that our fight in Iraq would be counterproductive, that is, it would merely encourage terrorism. Yet, not one major terrorist attack has occurred on American soil since the adoption of Bush’s anti-terrorism strategy following 9/11. Correlation is not necessarily causation, but there is a strong case to be made that what we did in Iraq succeeded in reducing the chances of another terrorist attack happening here at home. Terrorism cannot be fought effectively on our soil without us surrendering the civil liberties that make us the freest people on earth. The battle must be brought to the terrorists.

That is precisely what happened. Foreign fighters streamed into Iraq to fight the Great Satan—which means that the terrorists and their resources were not flowing into America. We paid a terrible price in blood and treasure but we successfully destroyed Al Qaeda in Iraq. On April 20, 2007, as the surge was in full swing, Harry Reid unequivocally said, “The war is lost.” Wishful thinking for defeatists, perhaps, but terrorism has been fought and defeated. Whereas, scores of American soldiers would die in roadside bombs a few years back, today, hostile deaths of American military personnel have fallen precipitously (it’s amazing what happens when one directs leftists to icasualties.org) to levels that, while still tragic, are indicative of our military’s enduring success.

The ideological and psychological effects of this are no less relevant than the fact that limited terrorist resources were expended in Iraq. Osama bin Laden has long spoken of a weak horse and a strong horse and the tendency of individuals to gravitate towards the strong horse. One may be willing to die for a cause they think will win, but one will think twice when theirs is a cause that is losing. September 11th may have established radical Islam as the ’strong horse’ and our initial bungling in Iraq may have confirmed that for many. But the defeat of Al Qaeda in places like Anbar province showed that America can win, and that she will not be deterred from her mission by any amount of sustained resistance from her enemies.

We have struck both a material and a psychological blow to the terrorist wing of Islamic radicalism that becomes more crucial with the ascendancy of the new administration in Washington. For the Obama administration to accomplish the diplomatic goals it spoke of with such conviction, it is hugely beneficial to speak from a position of strength—the position of a nation that has fought terrorism against the counsel of many and prevailed.

Yet, we were not merely fighting Al Qaeda and foreign terrorism; we were waging war against Iraqis who falsely mistook our motives as those of occupiers and not liberators. Many say that a popular insurgency cannot be defeated militarily. They are poor students of history. Comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam have been made passé by mindless protesters desiring to relive the past, but they are not entirely useless. As the eminent Vietnam scholar Lewis Sorley documents in his book, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam, American military prowess had crushed the Viet Cong and the NVA following the Tet Offensive and President Nixon’s victory was undermined only by the post-Watergate Democratic Congress withdrawing aid from our South Vietnamese allies. Fortunately, President Bush has successfully managed the conclusion of our battle against the insurgency in Iraq.

Today, the democratically-elected Iraqi government faces a whole set of problems, but its existence is no longer threatened. Iraq will remain a country ruled by its people, not by a dictator or a monarch who traces his family lineage to Mohammad. The Iraqi people have shown an appreciation and excitement for democracy and have not reacted to it by electing the most radical party possible, as the residents of Gaza did with Hamas. An Islamic coalition supported by moderate clerics rules the country, not the Sadrists, whose message is virulently anti-American and pro-Iranian. It is not a complete model of civil liberties, but it is not the Islamic theocracy many feared it would become. Baghdad, once ruled by gangs of puritanical fundamentalists, is seeing its nightclubs and liquor stores reopen and its parks fill with couples expressing their affection for one another perhaps a little too publicly.

The central thesis of the “democratizers” who argued for our military action in Iraq was that people would choose freedom and peace over violence and tyranny when given the choice. In a region that previously had one democratic Moslem state, the introduction of a second one where there has been no tradition of liberalism will act as an inspiring model for the rest—most importantly its neighbor, Iran—showing that religion can coexist with democracy without the need for all-powerful religious clerics. For democratization to work optimally, a period of somewhat benevolent dictatorship for the proliferation of liberal values in a controlled environment has proved invaluable, but as we skipped this step in Iraq, the nation will require a sustained commitment from us following the end of our military engagement there.

The Democratic Party has been portrayed as weak on issues of national security for more than a third of a century because of its complicity in the loss of a free Vietnam. We ought to pray to God that, as the party wields almost unchecked power today, it will not make the same mistake with Iraq—not for its own sake, but for the sake of the Iraqis and freedom-loving people everywhere.

A Californian who voted for Proposition 209 in 1996 expecting it to be the beginning of a new era of merit rather than political considerations being the dominant factor in UC admissions would have been sorely mistaken. The regents, laughably criticized as reactionary conservatives by radical leftist groups like BAMN, approved in February a plan that would eliminate the SAT Subject Test (popularly known as the SAT-II) requirement starting for the current high school freshman class. In so doing, they eliminated a measure that is both useful and fair: two one-hour tests on a Saturday morning, with fee waivers for those who cannot afford it.

A little thought experiment for those questioning the need for Subject Tests: individual A goes to a large public school where achievement is high, while individual B, otherwise equally qualified as individual A, goes to one where achievement is low. For whom is it going to be easier to achieve the more stand-out grades?

To adequately evaluate applicants, the university needs to differentiate between students A and B. The Reasoning Test is closely correlated with IQ, which in turn was successfully demonstrated by Harvard Professor Richard Herrnstein’s tour de force, The Bell Curve, to be indicative of many forms of human economic and social potential. But intelligence is not the only criteria the university has to take into account. It must also make sure that its students have been both academically well-prepared and have a track record of exerting effort in their studies. An IQ test like the Reasoning Test fails to do this, and so comes the utility of the Subject Tests, which tests academic preparation to a greater degree. Indeed, the most widely cited anti-SAT study, Saul Geiser’s 2001 study for the University of California Office of the President, even states that the Subject Tests are a better predictor of freshman grades than is the SAT-I.

If the regents truly wanted to remove a barrier to entry without harming academic standards, they would have loosened the very strict A-G requirements that disqualify thousands of scholastically successful students and discourage thousands of others from even considering the system. It is always ridiculous when, as a result of poor counseling, an otherwise-qualified high school senior discovers he is ineligible for the University of California because he took two semesters of art, but not in consecutive semesters, as is required by the A-G requirements. Most elite colleges such as Harvard and Yale have no specific high school course requirements, merely recommendations which it is highly advisable to follow but failing to fulfill one does not result in automatic disqualification. There is no reason for the level of stringency the UC practices, especially noting the trend away from points-based systems to holistic reviews.

Ironically, the initiative will fail in accomplishing its goal of increasing “diversity” in the University of California—that is, the number of black and Latino students. According to the UCOP, although more may apply, the percentages of both admitted will not change significantly, with the only substantive difference being the balance between white and Asian students, with the numbers of the former rising at the expense of the latter. Attempts to artificially create diversity in academia are much harder to accomplish than they initially seem and often have repercussions that would be amusing were the stakes not as high.
But connect the dots. This has little to do with the increased numbers of eligible students; it has to do with differences between races in what test they do better on. As UCSB’s Daily Nexus points out, data compiled by the National Center for Fair and Open Testing reveals that Asians do better relative to whites on the Subject Tests than on the Reasoning Test, explaining why eliminating the SAT-II hurts them disproportionately.

Regardless of which test gives admissions officers the most accurate picture of the applicant, having more information cannot hurt, especially when considering the individual idiosyncrasies of tens of thousands of applicants. A high math Reasoning Test score and a low Subject math score may reveal a lack of adequate preparation, or simply be the mark of a slacker. Admissions officers use these two tests together with grades to get the most complete picture of applicants’ academic capabilities. There is no reason to take this tool out of their hands—unless one, of course, has an antipathy to Asian-Americans in higher education.
In fact, many white leftists do. Asian-Americans threaten them in ways that Latinos and blacks do not, due to the low numbers of the latter two groups going to college. The white suburban Californian soccer mom may support Obama, but she knows her child is competing against an “Asian math prodigy” for admission to the top colleges. Her child knows that just as well as she does and often bears resentment toward Asian students for challenging the hegemony he feels entitled to.

These attitudes may be silent sometimes, but they often are not. As Harvard Professor Stephan Thernstrom writes, “My wife, Abigail, appeared on Crossfire many years ago and was asked by liberal co-host Bob Beckel whether she would ‘like to see UCLA Law School 80 percent Asian.’” In a 1995 interview, President Clinton said that “there are universities in California that could fill their entire freshman classes with nothing but Asian Americans.” In 1998, a writer for Newsday asked, “Since Asians outscore everyone, would we accept an all-Asian class?” Who at Cal today has not heard from an avowedly leftist white acquaintance that “there are too many Asians here”?

What lies at the roots of this attitude? Democrats thrive off of keeping minorities poor and uneducated—that way, they can capture their vote share for perpetuity. And they are used to minorities being just that. When a minority that has endured a history of discrimination succeeds in America without the aid of government and even does better in many respects than the majority group, white leftists are left confused because that is so contrary to their paternalistic view of viewing the racial diversity in America. When people’s basic conceptions of the world are disturbed, they often respond with anger at the source of whatever the disturbance is. In this case, it happens to be Asian-Americans.

This may sound like a conspiracy theory, but considering that eliminating the SAT-II will not increase minority enrollment, as it is intended to do, will give admissions officers a more limited view of the applicant, and otherwise accomplish nothing positive, there seems little other explanation for the regents’ decision than anti-Asian sentiment.

The lesson to be derived from this sorry episode is that while social engineering generally does little to help those it tries to help, it can do wonders in hurting a minority group that succeeds without and even in spite of the government’s help.